Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King

Like most kids, I grew up playing and absolutely adoring classic Zelda games. Blossom Tales successfully accomplishes it’s goal of recreating the tried and true simplistic gameplay found in the classic action/adventure genre, but also adds a bit of its own personality as well. By adapting new mechanics for a more fluid experience and combining that with the charming story-telling narrative, Castle Pixel has created an elegant love letter to one of Nintendo’s most cherished and beloved titles. So if you yearn for a polished Zelda experience, look no further - Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is a beautiful homage.

Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is a great Zelda-like game that reminds masterpieces like A Link to the Past. It fits perfectly on the Switch and is funny and entertaining.

Fun puzzles, exciting dungeons, and satisfying exploration makes this retro-style title a joy to play through. With loads of Zelda inspiration and fun, new takes on puzzles and boss battles within the beloved formula, Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is a delightful take on a familiar style.

Blossom Tales scratches an itch I have of wanting to venture through Link to the Past once a year. It is well-designed if not a bit cliché in its approach. Still for those with the same nostalgia for Link’s SNES adventure, there are few games that capture it as well as this one.

Overall, I found Blossom Tales to be a very good 2D Zelda clone. It was put together more competently than I expected from an Indie developer. That’s not a dig on Indie devs – it’s praise for a game done well enough that it only fell a few notches short of games like Minish Cap (though even shorter). If you are looking for an Adventure game that follows the top-down Zelda formula closely, there might not be a better game for you on the Nintendo Switch eShop than this one.

Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is another indie game which feels right at home on Nintendo’s platform, despite also being available on Steam. The game will appeal to those looking for a bit of classic dungeon crawling, and it will be sure to please those that have missed top-down Zelda adventures. With a lovely kingdom to explore and a varied range of objectives, Blossom Tales shows us that this genre is still very much alive.

Blossom Tales achieves with flying colors a synthesis of what used to make a 2D Zelda a great game, while adding enough ideas to satisfy the old-school fanatics. Thanks to a charming art direction, Castle Pixel's second game will please most of nostalgic gamers. But such reverence to the original Zelda series will not come along with many surprises, even with such a short length.

Blossom Tales might be a bit heavy-handed in its homage to the Zelda games of the past, but it brings a certain charm and fun to the Switch library. It also makes for a pretty good substitute as long as I still can't play A Link to the Past on my Switch.

Blossom Tales takes much of it's rule book straight from A Link to the Past and manages to adapt relatively well. Whilst the game lacks some of the polish and charm of it's inspiration, it doesn't stop the game from being good in it's own right.

While it may be easy to disregard Blossom Tales as a simple Zelda clone, the amount of charm and effort put into making it wholly unique, while honouring its inspiration, is both admirable and deserving of attention. Its dungeons feature genuinely thought-provoking puzzles, its combat requires a fair amount of strategy, and its story's Princess Bride-like narration lends itself to copious amounts of charismatic story beats. The faux retro graphics won't win over anyone sick of the style and the first impression perhaps relies upon referencing A Link to the Past a bit too much, but Blossom Tales is an incredibly creative and wholesome adventure that knows exactly what it is, even if it isn't entirely original. If nothing else, it's an immensely satisfying scratch for the Switch's 2D action-adventure itch.

If you're looking for a classic top-down Zelda experience on Nintendo's new console, you really don't need to look any farther. Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is a pitch-perfect homage to the SNES/Game Boy era Zelda games, and it also manages to stand on its own two feet by the end of the adventure. And the best part? No breaking weapons!

If you're looking to play a cute indie version of The Legend of Zelda then Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King definitely fits the bill. Just don't expect it to provide anything particularly new and exciting.

A carbon copy of classic Zelda games, but in my opinion the best part of this game is not how it looks, but its story design. A mixture of fairy tales.

Blossom Tales stands as a good example at how a game with a rather simple origin can provide a surprising amount of content and a world to explore, even if it does not reach the monumental peaks it would like to. Thanks to its fine controls and gameplay and to the satisfaction of exploration, as well as to a visually charming outlook, Blossom Tales is a very welcome addition to the adventure and exploration games of the Nintendo Switch catalogue.