1463 replies to this topic

[HylianGlaceon]

I kinda agree with Russ on the F6 thing. It's no big deal still as I'll just grind on pots otherwise, but it's a bit more of a time waster this way.

[Aevin]

Ginormous review thingy:

Spoiler

I made it to the middle of both lv 10 and 11, and unfortunately I've lost motivation to finish.

 

There's a lot to love in this quest. There's a lot of care given to the progression of the game, and although I stayed on the normal difficulty the whole time, I loved the inclusion of a difficulty setting that could be reduced if needed. The dungeons are designed in such a way so that even if you die a lot, shortcuts are unlocked that rarely make it feel like you're losing a lot of progress. The overworld is great, with lots of unique areas. Screen design is stellar, making optimal use of a GB tileset so that the spacing of the borders and everything feels just right. Most of the dungeons are fantastic from an aesthetic standpoint, with themes and appearances that are standouts in ZC.

 

Most of the issues I have here are with the dungeons themselves. Past a certain point (level 6 or so) they began to feel much too long. They required constant referencing of your map, which of course was a problem if you couldn't find it in the first place. Several of the dungeons, such as levels 9 and 10, had major gimmicks that made navigating them a chore. I'm not in the habit of spending 5 hours on a single dungeon. And, while the battle difficulty can be decreased, these frustrating labyrinths remain every bit as exhausting. Several of the dungeons also feature very small enemy variety, most notably levels 6-8, and while the problem does go away later in the quest, it's especially tiring fighting through the same (or the same-looking) enemies for such long time periods. Personally, I found myself dreading the dungeons, which is why I only went far enough into 10 and 11 to get the items before exiting ... and then found I never wanted to return. Another dungeon issue has to do with the items. There's obviously a lot of scripting talent on board, yet you get almost exclusively unscripted items until you reach level 10, and the level 8 item was a massive disappointment. It would be nicer if a few scripted items were scattered throughout, or if the normal items had small scripted effects. This isn't something I'd complain about in a normal quest, but given the scale of this one, it needed a little more surprise in the inventory to keep the excitement up.

 

I know I'm in the minority here, but I also had issues with the bosses. It's not that they were too hard, it's just that many of them don't seem to fit with the tone of the quest. In many ways, this quest has a simple feel, like a GB quest but epic in its sheer scale. But many of the bosses didn't feel like they belonged in this style of game. This is most noticeable, but not exclusive, with bosses that spam large amounts of fireballs. Whenever a certain amount of sprites were on screen, it just felt out of place, and I question whether similar firing patterns couldn't be accomplished with a few 32x32 projectiles instead of a dozen 16x16 projectiles to maintain the GB visual feel. This is why I personally liked bosses like the Scourge, the level 1 boss, Mothra and Venser part 1 far better than the dragon boss in the desert, moldorm prime and the goron or pumpkin boss. Again, I know I'm in the minority, so I won't rant any more about this here.

 

I may also be alone in that I found the story pretty messy. It definitely improved from about level 7 onward, but the early scenes featuring Lumen, Venser and the other sky person felt out of context and confusing. It's the sort of thing that makes sense later in the story, but at the time I didn't know who the characters were and didn't care. I think it would have been more effective to have Lumen aid Link early in the quest before falling under Venser's power, so we get to know her and her change in behavior appears odd and tragic. The scene with Venser chuckling all Palpatine-like about how all was going to plan felt cliche and unnecessary, ruining what could have been an okay twist.

 

In spite of my criticism, this is a truly great quest that mostly manages to maintain quality over the whole thing. I don't write "essays" about stuff that doesn't make a huge impression on me. Dungeons are beautiful, and I have nothing but respect for the level of complexity in their design. It seems like there should be many ways to break these mechanisms, but testers have caught almost everything, and the very few bugs are very forgettable. Ultimately, I think it suffers from being too long. I think I would have finished this and rated it higher if it were a standard 9 dungeon triforce quest.

 

I'm sure there are those who disagree with my observations, and I'm equally sure those voices will be the loudest and most important when it comes to the rating. All I can say is that these are my honest impressions as a less-skilled player. For Evan, feel free to disregard what I've said and take to heart only what you can use.

Edited by Aevin, 02 March 2014 - 03:02 AM.

[Eddy]

I'm planning on putting that script on the database. It's a really simple script too.

Please remind me not to go and look into it.

 

 

 

...

Ok fine, I'll probably use the script too

>_>

<_<

Sue me.

 

Anyway, I'm currently in Level 3, and I gotta say, it's pretty interesting and freaking confusing. I don't even know where I'm going half the time XD I should get it done soon...

[Evan20000]

Ginormous review thingy:

Spoiler

I made it to the middle of both lv 10 and 11, and unfortunately I've lost motivation to finish.
 
There's a lot to love in this quest. There's a lot of care given to the progression of the game, and although I stayed on the normal difficulty the whole time, I loved the inclusion of a difficulty setting that could be reduced if needed. The dungeons are designed in such a way so that even if you die a lot, shortcuts are unlocked that rarely make it feel like you're losing a lot of progress. The overworld is great, with lots of unique areas. Screen design is stellar, making optimal use of a GB tileset so that the spacing of the borders and everything feels just right. Most of the dungeons are fantastic from an aesthetic standpoint, with themes and appearances that are standouts in ZC.
 
Most of the issues I have here are with the dungeons themselves. Past a certain point (level 6 or so) they began to feel much too long. They required constant referencing of your map, which of course was a problem if you couldn't find it in the first place. Several of the dungeons, such as levels 9 and 10, had major gimmicks that made navigating them a chore. I'm not in the habit of spending 5 hours on a single dungeon. And, while the battle difficulty can be decreased, these frustrating labyrinths remain every bit as exhausting. Several of the dungeons also feature very small enemy variety, most notably levels 6-8, and while the problem does go away later in the quest, it's especially tiring fighting through the same (or the same-looking) enemies for such long time periods. Personally, I found myself dreading the dungeons, which is why I only went far enough into 10 and 11 to get the items before exiting ... and then found I never wanted to return. Another dungeon issue has to do with the items. There's obviously a lot of scripting talent on board, yet you get almost exclusively unscripted items until you reach level 10, and the level 8 item was a massive disappointment. It would be nicer if a few scripted items were scattered throughout, or if the normal items had small scripted effects. This isn't something I'd complain about in a normal quest, but given the scale of this one, it needed a little more surprise in the inventory to keep the excitement up.
 
I know I'm in the minority here, but I also had issues with the bosses. It's not that they were too hard, it's just that many of them don't seem to fit with the tone of the quest. In many ways, this quest has a simple feel, like a GB quest but epic in its sheer scale. But many of the bosses didn't feel like they belonged in this style of game. This is most noticeable, but not exclusive, with bosses that spam large amounts of fireballs. Whenever a certain amount of sprites were on screen, it just felt out of place, and I question whether similar firing patterns couldn't be accomplished with a few 32x32 projectiles instead of a dozen 16x16 projectiles to maintain the GB visual feel. This is why I personally liked bosses like the Scourge, the level 1 boss, Mothra and Venser part 1 far better than the dragon boss in the desert, moldorm prime and the goron or pumpkin boss. Again, I know I'm in the minority, so I won't rant any more about this here.
 
I may also be alone in that I found the story pretty messy. It definitely improved from about level 7 onward, but the early scenes featuring Lumen, Venser and the other sky person felt out of context and confusing. It's the sort of thing that makes sense later in the story, but at the time I didn't know who the characters were and didn't care. I think it would have been more effective to have Lumen aid Link early in the quest before falling under Venser's power, so we get to know her and her change in behavior appears odd and tragic. The scene with Venser chuckling all Palpatine-like about how all was going to plan felt cliche and unnecessary, ruining what could have been an okay twist.
 
In spite of my criticism, this is a truly great quest that mostly manages to maintain quality over the whole thing. I don't write "essays" about stuff that doesn't make a huge impression on me. Dungeons are beautiful, and I have nothing but respect for the level of complexity in their design. It seems like there should be many ways to break these mechanisms, but testers have caught almost everything, and the very few bugs are very forgettable. Ultimately, I think it suffers from being too long. I think I would have finished this and rated it higher if it were a standard 9 dungeon triforce quest.
 
I'm sure there are those who disagree with my observations, and I'm equally sure those voices will be the loudest and most important when it comes to the rating. All I can say is that these are my honest impressions as a less-skilled player. For Evan, feel free to disregard what I've said and take to heart only what you can use.

I really want to thank you for writing up a long and well thought out review. While I definitely don't agree with everything said, I completely understand your perspective which has given me good insight for making future games.

[strike]

Hey! This is really good. I just got to level two and am having a pretty good time.

 

not sure why this post is indented

Edited by strike, 02 March 2014 - 10:13 AM.

[TheLegend_njf]

Something should hint that the rocks around this overworld can be blown up, as I wandered around for awhile believing they had to be pushed, but that is just me. Maybe that hint is there and I missed it. 

[Aevin]

I really want to thank you for writing up a long and well thought out review. While I definitely don't agree with everything said, I completely understand your perspective which has given me good insight for making future games.

Thanks for taking that so gracefully. If you agreed with everything I said, you would have made MY quest, instead.

 

In case you're interested, I had over 36 hours and over 250 deaths in the end.

[SyrianBallaS]

Yeah this quest was pretty hard I finnished it on hero mode in 53 hours with 560 deaths

[Air Luigi]

Man, this quest is a walk in the park now    I'm "breezing" through the dungeons! Prismatic Gate KO

 

**********************************************************************

 

 

So, I suppose I have to report this weird issue... I was starting Prismatic Gate, then I saved the file and... the icon changes to this... (It's the third file).

 

 

 

[TheLegend_njf]

Hahaha! That's an icon from my quest! What the hell?

[Air Luigi]

Mmmmm... I deleted my save of TRIFORCE after betatesting it. And then I played IoR... The icon was right, but after saving the file... that's the result.

Edited by Air Luigi, 02 March 2014 - 08:34 PM.

[TheLegend_njf]

Somehow ZC is loading the icon for my game in your IoR save file.

[Evan20000]

Man, this quest is a walk in the park now    I'm "breezing" through the dungeons! Prismatic Gate KO
 
**********************************************************************
 

 
So, I suppose I have to report this weird issue... I was starting Prismatic Gate, then I saved the file and... the icon changes to this... (It's the third file).

That's very likely a ZC issue.

[Air Luigi]

I fixed it. Don't worry.

By the way, I obtained my cane this time in my first try! I was surprised.

[Yloh]

I just defeated the bonus boss on hero mode. That thing almost drove me to my breaking point.