Zelda 2 is one of those games that gets a lot of undeserved hate just for being different. In spite of all the criticism, I still rank it high among my list of favorite Zelda games and favorite NES games. That being said, I’ve played it to death and pretty much memorized it.

With that in mind, I needed a fresh challenge for my Zelda 2 fix, so I went to check out Ice Penguin’s hacks. I thought Zelda 2 Part 2 and Part 3 were a little too Kaizo-esque for my taste, but then I came across Journey of a Day, which completely overhauled Hyrule, added new puzzles to solve with new item requirements for different locations, and expanded upon the gameplay and challenge of the original game.

One thing we used to do in old-school adventure and RPG games before the days of the internet was take notes of different things, like passwords or locations of things and stuff like that. For this hack, you’re going to want to do that if you want to get through the Great Palace. Just throwing that out there.

I believe that a good ROM hack should give a fresh challenge to players who have mastered the source game without going completely overboard, and I feel like Journey of a Day did that perfectly. While I can beat the original Zelda 2 in just over 2 hours, my playthrough of Journey of a Day took 6 hours. I felt the love put into making this hack, and any Zelda 2 fan should play it!