Trying to fish for more feedback, but haven't gotten any. I still don't really have a clear indication of whether or not AQR's difficulty is okay as it is (aimed to be a bit on the easier side) or if I should buff it back up to more challenging difficulty so it's not boring to experts but at the same time not scaring away more casual players. I did start to make a few minor changes such as using Lunaria's turtle enemy sprite and using her sword swing arc that she recently added. I also changed a few sprites and colors around on the various swords as well.
If that's a couple of things I'm terrible at, it's balancing difficulty and making a fair economy:
Adam's Quest II - Brutal to casual players if not borderline unfair at times with an economy Rupees end up racking up with little to nothing to actually spend it on. Many enemies did a lot of damage while Archnuts & Chargenuts seemed to destroy a lot of players with their fast arrows and charging respectively (honestly, the latter is a joke thanks to the sideways sword trick and the former was shieldless). Having a 2,000 Rupee cap at the start was overkill; most of the items for sale are unnecessary and just there to make life easier. Potions were also a bit on the expensive side.
Link's Blade Crusade - Easy with terrible design choices ruining the game as a whole. The "gimmick" was also poorly executed and pretty much a moot point once you got the Red Candle. The dungeon itself was horrendous and led people to believe you were supposed to do something in a much more difficult way than intended. Also, having Farore's Wind you could very easily use by accident. Oh, and boring NES overworlds. L2DoR n00b.
Adam's Quest Redux - Made too easy overall with a lot of unnecessary enemy nerfs (Red Goriya boomerangs only doing 1/2 heart base damage, Traps doing 1/2 heart, etc) and another economy that Rupees just pile up with little to spend them on. I think I have mistaken "balancing the quest out from its original" with "make the game easy". I should have simply removed all the statue spamming rooms, the 10+ bosses per dungeon idea and just went from there.