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Quest Club 19 - Legend of Link: The New Legacy


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#1 Russ

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Posted 17 October 2024 - 09:54 PM

Legend of Link: The New Legacy by Eddy
 
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What started as a simple remake has evolved into something completely different, I present "Legend of Link: The New Legacy". I abandoned this project back in 2017 or so and then decided to revisit it last year May. About a year later, it's finally finished and I'm glad this is finally out.

Explore the land of Hyrule in a completely open ended world on the quest to save Zelda from Ganon. Almost everything has been revamped and redesigned entirely from the original quest. Along the way you'll find many smaller quests and cool activities to do while you go out on your adventure.

Played up to finishing a single dungeon. The nonlinearity of the quest would very much allow for a number of users to end up having quite different playthroughs, which should lead to some interesting discussion surrounding this one. It appears to be quite good for the format, and I had fun with the one dungeon I did do.

The quest is a non-linear dungeon romper that plays not unlike a typical ZC quest. I think people will like that despite keeping inline of a traditional experience, the quest offers a variety of things unique to it. Each dungeon feels distinct and memorable with every one sticking out as great. The overworld for the most part can be explored at your own leisure, with side content that slowly opens up with each dungeon you complete. I think it being casual will allow this to be super accessible and fun for all ZC players.

I think when it comes to traditional dungeon rompers, this is one of the must plays. I think it'd be a missed opportunity to not have this be in the Quest Club at some point.

Because Joel's quest was good enough we needed his brother to take the spotlight. I admittedly know very little about the quest, other than what I saw of it looked cool and it didn't seem to get too much traction... which I guess I'm partially responsible for by not playing it. Let's rectify that now, shall we?
 
You can join discussion of the quest in the Discord thread, which can be found here. We encourage casual discussion in the Discord thread and longer thoughts on the quest in the forum thread here.


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#2 Shoshon the Elegant

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Posted 19 October 2024 - 10:26 AM

I played this quest back when it originally came out, and I loved. Eddy turned possibly his worst quest into his best quest.

And the final dungeon and final boss were both fantastic.
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#3 Moosh

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Posted 19 October 2024 - 11:13 PM

Played through three dungeons so far: Gnarled Root, Frosted Peak, and Sand Winds. The first time I played this I think I only got a little into Gnarled Root and got bored and forgot. This time my impressions up to that point were about the same, but the next two dungeons really picked up in quality. I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. I also like the mini shrines accompanying each dungeon and the overall nonlinearity of design. There's some real smart ideas here.


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#4 congo23

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Posted 24 October 2024 - 07:44 PM

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a compatibility issue?

 

I'm in The Forgotten Grave and just picked up the Possessed boomerang.  I used it to hit the switch in the top half of the dungeon, and there's a little circle there.  When I stand near it, the "A" label comes up, indicating that I need to push the A button.  When I push the A button, the only thing that happens is the "A" label disappears.  I'm assuming it's supposed to let me into that room so I can then proceed upstairs.



#5 Russ

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Posted 25 October 2024 - 12:29 AM

You need a specific key from the dungeon to use that. You'll want to leave the dungeon and go one screen south and east, then use the boomerang to open a path north to another entrance to the dungeon.

 

Also I mentioned a bit in the Discord thread, but I've been playing the quest and enjoying it. Will post a bigger write up with my thoughts here later.


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#6 congo23

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Posted 25 October 2024 - 06:12 AM

Oh, I see.  I thought that screen S and E was the way to the dungeon's shrine, so I was saving that for later.  Thanks!



#7 Russ

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Posted 30 October 2024 - 01:44 AM

Okay, I wanted to post my thoughts finally.

 

Overall, I really liked the quest. It's not perfect, but it's pretty fun. I think by far its biggest strength is its nonlinearity. Few quests give the option to just... go anywhere, stroll around til you trip over a dungeon, then have fun with it. As far as I'm aware, the dungeons can be done in literally any order and they never feel like you're doing things way out of sequence by doing it. Seems like that wouldn't be balanced, but the difficulty balance kinda works, for the most part.

 

The overworld's pretty good. Feels... Z1-esque, but with towns, and with a little bit of a modern flair and yet definitely reflecting something older. It's fun.

 

The dungeons, for the most part, are solid. I especially wanna call out the Forgotten Grave for pulling a cool bait and switch while being really fun and well-designed overall. On the flip side, wanna call out Gnarled Root for being kinda dull and phoning it on. But it's really the only of the bad ones. The system where dungeons become harder as you go is neat, though the fact that they're just arbitrarily paired is a bit weird (and Eddy and I have talked about that in private a bit). Dungeon items are pretty cool, though the boomerang controls are a little touchy. The bosses work for the most part too. I've seen a lot of bad Newbie Boss use, but this quest's usage was really solid throughout.

 

Did wanna give a shout out to the master shrine system, which is really neat. Not sure if I'd have tied defense as well as sword upgrades to it, but it's neat.

 

The story... is there? It's really just the usual "Get the triangles, kill the pig, save the girl" plot from ye olden ZC days, but with a more modern feeling intro that... feels a bit odd? I dunno, it's a weird juxtaposition, spending a lot of time and buildup to get to "Ganon kidnapped Zelda". The intro sequence isn't bad, per se, but it definitely is weaker than just about everything that follows. For better or worse, the plot is on the backburner after that til the end.

 

Long story short, the quest is really fun. It feels very much like old-school quests in a lot of ways, while also feeling much more modern everywhere it needs to. Definitely enjoyed it more than I was expecting to, and I'd solidly recommend it to just about anyone who likes old school Zelda games.


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#8 Eddy

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Posted 30 October 2024 - 09:46 AM

I think it's rather interesting you find Gnarled Root to be the weakest because in my mind it's always the Corrupt Cathedral since I never really had much going for it during development lol

All other stuff is totally fair and tbh the story I can kinda get but I just wanted some intro to kinda get the feel of the starting area and also to have stuff to do before you get let out into the big world basically. Initially it was gonna be you're free from the start and none of that existed but I didn't really like how sudden that felt.

 

Thank you very much for playing though, and thank you for the help with the dungeon difficulty stuff. I'm glad you enjoyed it!!



#9 Russ

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Posted 30 October 2024 - 12:09 PM

I think it's rather interesting you find Gnarled Root to be the weakest because in my mind it's always the Corrupt Cathedral since I never really had much going for it during development lol

See I don't necessarily disagree on Corrupt Cathedral. I think if I ranked all the dungeons in the game, it'd be nearish the bottom. With that said, while it's not super interesting, it's still a competent dungeon, with some degree of navigation puzzles, bomb walls that are hinted at, and interesting enemy combat. You could argue it's a generic dungeon, but it checks off all the basics a dungeon should do. I actually found it as my first dungeon, and it felt basically perfect for a first dungeon. On the other hand, Gnarled Root's structure is just fundamentally not that interesting. I think a dungeon built around a large, mostly empty central room can room can work, but you've gotta make it feel like you're not wasting the player's time every time they navigate that room. Gnarled Root has three such rooms all connected to each other, and the gameplay available in the oms branching off is generally pretty basic. The dungeon structure is basically a series of "Russ switches" as people like to call them (cuz I can never escape mistakes of my past). Run across dungeon. Hit switch. Run back across dungeon to go through path that opened. Hit other switch. Run back through dungeon again. It's just back and forth without anything to hold the player's interest, compounded with a bunch of mostly identical looking big empty ring-shaped rooms. In a quest full of dungeons ranging from basic but gets the job done (Corrupt Cathedral) to actually really freaking cool (Forgotten Grave) and generally leaning more towards the latter end of the spectrum, Gnarled Root was the only one that just made me feel kinda bored.
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#10 Eddy

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Posted 31 October 2024 - 02:07 PM

That certainly makes sense when you put it that way, and ya I can totally get it actually. I suppose one would also be able to tell that it was the first dungeon I made in the quest before I started to get the ball rolling lol




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