Personally, I think complaints about the difficulty have merit. At first I wondered whether I myself might just be whining, since I played the game as a kid and was not very good at video games. But recently I started a game again in emulator (only for convenience; I have an NES copy but I haven't dug it out), and after trying it out anew, I could see where the difficulty complaints came from. Here's the problem:
A good deal of the game is very basic and straightforward as far as the difficulty is concerned. Parts of it are just plain easy. But when you come to a hard part, it's suddenly hard
all-at-once. And the sudden spike in difficulty isn't a wide variety of skills. It's usually just one action that you have to perform
exactly right, sometimes multiple times. And if you don't, you die, and you have to replay all the mundane tasks that led up to that challenge.
I can sum it up in two words: Death Mountain. Levels 1-2 of the game are only moderately difficult. And then, even before level THREE, you are thrown into what some people say is actually the hardest part of the game. To this day, I feel I can't beat those alligator men in a fair fight, even though it's only a matter of timing. This is extremely frustrating.
To put that into perspective, I have played, beaten, and enjoyed Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and more importantly, Alundra. One is a melee combat platformer, and the other is a 2D overhead Zelda clone. Both are games with hair-ripping levels of difficulty... but in both cases, the way they build up the challenge is very satisfying.
Zelda II had its moments where it was "hard-as-hell but fun for it," but they were much fewer and further in between than the other two games I mentioned. I would much rather play Order of Ecclesia or Alundra instead of Zelda II. In fact... I think I just may do that right after this post.
*gets out the DS*
QUOTE(blackbishop89 @ Jul 8 2011, 07:46 PM)
Yeah, I'm still trying to envision how to go about the puzzle elements. Two things I plan to do is first make a more complicated multi floor maze out of maze island where you have to go up and down and second making the hammer one of the most useful items for puzzle solving you have. Do those sound like good ideas?
It seems particularly weird to turn Maze Island into a multi-floor maze, because:
1. it's an outdoor maze, and
2. it'd make a lot more sense for the
palace to be an indoor maze, and
3. if you want a maze of caves, you already have Death Mountain to mess with.
If you're going to take freedoms, I think it'd make more sense to make the overworld portion of Maze Island into something resembling the Valley of Death, except obviously not as dangerous.