Jump to content

Linked To the Past

Overview Feature Quest
Creator: Jamian Genre: NES-style Added: 30 Mar 2013 Updated: 11 May 2013 ZC Version: 2.50 Downloads: 1586 Rating[?]: Rating: 3.76/5 (24 ratings) Download Quest
(5.96 MB)
Information

About Reviews Comments Forum Topics

Zeldagamer2020  

Posted 14 March 2022 - 10:19 AM
Cant play because The sword button doesn't work please fix.
 

SomeZeldaFan  
Rating: 5/5

Edited 17 May 2016 - 05:09 AM
Another fantastic quest by Jamian. Almost as good as Hyrule's Resurrection.
 

KingPridenia  
Rating: 2/5

Posted 05 June 2015 - 01:21 AM
I won't lie; the name of this quest made me think this would be a good game, possibly a sequel or spin-off of A Link to the Past. However, after going through it, it's just a huge letdown. This quest has some major issues. The good thing is that the author learned from his mistakes and made quality quests such as Promised Lands and The Forbidden City. Of all of his quests, this is, in my opinion, the weakest one. Sure A Big Hunk of Hyrule and Aloha From Hyrule were pretty standard NES style quests, but they are masterpieces in comparison. Anyway, let me begin the long rant:

Problem #1: Tileset Usage
This has been beaten to death by many critics, but it has to be touched upon. The use of the tileset is horrible. It's ugly and is more or less a bunch of boring, unremarkable overworld screens. The dungeons aren't nearly as bad in my opinion in terms of design, but that could just be me. Even as someone that isn't as picky about design, I can say the overworlds are just very empty.

Problem #2: Flipped Slash
Pretty much everyone dislikes it, please don't use it.

Problem #3: Too Many Filler Dungeons
This quest has a lot of dungeons, many of which exist solely to REQUIRE you to slog through them. To be fair, this isn't really a problem early game, and most of the mini-dungeons have good enough gimmicks to make them bearable. Later in the game, mostly post level 8, you have to go through a bunch of mini-dungeons to get items needed to survive more than 30 seconds in the other dungeons. Quality over quantity.

Problem #4: Storyline
I normally don't care about story, but this quest starts with a nice storyline, but after the first dungeon, the story just goes away entirely. I wouldn't mind the lack of a story if there wasn't a story to begin with. But don't have a story about the Maku Tree and have it NEVER be referenced again. At this point, I'd rather see some lame attempt at a story than the story simply disappearing without warning.

Problem #5: Difficulty & Balance
This is the BIG problem and the main reason this quest gets such a poor rating. Early on, difficulty isn't too bad. It's around level 6 where the difficulty slowly goes from tough to just plain unfair. Pretty much from this point on, a majority of the enemies do 2 hearts of damage per hit if you're properly equipped. Some enemies deal even more damage. Enemies simply have too much HP as well. It's not fun hitting an enemy 10+ times to kill it while it does 2 hearts of damage per hit. This is especially bad post level 8 as if you don't have the Red Tunic, a lot of enemies will deal FOUR HEARTS of damage per hit. Sound like fun? Didn't think so.

The bosses are pretty much hit or miss. Some of them are pretty cool, but others are just massive walls of HP that deal absurd amounts of damage. The earliest bosses are actually balanced very well, dealing 1/4 or 1/2 heart per hit and being reasonable to kill. Level 5's boss is especially bad as it does too much damage for your condition at that point in the game and it spams a massive army of enemies that will quickly overrun you, and they just won't die! Some ideas are refreshing however, such as level 7's boss giving an otherwise standard boss a weakness to a weapon that ordinarily doesn't affect it at all.

As I've stated above, the enemies are largely unbalanced. More so later in the game, they have absurd HP and do ridiculous amounts of damage. Not only that, but the enemies tend to have really random weaknesses and immunities. For instance, an enemy in level 6 is immune to everything you have. So you get an item in that dungeon that is a new weapon, so it must be weak against that, right? WRONG! A direct hit is blocked while a reflected one stuns said enemy. How do you kill it? Guess what; you're expected to get to it with FULL LIFE and use reflected sword beams to damage it. Guide dang it. That's all a lot of enemies are; simple trial and error in figuring out their weakness. Expect to hear a lot of blocking noise spam.

This quest also has a very unhealthy habit of having enemies that both hurt you AND jinx you at the same time. No, just no. All that does is give you a one-way ticket to a game over screen as many (if not all of them) jinx BOTH BUTTONS. Tack on dealing 2 hearts of damage with the best armor at that time and you pretty much have unfair, unbalanced difficulty at its finest. But nothing compares to the biggest unfair enemy in the game, the homing fireballs. These things come out of literally nowhere and will home in on you. Even if you dodge them, they simply circle around to try again. Oh, and half the time, your shield doesn't block them. Lovely. Early game, they're just a nuisance. End-game, they deal heavy damage and will make mincemeat out of your life at 1 1/2 hearts per hit with the Red Mail. God help you if you have only the Blue Mail...

Problem #6: Tedious Puzzles
Some are pretty neat, such as the one in the library having to figure out what each number is. However, many are just annoying, especially the quizzes. Make one mistake and you have to try again. Worse yet, you have to pay for most of them too! As if you're not gonna blow enough of your Rupees on potions that are overpriced! While I like the puzzle in level 6, having it spawn you on a pit of 2 heart damage spikes if you make a mistake is just bad design. Failure is punishment enough; why damage or kill the player for a simple mistake?

My official rating for this quest is a 1.5 / 5. However, since no 1/2 star ratings exist, I'll be a nice guy and bump it up from Poor to Bad. Had some neat dungeons and a few cool puzzles with pretty solid music overall, but is largely shot down by heavily unbalanced difficulty and enemies that take too long to kill and do too much damage. I do realize this is an old quest and took that into consideration. If you're looking for a good Jamian quest, try Stranded, Promised Lands or Forbidden City.
  • Eddy and Avaro like this
 

newstarshipsmell  
Rating: 4/5

Edited 09 October 2013 - 06:03 AM
I felt this deserved a solid 4 despite the lackluster overworld and dungeon design; that is, until I got to the custom enemies that prompt you to randomly switch items and execute A/B. Just wasted both my potions for no reason. *abandons quest*

ETA: Okay, I lied. 30 hours, 79 deaths. Pretty good, and satisfying long, if not fantastic.

Things I liked:
No dungeon bat caves. I wish everyone would eliminate them, if they can't make them somehow interesting.
The custom enemies and custom bosses. A few of the bosses were trivially easy to defeat (especially the Death Mountain boss.) But I loved the garden and training ground bosses (and I found the hint for the garden boss after defeating him... *sigh*)
The overall design/theme concepts for the dungeons, though most of them were rather easy/straightforward to pass, and some of them felt half-done.I don't think I was actually stumped anywhere until Ganon's level (I had trouble finding the stairwell, and more trouble figuring out the wizzrobe room.)
The mix of underground dungeons and aboveground, map-adjacent "dungeons" was a nice touch.

And yeah, like others said... the overworld was horribly boring. Many similar screens with identical enemies makes for uncompelling exploration. More than one portal between the times would've been nice. More than one place to restock potions, and easier to find bomb/arrow shops would've been good. Selling x1 and x8 Superbombs would have made restocking them a lot less tedious. Most of the items only unlocked one new path somewhere on the overworld, which, again, made exploration really uninteresting.

But you've clearly got talent and good ideas, so I'm looking forward to your next quest.
 

Avalee  
Rating: 5/5

Posted 29 April 2013 - 05:14 PM
Very inventive Quest. Best one I have played in quite awhile. Good to see someone using the new features of the new engine instead of worrying about who is going to have the best screen shots. A game worthy to play again sometime.
Avalee
 

View all reviews (22)