I don’t know if this is the right community for this, so I am sorry if it shouldn’t go here. I am currently playing through a link to the past for the first time and have noticed a steep increase in difficulty once I unlocked the dark world. The dark palace was okay but I am honestly kinda stuck at the swamp palace. I would love to play through the game because it was a lot of fun up to this point but I don’t feel like the game is mechanically fun enough to beat my head against the wall repeatedly. I have already noticed I can swap between the worlds with the mirror so I guess I could go to the normal world at any time to stock up on fairies. Are there any other tipps or hidden mechanics to make the game easier? I don’t really want to spend a lot of time aimlessly searching the world for heart containers and following guides to them also seems kinda tedious.
I love ALttP, but watching my wife on her first playthrough recently reminded me how frustrating it can be so my heart goes out to you. Heck, whenever I play again I put off swamp palace until nearly the end.
ALttP is also from that generation of games where you needed to talk to every NPC to figure out the hints and locations to sidequests and items. There are a number of bombable caves that you can access in either the light or dark worlds, as well as some that are accessible ones you’re equipped with the gloves/mitts. Some others are accessible if you go to the dark world and get into position to transition back to the light world in a spot you couldn’t reach from the light world alone, like getting to the Tower of Hera.
I think a nice middle ground for you might be the ALttPR tracker. It’s made for the randomizer, but the chest locations are all the same (it’s just their contents that get shuffled) so you’ll have a visual representation of where items can be found but you can still work through getting to them on your own without spoilers.
Thanks for that link, I do think part of why the guide seems tedious is figuring out where things are in the game world and I vastly prefer just checking out the places with a map
Edit: wow, I just realised the map even lets you select which items you have picked up and then displays which places are actually accessible, that is extremely neat! I think this is the tool that will save this playthrough lol