For puzzles, I took a little bit of inspiration from The Lost Vikings, though my style is fairly different.
omgggg i was just thinking about how some of the splitting puzzles gave me kind of a Lost Vikings vibe; nice to know that wasn't all in my head
anyway... i haven't finished this yet; i just wanted to say (while the thoughts are still fresh in my mind) that i am enjoying this very, very much so far and i think it's going to end up being one of my favorite quests and a stronnggggg contender for favorite. i know people have said this already, but the way you managed to get all these things from all these disparate games to fit together and to use them in puzzles in TONNNNS of clever and interesting ways is kind of genius. it's like you have an entire ecosystem of items you can combine together in a bajillion ways. the possibilities feel endless.
i think, beyond that, i really really really appreciate the attention to detail it has; the eye for the original games' mechanics' finer details and the way they all fit together. i feel like a lot of quests take mechanics from official games and just kinda just rush to include them in super barebones, unsatisfying-feeling ways, but everything in this quest just feels fun. the downstab feels as fun to pogostick with (even in top-down!) as it does in Z2, just jumping around with the roc's cape feels super fun, the pegasus boots (or their replacement, rather) feel just like LA's in a way that's kind of... amazing. (speaking of the pegasus boots, i REALLY appreciated that there's an "Ancient Stone Tablets" item that lets you turn dashes. having a reference to a little change in game mechanics that was in a spinoff game on the satellaview genuinely fills me with joy) i think it is that attention to detail and that ability to use the mechanics in clever ways that holds the quest together. it's honestly the same sort of feeling i get from Nintendo's best games, that combination of game mechanics that feel fun to control and the joy of discovery, both of secrets and the potential uses of said mechanics.
(also i liked the instruction manual too, it was cute and felt super authentic)
i'll probably have more stuff to say (and maybe some bugs to point out? sorry if the idea of having more stuff to fix on your plate is daunting @_@) later once i finish the quest