Action role-playing game
An important influence on the action RPG genre was the 1986 action-adventure, "The Legend of Zelda", which served as the template for many future action RPGs. In contrast to previous action RPGs, such as "Dragon Slayer" and "Hydlide," which required the player to bump into enemies in order to attack them, "The Legend of Zelda" featured an attack button that animates a sword swing or projectile attack on the screen. It was also an early example of open-world, nonlinear gameplay, and introduced new features such as battery backup saving. These elements have been used in many action RPGs since.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Like most games in "The Legend of Zelda" series, "Link's Awakening" is an action-adventure game focused on exploration and combat. The majority of the game takes place from an overhead perspective. The player traverses the overworld of Koholint Island while fighting monsters and exploring underground dungeons. Dungeons steadily become larger and more difficult, and feature "Nightmare" boss characters that the player must defeat, taking different forms in each dungeon, and getting harder to defeat each time. Success earns the player heart containers, which increase the amount of damage the player character can survive; when all of the player's heart containers have been emptied, the game restarts at the last doorway entered by the character. Defeating a Nightmare also earns the player one of the eight instruments necessary to complete the game.