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Melvin the Moblin

Overview Feature Quest
Creator: Smiles the Death Bringer Genre: Story-driven Added: 27 Dec 2017 Updated: 25 Jan 2018 ZC Version: 2.50.2 Downloads: 506 Rating[?]: Rating: 4.14/5 (6 ratings) Download Quest
(4.38 MB)
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Titanium Justice  
Rating: 5/5

Posted 05 May 2020 - 12:53 AM
This is the first big quest I've beaten in a while, so you obviously did a great job of captivating me from start to finish. I liked the personality of the characters and all the elements of parody spread throughout the story. The overworld at first was very maze-like but I figured it out after meandering around a bit. Dan's Labyrinth really made searching for treasure all the more interesting. Most of the dungeons felt very well thought out, though I think the one I have the biggest gripe with was the Clockwork Tower. Clocktown was very impressive looking, but that tower I found to be a bit on the frustrating side and overly long even with the halfway checkpoint.

I only noticed a couple of things that might be bugs. If you die in the icey segment of Dan's labyrinth, it will send you back to the entrance surrounded by the ice even if you didn't enter from there. Not sure if that was intended or not. Also, after you beat the last boss, it is possible to enter the door to the right into a black screen. I have a feeling that wasn't intended, but it didn't ruin anything for me.

All in all, a very solid quest. One of the best I've played in a while, if not one of the best I've played.
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SofaKing  
Rating: 5/5

Edited 07 January 2018 - 12:07 AM
While I agree with some of Eddy's criticism to a degree, there's just too much originality, cleverness, obvious attention to detail, and goodness here to rate this anything less then "excellent," or five stars. While there were a few too many empty screens in places, the dual overworld/underworld, combined with some truly unique levels, makes this a winner. I loved Level 6, had a love/hate relationship with Level 7 but man it looked cool, and agree Level 8 could do with a bit more direction. Level 9 frankly dragged a bit for me. Your puzzles tend to be a little too obvious most of the time. But still -- A parking ramp actually graphically pulled off? Perfect use of the Kraid's lair theme and possibly my favorite video game composition of all time ? (the closing credits music from Mario 64 is SOOO good). Yup, the care and feeding that went into this is obvious. Congrats Smiles. This was something overall. 10+ hours, 9 full levels, a huge "extra" level, and much humor and eye candy. Thumbs up!
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Eddy  
Rating: 3/5

Posted 31 December 2017 - 11:41 AM
Finished this quest in about 2 days with 11 deaths. Overall it was better than what I expected, though I'd say the quest was average at best, but definitely not bad (effort was clearly put into this).

The quest itself was decent all around. The story was definitely very humorous, and I guess now I know what's up with the insane money drops everywhere. The overall progression and flow of the quest was quite nice and the overworld was quite cool to go through. The biggest highlight of the overworld for me was the Dan's Labyrinth which was a very nice dungeon to go through. I really like the idea of multiple entrances throughout the overworld and the fact that the labyrinth connects up underground too is also quite nice. Each section has their own theme too so it isn't just a plain boring dungeon. Talking about dungeons, the dungeons of the quest were quite interesting and fun to play. My personal favourite is probably Level 7 despite the terrible platforming at times. I really like the concept and theme of that dungeon and the area around it was pretty cool too. The difficulty was fairly good. There was a clear increase in difficulty as the quest went on which was good, though there are a couple areas where the difficulty was super inconsistent, especially in Dan's Labyrinth. I noticed after clearing a room with tough enemies, the next room has really easy enemies which was quite an odd difficulty drop.

There were a couple negative points I have with the quest. The overworld design was good for the most part with plenty of design and detail in places. I get really peeved when I see GB trees being stacked vertically on each other rather than diagonally, but that's just a personal preference. As far as dungeon design goes, I noticed it is quite on the empty side of things. There could definitely be a bit more detail and maybe more blocks or something to fill up the empty spaces at times. Wall detail of any kind would also help a lot when it comes to dungeon design. Probably have some torches around or some design on the walls to make things look less empty. On the topic of dungeons, I didn't like Level 8 at all IMO. I personally found it to be a bit of a mess since I pretty much just had to wander around aimlessly in hopes I can find something. Probably some way to help guide your way through the dungeon would be very nice (like Lens hints showing paths that don't loop you around the dungeon for example). I found the ending to be a bit of a let-down personally. After fighting Mr. Manfred, I was hoping there would be some sort of a big Ganon fight or something since there was definitely a build up, but the quest just seemed to end like that which was quite disappointing. I understand the whole inflation thing going on with the quest and stuff, but yeah money was generally useless throughout the whole quest since I kept on getting so much of it. Getting money rewards and stuff later on pretty much wasn't needed anymore since I always maxed out super fast. I would personally lower the money drops significantly, even if this goes against the story since it got to the point where there was no point in getting money rewards later in the quest anymore. I noticed that the main overworld has quite a lot of filler screens, especially in areas around dungeons. There are a ton of dead-ends with nothing in them and there were hardly any secrets to be find throughout the quest, which was a bit disappointing since it would've been nice to burn a lot of bushes or bomb walls and stuff to find Heart Pieces and other things. One final thing, I would highly suggest not to use bush tiles on edges of screens and to make sure treetops are solid on the edges of screens. I know you have Smart Screen Scrolling enabled, but there can still be unusual bugs with that and generally doesn't look or play nicely IMO (I found a bug with this as shown later on).

Now for a couple minor bugs and oddities I found. To begin with, I managed to walk over this Darknut. Seems like you forgot to make him solid there. Pushing the blocks on this screen shows the wrong undercombo tile. I've noticed something similar happening elsewhere, but this is a fairly easy fix. Just make the pot tiles a "slash -> next" tile so when you slash them, they turn into the next tile on the combo page, and you can use a different undercombo for the blocks. I can get stuck here from walking from above. This chest has nothing in it, is that intended? I can walk over this shield tile thing, forgot solidity here. This enemy is somehow on top of the mountain tiles which looks odd. You could prevent that by making the top layer solid or using no enemy flags. When I bought a bait item from the shop in Clock Town, I noticed I got my gear back which is what I used to get the upgraded sword. This is a bit of an oversight, you can use the Hookshot to get to Kakariko, but you can't use the Hookshot to go back since it doesn't grab onto anything, that could be fixed up. Typo here, "the legend is has" makes no sense. Here's another oversight, I managed to break the screen above and clip through the trees somehow. I don't think this is meant to happen, and that should be all.

Overall, I can definitely see effort put into this. It just needs a bit more refining and more bug fixes and stuff, and you should be good. I'll give this one a solid 3/5, it's a good effort IMO.
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