29 replies to this topic

[Moosh]

Word on the grapevine is there's an Urdolf conversation in Level 5 that's inaccessible because the trigger is bugged. Could I make a request to Twilight Knight to push a small update fixing this? It's the littlest thing, but the people love Urdolf. It kills me that 100% Urdolf access isn't possible. There might also be a couple other little bugs like the gemstone near Milton with the string control code that links to itself and hangs the game.

[Ether]

It's true. Urdolf is an icon.

[Twilight Knight]

Word on the grapevine is there's an Urdolf conversation in Level 5 that's inaccessible because the trigger is bugged. Could I make a request to Twilight Knight to push a small update fixing this? It's the littlest thing, but the people love Urdolf. It kills me that 100% Urdolf access isn't possible. There might also be a couple other little bugs like the gemstone near Milton with the string control code that links to itself and hangs the game.

Urdolf: "Djinns upgrade your items for free, use those to get to where you use up the keys you find around. Keep moving at the boss, arrows are handy."

Nargad: "You are surprisingly sane today"
Urdolf: "That's because I am sick"

 

No wonder this one is bugged, Urdolf is sick and talks quite sensibly.


I might make an update to the quest with minor fixes, but I definitely plan to make a more grand update with graphical improvements (ported from the Argon's Evil Lair remake), scripted bosses and various other fixes or improvements. The feedback from the Quest Club will definitely be taken into consideration.

[DarkFlameSheep]

Word on the grapevine is there's an Urdolf conversation in Level 5 that's inaccessible because the trigger is bugged.

I thought I simply missed him in Lv5....


 

Edited by DarkFlameSheep, 27 November 2023 - 07:25 PM.

[SofaKing]

I am back from my Thanksgiving weekend with no ZC access and playing again.  I finally made it to L2 and beat it last night.  Fun dungeon.  Right balance between confusing but not tear-your-hear-out frustrating.  

[Ether]

So I finished this except the final boss about a week ago, I should really talk about it! Let's see.

 

There's some really pretty graphics and screen design in here. A lot of games in fancier tilesets tend to use NPCs based off of the GBC sprites except with more colors, and those always look very flat to me--this game seemed to have its own set of NPCs and I think they look much better. I also like the shallow/deep water transitions a lot, and I normally hate those!

 

 

Also this mountain grass edit. I appreciate the mountain grass edit.

 

The game's pacing is a really odd choice. You can get the L2 sword and blue tunic after the first dungeon, but it's griiiiiiiiindy, but the game calls for a massive trek through a whole bunch of overworld areas to reach the next dungeon and the grind felt kind of required. (I know some other players did it without the tunic, but also aaaaaaaaa.) They're cool areas and it was definitely a unique experience, trying to push as far as I could into territory that it didn't feel like I was supposed to be in. And then coming back later with enough health to explore them in a more leisurely way, without the same need for caution, and see the nooks and crannies that I'd kept my distance from before. But I kind of wish the equipment upgrades were either simpler to come by, or not available at all with the regions you have to pass through being nerfed to accommodate.

 

(Optional item placement in general was a miss for me. I really dislike how the lens was dumped in just...a really unceremonious spot that you could easily never be drawn back to. And the whistle takes waaaaaay too long to get, for such a massive overworld.)

 

It's a shame exploration dropped off later--the tundra area was a big annoying maze, and christ some of the lategame wizzrobe variants were a pain.

 

My opinion on the dungeons was...fine? Mostly? (Except L8. I hated L8, just a big mess of "try to remember which of the 875698576456897 warps go where and keep going through them in the proper order." Also it told me I could shoot any machine and there were like maybe one or two machines that could actually be shot.) The others...none of them really clicked with me, they mostly just blurred together, but I didn't find them unpleasant either? Hard to explain.

 

The theming on the dungeons was very unusual. The names kept reminding me of Homestuck lands. As a Yuurand enjoyer and fan artist I feel like I should have liked that, but not being able to connect them to the overworld areas where I found them made them not stick in my head as well, I think. I wonder if that's a part of the blur effect, although I'm not sure it's all of it.

 

I did like the bosses much better than I was expecting to, for 2.10 bosses. The dialog was fun.

[Haylee]

There's actually no way for me to finish this quest before it's time for the next Quest Club quest, so for now, I'm just gonna drop how I felt about the quest up to where I played (Level 3).

 

It's a fantastic quest, albeit maybe one that isn't particularly my type of quest. Quests that are very long just aren't my thing, plain and simple. There's so much attention to detail and hidden stuff sprinkled throughout that it's honestly awe inspiring. My only really big critique is that I feel it's incredibly cryptic, and pretty as the quest is, I think the game does a pretty bad job telegraphing its secrets (I went over this in my initial post from earlier.). I think I've played enough to say that it's a pretty damn good quest.

Edited by Haylee, 28 November 2023 - 08:24 PM.

[SofaKing]

I'm pressing on with this.  There's a lot of good here.  I have a question and don't feel like going through the 23-page game thread if that's OK.  I'm in Level 4, which has some design flaws because you're often on a narrow catwalk on one side of a room waiting for an enemy to come over to get in range to hit and it can take forever, but I digress.  Was I supposed to have the bow before coming into this level?  And, if so, how in the hell was I supposed to know that?  

[Ether]

I think you were supposed to get one, yeah. I think most of us just wound up finding or buying one at some point because you spend so much time at the money cap? But yeeeeeeeeeeah it's an awkward decision.

[Twilight Knight]

I'm pressing on with this.  There's a lot of good here.  I have a question and don't feel like going through the 23-page game thread if that's OK.  I'm in Level 4, which has some design flaws because you're often on a narrow catwalk on one side of a room waiting for an enemy to come over to get in range to hit and it can take forever, but I digress.  Was I supposed to have the bow before coming into this level?  And, if so, how in the hell was I supposed to know that?  

Yes you are supposed to buy it before. Sandgaze Village sells them and it's quite close. You also need a quiver btw, also sold in Sandgaze Village. There is a free one in the cave between Secluded Bay and Dunarea Wetlands.

Could be telegraphed better indeed.

[Russ]

Well now that I've managed to finish the quest just in time for the club to a roll a new one, lemme try to put together my thoughts.

On the whole, I quite like it. I wrote a detailed review several years ago, and a lot of that holds. The overworld is huge and fun to explore. I appreciate the amount of shortcuts later items allow, as well as the huge variety of biomes and the general sense of actually exploring a massive continent. The trek to level 2 in particular stood out to me. I appreciated having to sneak through a Rebonite-taken city, and finally arriving at the Secluded Bay felt... magical. Yamuta's Remains also gets props for being such a wonderful area in terms of atmosphere. I didn't care too much for the desert, but ah well. I do also wish there were some more convenient forms of fast travel, though the guitar helped a lot with this in the late game.

Towns are big and full of people, and I respect that. I do think I'm coming down more harshly this time on the NPC dialogue than my first play through. A lot of it feels kinda stiff and wooden, like... well, checklists for NPCs. I dunno, maybe my standards are too high here.

Dungeons are sort of a mixed bag. On the whole, I do wish they tied a little more closely to the overworld areas they're found on, but I do appreciate the sort of magical otherworldliness of them. L1 was visually a mess; I couldn't tell what was walkable and what wasn't, and I was legitimately confused on getting the ladder cuz I hadn't read any of the floor tiles as pits. The bombable floors were also annoying. L2 was better, though a bit annoying. L3 was good; no complaints. L4 was alright; I enjoyed it better than on my first playthrough, at least. L5 was great and I have nothing bad to say about it. Loved the dreamy sense it had and the spire poking into the sky above. L6 was alright, nothing bad but nothing too special. L7... L7 felt like L4 again but more annoying to traverse. The music also didn't do it any favors. L8 I wanted to like but man did it do some annoying things. Lots of going down a long path, realizing you didn't hit a switch, and doubling back all the way to the far side of the dungeon. L9 was great, and I enjoyed the concept of all the keys being entirely optional for shortcuts.

The custom bosses were better than a lot of 2.10 bosses, but were sometimes a bit awkward. Later ones tended to devolve into enemy rushes. The final boss was really neat, save for one moment with bombs right before the end that appears to insta-kill you. I wasn't too thrilled about that. The boss dialogue is very awkward on the whole, but that's a minor complaint.

The story... I've mentioned this before, but I guess I'll spoiler tag it.

Spoiler

I really feel like the Frozenblood twist wasn't handled great. It was obvious he was going to betray you, to the point where everyone but Nargad knows it's coming. The fact that it was played straight feels mildly insulting to the player's intelligence. If it were more tongue-in-cheek, intentionally ridiculous, it might come off better. Alternatively, it would've been great if he'd turned out to not be a villain the whole time, against all odds. Alas...

As a random positive, I enjoyed how some early game passive items continued to get a lot of use in the late game. Made it feel like it's an actual world you're exploring, and the climbing gloves and ladder aren't just keys to open one or two locks early on. As a random negative, I feel like the game's got too much money grinding.

Oveall, my opinion on the game stands from the first time I played it. Great overworld, okay dungeons, kinda eh plot, overall fun but with some issues. I still think I'd give it a 5/5 because it has a cohesiveness to it and a sense of scope that most quests fail to achieve, and I really appreciate that, but it's also hard not to look at the quest's flaws and imagine what it could be.

[Ether]

Fun fact about the plot:

 

Spoiler

So I played the Argon's Evil Lair remake expo demo before I played this, and I knew from osmosis that Frozenblood would turn out to be secretly evil in this game. But I didn't know the order the games were in then! So I just assumed that Argon's Evil Lair was him having a redemption arc after the events of Crystal Crusades.

 

Since I knew he was evil here the entire time, I just found it funny, really. It was all very "Frozenblood! Ol' buddy ol' pal, the one person who would never betray me." No idea how I'd have reacted if I'd been completely spoiler-free. I think playing it up for laughs would've worked; that's basically how I went through the game anyway. I don't think subverting it just for the sake of subverting it would have inherently made it better--maybe if the game was setting him up to be a midgame boss instead of the final boss, so there was time to actually see him as a friend? But eh.

[SofaKing]

Well I see QC2 is out now so I'll start playing that, but I'm definitely going to keep going with this too.  I just made it to L5.  I have kind of a love-hate relationship with this but I'm definitely sucked in enough at this point that I want to keep going.  

 

Edit:  I just beat Level 5, which was great, and I'm pretty obsessed with this quest now.  

 

Edit2:  I'm doing Quest Club wrong.  I need to start LQFTH but I can't stop playing this.  I'm now almost done with L7.  I've gone from disliking this quest to full-blown addiction to it.  

Edited by SofaKing, 06 December 2023 - 10:55 AM.

[Shane]

I played up to Level 2, explored it a bit. But I probably won't continue from there. Not the fault of the quest, just haven't been feeling motivated with Zelda Classic lately. What I played was really cool. Probably one of the overworlds where just exploring around felt wholly satisfying. I'm sure I just scratched the surface of the locations available, but every place I visited was visually stunning and some even unique. Level 1 and the bit I played of Level 2 were pretty good as well - very unique in vibes. I'm not sure if I would have liked any of the bosses if they were of the 2.10 "anything goes" variety. But I guess even great quests are bound to have a weak link in them.

 

I believe when I first played this quest years ago I didn't quite like some of the things offered, especially the dungeons. But I guess overtime my preferences have changed because I'm not sure why I felt that way before. I'm glad at the very least this small playthrough attempt made me see this quest for what it truly is. And who knows, maybe I will continue this in my own time down the line and leave a review.

[SofaKing]

So a month and a half after everyone has moved on from this I finally finished.  I must say, I really, really ended up enjoying this.  At first I felt totally overwhelmed by the overworld but once I got into this I loved it.  It's not perfect, and its flaws have been discussed at length, but this is fun, ambitious, looks cool, has some great puzzles and levels, and I likely never would have played it but for Quest Club.  There's way too much grinding early, things that make travel distances much more tolerable are obtained too late, and the dungeon quality fluctuates somewhat.  Some secrets were a bit too obscure.  But I'm glad I finally stuck this out.  Sometimes I start something but get overwhelmed if it seems too daunting as I tend to prefer shorter, simpler games.  I did this with Lost Isle as well.  But some of these epics are worth pressing on and getting immersed because they become very much worth the time.  This was.