Among the first things I noted about the quest how well done the overworld design is. The overworld looked really pretty and it flowed very well, nothing about its design sans some of the obstacles seemed artifical. The dungeons, which are large and sprawling, also look really pretty and maintained a nice flow throughout while keeping the obstacles fresh and challenging throughout. It is very clear that this quest takes a lot of inspiration from Isle of Rebirth, in both the general asethic and the dungeon flow. The dungeons do get slightly repetitive, but they never outstayed their welcome. One thing that really helped the dungeons stay fresh and keep a consistent pace was the addition of the spacebar map, letting players closely observe the screens they been to in the dungeon.
The quest's puzzles tend to be basic, mostly revoling around hitting triggers repeatedly to proceed, but there were some that were really clever; like the puzzles revolving around hitting switches to change the angle of floating platforms. As far as secret triggers go; they all made sense and were intutitve with the exception of the Wand magic triggering whirlpools and thus getting stuck due to missing secret triggers rare. However, getting stuck because you missed random keys is a lot more common - more on that in a moment.
The difficulty curve was overall consistent, with no large difficulty spikes. It starts out pretty easy, gets easier with the acquistion of the Blue Ring and remaining easy until Level 3, where the difficulty picks up at a fast enough pace to start getting challenging. That said, some rooms in Levels 4 and a good majority of Level 5 fell victim to enemy spam - too many enemies to handle short of resorting to facetanking everything. Rooms with multiple Batrobes mixed with traps or other enemies like Mirror Wizzrobes are especially bad for creating enemy spam; overwhelming the player with sheer numbers of Bats, which were in some rooms of Level 4 and were very common in Level 5 - Level 5 would be a lot more tolerable if they weren't so common. Also, Fire Gleeoks are dumb and broken and should never be used while rooms of Ghoma spam were annoying.
While the quest's screen design is pretty, it is clear there is a lack of polish to go with it. There are numerous situations where you can get stuck and have to F6 out, many of which (eg. the path to the Blue Ring and Whistle in Level 2, one section of Level 3, the screen featuring raising and lowering blocks of the forest sublevel of Level 5) are unacceptly easy to get stuck in often long before you find out that you are stuck and have to F6. There are also multiple sequence breaks that can be made if you look hard enough; like facing down and jumping over a pit to hookshot to something and grab a key early (and getting stuck so you have to F6) in level 4.
There is also a big overeliance on use keys as a means of gating dungeon progression, which shows when you are at a blockade because you missed a key somewhere. Most dungeons use way too many keys and many of said keys being on random screens as the reward for killing all enemies. The worst of it is in Level 5; where multiple players quit at the last key lock because they missed a random key somewhere in the 8x8 screen dungeon of overpowered enemy spam. With dungeons this large and sprawling, it is important to give players an indication of where important points of progression are so they don't get lost if they miss a key or something somewhere. I actually had to crack the quest to find the last key in Level 5 because I (and many people) searched through the dungeon for a long time and fighting through overpowered enemy spam in search of the key to no avail... only to find that said key is on a random kill all enemies screen far away from the final lock.
Finally, lets talk about the chemistry puzzles and the music used. In theory, requiring the players to learn basic chemistry is good and is a change from standard ZC conventions. In practice, the execution leaves much to be desired. They are block puzzle quizzes, where you push blocks with the elements' symbols on them into positions based off a quiz, presented without giving the player a chance to get a basic grasp on chemistry before being tested on it. You can pay up to get hints, but chances are you are paying for the expensive 200 Rupee hints unless you learn and remember basic high school chemistry; which requires grinding to reach.
While Touhou music is nice, don't overuse it. And don't use it where they don't fit. When I hear Imperishable Night's Stage 1 theme, I imagine of a nice quiet night enviroment; not a nature-themed dungeon like this quest's Level 1. When I hear Okuu's theme from Subterrean Anisim, I expect of a powerful enegetic boss battle and not a sub-boss of this quest's Level 4. Most of the music choices for this quest don't fit their respective areas. A few do, like UFO's Stage 3 theme for Level 3 and Mystic Square's Stage 5 theme for Level 5, and I really appreciated their usage in those areas. This arises from the idea that a quest's soundtrack must all come from series or even a single game (eg. Isle of the Winds and its overuse of Secret of Mana music) - this is a trap and always consider music from other series or franchises if you can't find a soundtrack from your current series that matches the area.
And this concludes my review. Overall, it is a very decent quest featuring impressive screen design, clever and intutive puzzles, nice flow and good difficulty curve. It is however dragged down by primarily a lack of testing, overuse of keys and then smaller issues like the poorly implemented chemistry puzzles, enemy spam in the endgame and overuse of Touhou music.
Suggestions:
- Hire testers and have them thoroughly test your next project - You will always miss bugs when testing by yourself.
- Make it clear that their job is to try to break the quest where possible and not just play through it.
- On every screen with a treasure chest (or item) that appears after killing all enemies, mark where the treasure chest is to appear. This will make it easier to search for these chests after missing them.
- Demonlink's GB Compass Beep script is a very useful script to tie to the Compass for this purpose - it makes it much easier for players to identify where items they miss like keys are.
- For your next project, carefully map out your dungeons to rely less on overcoming progression blockades (keys, switches to remove blockades accessed from other screens) and more on exploration.
- Give the chemistry puzzles more context; like giving players the chance to experiment with elements before you present them with their puzzles. This will make the chemistry puzzles feel less hapzardly thrown in and will make them more intutive to learn.
- Don't only use Touhou music. Look for other franchises and series to pull music from to better suit the enviroment when Touhou music doesn't work. Alternatively, I would like to see more usage of the more generic Touhou themes like the other generic themes from Scarlet Weather Rapshody or fangames like New Super Marisa Land, which mesh better in an adventure game like this.
- Make lategame enemy encounters interesting without flooding cramped screens with powerful enemies. Maybe make stronger enemies and place only a couple on said screens. Maybe add in more enemies that support others like Bubbles.
- Give the Cross out before having to fight invisible enemies. Please.
- Final Rating: 3/5
