So, finally a real quest by Joelmacool. After beta testing a small portion of his quest, I was actually very excited to fully play through it, and so I did. The following is an in-depth review of the quest where I try to be as constructive, honest, and objective as possible. Enjoy!
Gameplay: 20/40
To begin with, the gameplay of this quest is mediocre, at best. While I can definitely see Joel's effort in creating a quest that exceeds what is expected of him due to his history of creating joke quests, I feel like much can still be improved in the gameplay department. Before I jump into the bad, I want to start with the good.
One of the superlative gameplay aspects of this quest, I feel, was in the structure of the overworld. The overworld was formatted well according to the flow of the quest as a whole. Both of the overworlds have a gigantic variety of landscapes, from deserts, to forests, to graveyards, to volcanoes, and to frozen lakes. This variety really improves the gameplay because rather than seeing the same thing over and over again, the landscape changes so that everything feels new and refreshing to the player.
Additionally, the difficulty flow of the quest overall is relatively good. There are no massive difficulty curves at all in the entire quest, which is usually what should be achieved. However, I feel like the quest is quite on the easy side, which is completely fine with me, but that can be a nuisance to more experienced players who are looking for more of a challenge. Except for a few minor hiccups with the extremely unfair fire gels (which have now been partially fixed) and the enemies always return rule, the enemies tie in very well with the difficulty flow as some of the enemies are edited to make them easier or harder, depending on where they are placed within the quest. Also, the new enemies, albeit few in number, are a neat touch which improved my enjoyment of the quest.
The last good point I want to make about the gameplay is that I found no gameplay bugs of any kind in my time playing the quest, which is actually quite the achievement. It shows the effort that was put into creating and polishing up the quest.
And now to move on to the bad. Please keep in mind that while I may sound harsh, I'm just trying to help you improve on your future quests.
Let's start out with the overworld. While I felt that the overworld's
structure was great, the overworld was rather boring because instead of being built around exploration and secret-finding, it seems more like the overworld was built as a padding for the quest to try and its length. Throughout both overworlds, the lack of secrets, shops, caves, etc. is truly ridiculous. It really hurts how much I can enjoy exploring the overworld. In the future, when creating an overworld, please remember to add more secrets so that exploring the overworld can be enjoying rather than tedious and uninteresting.
Enemy variety in both the overworlds and dungeons is exceedingly limited, unfortunately. While the enemies that are present fit the theme and difficult of the area quite well, enemy variety itself is lackluster at best. Every single area of the overworld or specific dungeon basically has two or three sets of enemies that are repeated indefinitely. This causes specific areas and dungeons to become boring and monotonous very rapidly, which is something that should definitely be avoided at all costs. While I understand that the enemies were chosen to fit the theme of certain areas, it still doesn't hurt to add some different enemies here and there to break the otherwise repetitive nature of the entire quest. The only dungeon that does not experience this drawback is the final dungeon, because it actually had a bit of enemy variety. However, since all the other dungeons do have this problem, I have to list it as a negative in the grand scheme of things.
And now for the dungeons specifically. Oh boy, the dungeons. While each of the dungeons have good and interesting gimmicks, completing them was basically the same every single time. Each dungeon follows a routine similar to this: "Explore the dungeon a little, defeat some enemies, press on a switch to open a block, and find a key and use it to open a door". This routine is pretty much repeated many times until the final boss is reached. Because of this, the dungeons felt incredibly effortless to complete. Another one of the main problems is that there aren't not enough paths or branches to explore. Usually, in this quest a key can be found by following a single path, when really, there should be multiple large paths, with some of them leading to dead ends, and others accomplishing tasks that are required for later in the dungeon (such as hitting a switch to open a block so that you can traverse later on), and the final path leading to the key that you need to advance. In addition to this problem, the dungeons feel way too focused on enemies. Basically every screen is composed of killing enemies to advance, and the fact that the enemy variety is extremely limited and that the enemies always return rule is on amplifies this problem even more. It would be nice if fighting enemies in dungeons could be balanced with puzzles (which this quest had almost none of) and/or traps of some sort.
One dungeon in particular that really hurt the gameplay was the bonus dungeon. I was really expecting something really creative and interesting for that, but instead, it ended up being a boss rush. That is not the biggest problem though, which is the flashing colors and the annoying music (discussed later). It really hurt my immersion into the quest, and left an inferior lasting impression of the quest.
Finally, the last gameplay point I'd like to make is that the quest itself is far too short. The fact that this quest has 11 dungeons but can be beaten in only 4 hours says a lot about the depth of the overworld and dungeons. Not only that, but it feels like the last few dungeons in the quest were unnecessary and that they were placed there to make the quest seem more content-filled. This causes the last half of the quest to feel a bit rushed. Making the dungeons in general longer would probably solve this problem entirely, as would eliminating the urge to create too many dungeons in the first place.
Design Attention: 27/35
Design attention is definitely one of the strong points of the entire quest. The overworld in particular is immensely detailed and very beautiful. The usage of layers works incredibly well and adds lots of visual flare to the screen design. The forest area in particular is a highlight of the screen design, I think. The only problem that I had with the screens was that sometimes they were very repetitive. The desert areas are a great example of this. Ever screen was exactly the same except for the placement of the cacti, essentially. Even though desert areas may look barren and boring in real life, in Zelda Classic, they should be filled with detail nonetheless. The palettes also looked incredibly great, and fit the theme of each area very well.
While the overworld is beautiful and rich with details, the dungeons are a whole other story. The dungeon palettes themselves are far too monochromatic for their own good. It makes the dungeons appear less professional and far less exciting. Not only that, but the dungeon detail is also lacking in general. The most detailed area was probably Zora's Floodgate, but even then the details were subpar. It feels like each dungeon screen is basically just the screen and a floor, with nothing else that would constitute as a detail. Adding torches and other dungeon details would definitely solve this problem and improve screen design drastically.
Finally, the entire quest is
almost completely free of screen bugs. The only things I caught are simply enemies getting stuck in strange locations, which is typical of quests since finding these instances can be difficult.
Story: 10/15
This quest appears to be a typical "save the damsel in distress" story, with the damsel being Zelda and the enemy being Ganon. So basically, it is just the normal Zelda story. While this is fine, the quest could be even better if the story was a tad more interesting than that, which could have been accomplished by adding a story twist somewhere. However, the execution of the story is really bizarre sometimes as it seemed like the story was being forgotten about completely in certain parts of the quest. Otherwise, the story is only okay due to the subpar execution of it and the fact that it is a typical Zelda story.
Music: 9/10
This quest has some really incredible music selections that really helps the enjoyment and immersion of the quest. Most of the music selections fit the environment perfectly. The only reason that this category did not receive the full points is because of two reasons: the final dungeon music did not fit into the area because it was a tad too happy, and the bonus dungeon music was just outright annoying.
Concluding Thoughts/Summary
This quest, though good in general, especially in the design department, suffers greatly due to massive gameplay issues such as the lack of enemy variety in the dungeons and secrets in the overworlds. However, I still recommend this quest because it is Joel's first non-joke quest, and he did a great job with it.
Strengths- Great overworld structure
- Good difficulty flow
- Impressive overworld screen design
- Exceptional music soundtrack
- Almost no gameplay and screen bugs
Weaknesses- Lackluster enemy variety
- Lack of secrets in the overworld
- Repetitive dungeon routine
- No puzzles (the entire quest was fighting enemies)
- Bonus dungeon
- Minimal dungeon screen details
- Typical Zelda story
- Too short a quest considering there are 11 dungeons
Rating: 66/100
Database Rating: 3/5
For your first non-joke quest, you did an impressive job, Joel. I hope that you take my constructive criticism to light in order to improve your next quest, of which I'm looking forward to greatly!
