I have no clue how this quest is rated so high.
Let me break down what is wrong due to oversights by the designer.
1. There are way too many one way routes you are required to go to for items but then the only way to return is to save and quit. This in itself should be enough to subtract a point from any sane reviewer.
2. In level 7 and 8 there are rooms where he has flags to disappear when you cut the grass to unveil the musical note tiles. Now you would not know about those tiles without cutting the grass/bushes, but as soon as you do that flag is gone and the whistle does not work.
3. Level 9 has some of the stupidest design I've seen in my life. Honestly traps everywhere with bat wizrobes. I'd hate to try this dungeon without doing the bonus dungeon.
4. On with level 9 again who in their right mind would think to shoot the wand at an enemy to light a tree on fire, this is just the stupidest concept I've seen in my life, easily the tree could have been triggered with the candle, but no the creator decided he wanted to do the stupidest thing ever.Sorry this is just a childish design in my opinion and in no way intuitive.
5. Also it is in no way fun having to re-enter a room 50+ times for enemies to lineup properly as in level 8 for the first wand puzzle room.
6. Speaking of enemies level 9 has a fair share of re-entering rooms for Dodongos to be in an area where you can defeat them.
Honestly having to F6 to continue is not good design and this quest overall is riddled with that. So if poor design gets a 5 star rating I'm afraid to play any of the quests that are rated lower. In my opinion this quest is blasphemous to the Zelda name. I have played several other quests that were closer to the feel of Zelda.
Honestly this game in and of itself is just riddled with way too many bugs and dead ends to be rated so high. If I was to give a rating and if I was in a generous mood I may give it a 2. If I was to rate it from the gut I don't think I'd be able to rate it with a positive number.
Honestly when there are Quests like The Longest Journey which definitely is leaps and bounds above this and several others this quest is in no way one of the best quests in my humble opinion.
Now if the creator ever went back and fixed what I call areas of dead ends I could very easily like this quest. Overall if that was improved this easily could be a good quest. Unfortunately I feel the creator got a bit I'm holier than thou with his design of level 9 and traps on top of traps. When I finally started liking the game with the good designs of level 6,7, and 8 which had very little of the dead ends in them to trap hell. I could see maybe having the traps done to death in a bonus dungeon, but not in a required dungeon. Honestly again I can only imagine the pain one would go through without obtaining the gold ring.
If I would give any advice to the creator it would be to test your own design to make sure there aren't any dead ends. For me having to save and quit after getting required items just gets annoying. Also with something like your "brilliant" wand-enemy-tree puzzle maybe have the typical old man to give a cryptic hint about it to give the player a clue of what is supposed to be done.
Level 9 in no way was fun when you rooms with bosses in rooms with nothing but traps going every which way. This just my overall fair assessment after putting so much time into the game it in no way felt rewarding to finish as the original Zelda or some of the other quests out there.
Edited by Arek1985, 11 May 2011 - 07:22 PM.