The signature addition to the Switch version of Link’s Awakening is Chamber Dungeons. After Link rescues BowWow from the Moblins, Dampé comes up with the idea of rearranging rooms from the dungeons Link’s completed to create new dungeons. His hut is where the Camera Shop was in the DX version; the Photographer seems to have moved on, and, a few cute pictures aside, I don’t miss him. Link can’t actually do anything with this until he’s completed Bottle Grotto and taken BowWow back home, but after that’s settled, the game opens up.
There are two modes for Chamber Dungeons. The first is challenges given by Dampé, which come in four sets. The first set covers the basics. There must be an entrance room and a Nightmare boss room. Aside from the entrance, every door must connect to another door. Pairs of staircases will use one of the game’s underground passages to connect to one another. (If an odd number of staircases exists, either the passage you can fall into during the Moldorm fight [1] or the one the key falls into in Angler’s Tunnel will be used.) There must be a way into every room. Some challenges come with places where certain types of rooms must be placed (e.g., the room has to have a treasure chest, stairway, or a locked door), or have a design where every available square has to have a room. There have to be enough treasure chests to spawn enough keys to open all the locked doors. While exploring dungeons, Link has to collect all the chests; he gets small keys until he has enough, the last chest opened has the Nightmare Key, and the rest of the chests have rupees.
The second set of challenges is slightly more complex, and then the third set introduces restrictions. In one, Link is limited to three hearts, another has a five-minute time limit, and in the third Link can’t use his sword. The rewards for completing these first twelve challenges are two pieces of heart and one full heart container, a bottle, and a Seashell. Link also unlocks free mode, where he can arrange things however he likes. (This mode feels pretty pointless without being able to share online.) There’s a fourth set of twelve challenges and these are a doozy. Not necessarily to play through – even with restrictions, they’re only as hard as you make them – but they’re rough to design; the layouts are big and/or complicated, and it’s easy for something to not line up just right. The only reward for these dungeons is rupees, and by time he unlocks them, the only thing really left to buy is Chamber Stones, so unless you’re a completionist or you really like the Chamber Dungeons, it’s not really worth it.
There are 20 more tiles Link can unlock. Six of these come from amiibo: five from scanning any Zelda amiibo, plus one for scanning the Link’s Awakening Link amiibo. The other fourteen come from Chamber Stones. Seven are bought at the Town Tool Shop for 1280 rupees apiece. (Fortunately, rupees are very plentiful in this game – especially using the Chamber Dungeons.) Two are won from the Trendy Game, two from the Fishing Hole, two from collecting Seashells, and one via the Rapids Ride. Some of these unlock room effects – rains of rupees, hearts, or bombs; added Wall Masters and enemies; and spawning a Shadow Link miniboss. I’ve only fought Shadow Link once, so I’m not clear on the mechanics, but he’s got a lot of health (possibly like Ocarina of Time Dark Link, who had as much health as Link) and hits hard: normal attacks do 1 heart of damage, spin attacks do 3 hearts. The reward for beating him is a bunch of rupees and recovery items.
While, overall, I enjoyed the Chamber Dungeons and thought they were a nice addition to the game, there were three big flaws. The first is the pointlessness of the final set of challenges. That also came after Turtle Rock, so it feels like the game just stops dead right before the ending. Second, by reusing rooms from completed dungeons – and reusing them again and again through repeated challenges – the Chamber Dungeons start to feel repetitive and samey after a while. (Also not helping the huge batch of challenges in the end.) Finally, stair connection is not something the player has any power over, and the AI for how they connect is terrible. It seems to prioritize connecting the closest staircases, no matter how little sense that makes, and can isolate a set of rooms to not connect to the rest of the dungeon and leave it to the player to rearrange rooms to make it work.
Even with the flaws, the Chamber Dungeons were fun. They were an easy way to get rupees for the Bow, and later, the Chamber Stones. Fighting the bosses multiple times gave me a good feel for how they changed for this version of the game. The execution isn’t quite perfect, but it never quite reached the level of tedium that, say, the Nintendo Gallery in Wind Waker did. (I may change my mind on this on future plays, since there’s a heart and a half locked behind it. On the other hand, if I can copy my challenges from my first play to an amiibo and reuse them…)
Overall, I think the Switch version is an upgrade to what was already one of the best Zelda games in the series and is the definitive version of the game. What made the Game Boy game great is still here, and the presentation is nicely touched up for a modern system.
[1] Which turns falling off the edge from falling into a passage to a normal fall, respawning Link minus a heart.
