As those keeping up with the thread may know, I had a bit of a hard time finding a quest to review this week. I was originally going to review a different quest, but I couldn't find enough interesting things to say without turning to gimmicks that would be kind of lame. I could have mentioned a few facts about that particular quest's creator, but that would have gone down territory I'd rather not tread in this thread.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week's quest is certainly odd. It uses Happyman's rarely used
HappySet. It has a mixture of unique ideas and is driven by a plot. The quest name is a pun of X-Files and even stars a character named Mulder. However, everything seems to fall flat in the actual execution.
Disclaimer: This review will not contain Chuck Norris jokes. Sorry.This quest is linear. It is so linear that it railroads you.
The quest is broken up into five main overworld-ish areas. In order to properly progress, you need to complete everything within the current area before continuing. This includes buying all the unique shop items and getting the item of the dungeon in the area. You are technically supposed to be going after "artifacts" in each dungeon (the 8 triforce pieces), but I'll explain why that doesn't matter later.
Welcome to Overworld2, not to be confused with the second overworld. Wait, what?The fact that you need to do everything before progressing is not made immediately obvious. You don't get to spend a lot of time in the first overworld before being railroaded into a one-way cave entrance. This first path blockage does not matter since you will eventually be able to return to the first overworld near the end of the game. You really can't get anything from it anyway. However, it's a mistake to assume that you are safe to plow through the rest of the quest as quickly as possible.
On my first playthrough, I explored nearly everything and bought all the items I could find. Because of this, I didn't run into this quest's major issue. When playing through a second time, I rushed through things and accidentally skipped the shop that contained the candle and the bait replacement (a fruit). Because of this, I was unable to complete the game when I reached the fourth overworld since it is impossible to backtrack.
Two of these three required items are only available in this particular shop. You have to buy the letter (juice) from a different shop to access this.But it isn't too much of an issue to replay the quest if you are that desperate to see it through to the end. I beat the quest in my first casual playthrough in 35:49. The overworlds are extremely small and easy to explore and the four dungeons are even smaller (the longest dungeon is probably 7 screens large). The only challenge in the quest comes from bats and wizzrobes being in early levels they should not be in for a balanced difficulty quest, but even that is offset by how spacious and bland the dungeons happen to be. The quest also hands out powerful items like candy. You get the hammer in level 2 and a whole cache of upgraded items before you touch level 3.
NarrativeThis quest stars a character named Mulder, which is not at all a p
but then Mulder decides to go after the artifacts after Chuck Nor
guy tells you that he is from the future, or something. I have no
another agent is seeking the artifacts for some vague evil purpo
and then Mulder goes into an alternate dark dimension portal f
The evil agent guy makes a lame pun involving Sonic the Hedge
"I see You know everything the Beast with the 666 Know"
and then the agent guy sends Mulder to "The past Of Mulder."
Despite time traveling, Mulder picks up more powerful items
the temple doesn't have an artifact as advertised, but that doe
Mulder returns to the present and rafts down from the beginn
feeds the fruit to the ladder in order to progress to the final are
Mulder defeats the four evil black x's by turning them green wi
it turns out he didn't get all the artifacts, but maybe he will get
them next time.
I'm exaggerating a bit, but the strings in the quest cut off randomly. It's usually only one character at most, but it sometimes feels like I am missing major chunks of what is going on. I checked this in 2.10 since I thought this might just be a 2.50 issue, but it is not. The strings also contain numerous typos, making the already hard to follow story even harder to follow. I would normally try to ignore the disjointed story, but LavaBall made it a major focus of the quest. There are actually cutscenes in this quest outside of randomly going into guy caves. I dare say the story is the only reason to play this quest (not that it is a good reason).
Nothing says X-Files parody like... Sonic the Hedgehog?Also, X-Flakes 2 tries to be funny... but I honestly think it is annoying. Chuck Norris just ends up being odd and the quest makes several random jokes that make no sense or look completely out of place. I'm aware this is supposed to be a parody of X-Files, but the jokes could have been done much better. The only thing that made this even remotely like X-Files was the usage of random cryptic conversations that made no sense.
Design AttentionThings get really spastic here.
The overworld, as small as it is, has most of the screen design effort put into it. The only overworld screens that have major design flaws that stick out to me are the ones featuring heavy amounts of water. However, this doesn't excuse how horribly bland every interior screen is.
Imagine three screens adjacent to this one. That's level 1 in its entirety.It also doesn't excuse how horribly designed the dungeons are. All dungeons can be summed up as walks through bland areas to get an item then get the artifact. The plot even tries to hand wave it by claiming the first dungeon was bland on purpose, so LavaBall clearly knew this. What makes this even more annoying is that the main dungeon objective, the artifact, is not even necessary to beat the quest. There are only two artifacts in the quest. The last dungeon does not check if you have them, so you can presumably beat the game as soon as you have all the necessary items.
Imagine four scree—oh you get the point! This is about as detailed as the "real" dungeons get. As nice as Espilan's custom midis are, this midi is overused in the quest. Of the 7 midis in the quest, this one is used for almost every dungeon and is used for the alternate dimension. I eventually just muted midis and played my own music over it. I think LavaBall set all of the midis to volume level 255. They are really, really loud. The one thing I can complement the quest on in the music department is that it didn't shy away from using PureZC midis.
What really kills me about X-Flakes 2 is that it contains random spurts of cleverness. They are just not used effectively. In the first cave, there is an instant death pit. Sadly, it is really easy to ignore and that is the only instance of it in the entire quest. Armos statues can often be found hidden under bushes (a dickish move I enjoy seeing). There are some actual "cutscenes" in the quest that do not involve just walking into a guy cave, but they are few and far between.
There are also things that make me scratch my head, such as the first screen of "overworld2" (the third overworld). When you walk off to the right, you cannot return to that screen since there is a random scrolling warp. That just makes no sense. There is also a random magic carpet thing that takes you out of the first cave into the second overworld appropriately titled "Where am I." The quest sets up rows of bushes that can only be cut with a more powerful sword... only to give you the necessary sword on the same screen. Ganon is also just a collection of four black X's.
SuggestionsThe quest could really do with far less railroading. I'm aware that there was a story to tell, but part of the design process of a quest involving plot is to create a balance between gameplay looseness and keeping things to the plot. If this is hard, then the least that could be done is to allow for backtracking so that players do not screw themselves over if they forget a necessary item.
Also, the interiors were extremely bland. They had very little effort put into them. I know that HappySet has far more tiles available for interiors than what LavaBall used in this quest. Some actual puzzles would have also helped the monotony a bit to keep it from just being a walk from point A to point B formula for all the interior areas.
SummaryOverall, X-Flakes 2 is a quest that tried to tell a story, but just didn't do it effectively. The design of the quest seemed secondary to the story and it really shows. But it wasn't without a few random clever things sprinkled in it. It just wasn't enough to make the quest worthwhile.
I don't recommend playing this quest unless you are really curious about the disjointed story. This
barely gets a 2 out of 5 due to its game stopping issues.
Score: 2/5
Oh well...
