105 replies to this topic

[Eddy]

Oh wow, it's been way too long since I've last seen this! I'm happy to see this return, and this review made me remember the time I played Doublevision long ago. Great review!

[Evan20000]

I'm happy to see these back again!

[Ben]

I didn't even know these existed before. I need to go through and read them all, now.

[Orithan]

Ah, I remember playing Doublevision a long time ago. I never really enjoyed it as much as a lot of Mr. Z's other quests, especially Link's Birthday. As far as I recall, I got stuck at Level 2 because of a 2.50 build bug and I was not really fond of how heavily the whistle was used and the Diggdogger boss in Level 1. Having to fight a Diggdogger kid with 3 Hearts, Wooden Sword and no Ring was just tedious.

[LinktheMaster]

Ah, I remember playing Doublevision a long time ago. I never really enjoyed it as much as a lot of Mr. Z's other quests, especially Link's Birthday. As far as I recall, I got stuck at Level 2 because of a 2.50 build bug and I was not really fond of how heavily the whistle was used and the Diggdogger boss in Level 1. Having to fight a Diggdogger kid with 3 Hearts, Wooden Sword and no Ring was just tedious.

Yeah, it definitely doesn't feel as polished as Z's later quests.  I will say that I played this in 2.50, and I didn't have any game breaking bugs.  There was one thing that might have been a 2.50 bug, but I honestly have no clue since I'm not sure if it worked originally.

 

The digdogger thing is really annoying, though.  For that fight, I pretty much had to abuse invincibility frames.  There's another one later on where you fight 4 digdoggers with 3 children (the one I grabbed a screenshot of) that was really annoying too.  At least by then you had the boomerang, but it was really easy to get overwhelmed. (Though I noticed at the end of the fight that apparently the door was open, so I probably could have used that as a vantage point to just snipe them all with the arrow.)

[David]

Oh my, I didn't see the review until just now. I'm glad that this is coming back! And great review!

[Avaro]

This review gave a really really good insight into the quest, about what it did well and what it didn't. It was a good read!

[LinktheMaster]

The Random Review #12 – 05/31/2014

Prepare Yourself by King Aquamentus

Last Updated: December 22nd, 2008
ZC Version: 2.10
Genre: NES-Style
PureZC Rating: 3.88/5

In his quest Prepare Yourself, King Aquamentus takes the classic Zelda 1 style to the max. Removing the triforce from the quest, he opens everything up where you can feasibly tackle level 9 provided you have gotten the bow and sword. But, how does this concept hold up?

To be honest, I actually really liked the concept. In the beginning you are given nothing (not even a sword), and you have to wander to find items to allow you to be able to be strong enough to progress. In some cases the items are given to you by people in hidden caves, in others you have to go through a cave system, and there are of course dungeons centralized around giving away items. Some things are quite easy to find, but others really rely on having to do some really good searching around the overworld. It’s a really interesting concept if you like NES-style quests.

These statues are important to you – if they work.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its own hiccups, though. Some of the item choices for dungeons were a bit… peculiar. Some made sense, such as a dungeon for the whistle (since it is really useful in the quest), bow, and hammer. However, there were some odd choices as well. Why do we need dungeons for the magic rod and red candle? Those aren’t particularly important items to get in an NES-style quest. I never really had to burn that many bushes to win the game, and the rod really isn’t that powerful of an item – especially since it was given in probably one of the harder places in the game.
 

Slow scrolling and Link over doors. Yay.

Where this starts causing gameplay issues is the fact that the keys aren’t level-specific. So, when you get to one of those dungeons, you can simply collect the keys and decide to give up on that item to use in more important dungeons such as the red ring dungeon. Some of the difficulty balancing was already kind of wonky (the red ring dungeon was easy in comparison to some other dungeons).
 

Dead ends are annoying. They make you waste time and bombs.

The item choices also impact the quest negatively in the respect of the dungeon/overworld ratio. So many big items that could have been given away in dungeons were just thrown out there. Why not make a dungeon for the raft instead of just selling it/giving it away? Since the triforce isn’t being used, there’s really no reason not to include more dungeons.
 

Enemies do sometimes get stuck when walking in from the sides, which is a bit annoying.

I bring this up is because I only went through maybe 3-4 full dungeons before tackling level 9, and it’s a shame too since I enjoyed the dungeon design in the game. The dungeons are each pretty short too, also adding to the lack of time you spend in dungeons. It just felt that most of my time in the quest was spent on the overworld trying to locate stuff and get to places.
 

Yup. Now you tell me.

Speaking of the overworld, it was done pretty well I think. It is divided into sections, and each section was really unique. Some places were really neat and memorable as well. To help make travel easier, King Aquamentus setup statues in each section. If you walk up to them you receive a “triforce” piece, allowing you to use the whistle. This is a neat concept, but I’m not sure if this is some obscure ZC bug or what, but some whistle points just never seemed to activate. In fact, I think I recall only 3-4 working properly. The rest I never went to, even after repeated tries.
 

This area was pretty cool and memorable.

The statues also serve as a return point for each section if you die. This can be nice, but can be a bit jarring as sometimes it means that if you die, you get warped to a random place that you may not have visited before. It’s not too big of a deal, but I’ll admit I was a bit worried one time when I thought I might have been sort of stuck in a place with powerful enemies because I died and got warped to the statue. Thankfully it wasn’t far from the exit to the place.
 

These are all from the same dungeon.

Finally, level 9. Level 9 was… unique. It felt really disjointed, to be honest. Part of this is because it’s one of those levels where it sort of has multiple entrances (sort of, but not really). But it goes so far as to have 3 entirely different palettes and looks. And each section is pretty much isolated, and it wasn’t like you were progressing toward a darker, more menacing portion. There doesn’t really feel like there was much flow or design put into it. It felt more like the focus was for quantity over quality. Not to say that the final dungeon was bad, really. It just didn’t fit well together.

Suggestions
- Make better usage of dungeons to help ensure that you will get useful items from them.
- Don’t give out so many items so easily by people or via shops.
- Perhaps make the dungeons a little longer.
- Maybe utilize level-specific keys.

Summary

Strong Points
- The dungeon design was usually quite a bit of fun.
- The concept was pretty neat.
- The overworld was pretty neat and had a few really cool areas.

Weak Points
- Difficulty curve could have been a bit better.
- Level 9 was a bit odd and sporadic.
- Whistle warp points didn’t always seem to work, meaning you’d have to walk around large parts of the overworld repeatedly.
- Slow scrolling.
- There’s a few minor glitches and annoyances (appearing over doors, enemies getting stuck on the sides of screens, etc.)

In the end, I did think this was an enjoyable quest with a really neat concept. I feel like a lot of my complaints are sort of nitpicky, but they did hold the quest back from being something truly spectacular. Still, I’d definitely recommend this for anyone who wants a little twist on the normal NES-style quest.
 

Score: 4/5

[trudatman]

thank you. keep them coming, please!

[Eddy]

Nice, I've seen this quest floating around but never got to actually play it. I might probably give it a try now

[LinktheMaster]

thank you. keep them coming, please!

That's the intention. I already have a couple on the pipeline, and I think Nick is wanting to start to write some as well.  I'm not sure how frequently we'll be doing them (or how long we'll be able to keep it up), but I'm hoping we can get 1-2 done a month at the very least.

[C-Dawg]

Been skimming your reviews.  This is kind of depressing to see, actually.  You would think that with the improvements to ZClassic and the experience of the community, particularly with scripting, that quests with the quality of Lost Isle or above would be the norm nowadays.  Sad to see most quests seem pretty uninspired even today.

[LinktheMaster]

Well, to be fair, a lot of the quests that we've reviewed have been older.  So, I don't think it's a fair comparison to what ZC quests can be nowadays.

 

That, and scripts just complicate things, meaning that quests take longer to make.

[Ben]

I realize you guys are busy, but is there going to be a June/July edition of this? I have yet to see in-depth reviews like this anywhere else, with only one or two exceptions.

[KingPridenia]

LinkTheMaster hit the nail on the head. You can't compare a quest made in 2.10 when it was the most recent Zelda Classic engine to something like Promised Lands with intense scripting. There is much less to work with in 2.10 and if you want a custom boss, sadly you're going to have to settle for a "warp maze" where you have the "boss" be a collection of tiles, or be forced to use the bland boring array of bosses everyone's sick of killing for the thousandth time. With scripting, you can have a moving FFC act as the boss or just use scripting to make one from the ground up. Look at bosses from Isle of Rebirth, Promised Lands and Link's Quest For the Hookshot 2 to name a few. You couldn't get CLOSE to making that in 2.10 or earlier.

 

The thing is, where people back in 2006 thought X quest was a flawless 5/5 masterpiece with an overall rating of 4.61, today if it doesn't stand the test of time, it's still an average or poor quest. Just because your quest is popular or famous doesn't mean you can get away with bad design, such as getting stuck in trees, walls, etc, or spamming Armos mazes like mad. And yes, these reviews ARE the opinions of the OP, so if he doesn't like the quest, then he doesn't have to. There are many quests I've played or seen before that seemed great at first, but when I take my rose tinted glasses off, I can't help but realize how flawed it is. That being said, where some quests I considered a 4/5 or a 5/5 a year ago, they may only be worth a 2/5 or 3/5 now.

 

Heck, even replaying and LP'ing the first one I ever made, I didn't hesitate to complain about my awful design choices. Some of the dungeons had rooms filled with so many statues you couldn't help but get hit left and right. Some rooms were just a flood of so many bosses all you're doing is getting hit left and right and hoping your life holds out to survive the war of attrition. Lastly, every dungeon was more or less an endurance test with death forcing you to repeat a lot of the dungeon. Nobody wants to repeat 20 rooms every time he/she dies. The scary thing is originally I only made you continue with 3 hearts, but I later changed it to full hearts since the game was tedious enough as is. Right now, if that quest was on PureZC, I'd rate it a 2/5, MAYBE 3/5 if I'm generous.