6 replies to this topic

[Ether]

Labyrinth of Dinus by Anthony
 
  
 

 

This quest took me almost 3 years to finish. I worked on it off and on during that time, so don't expect some big, epic thing. Its not. Its just a solid, dungeon crawling Zelda game that shouldn't take too long to complete. I'm particularly proud of it though, mainly because of the attention to detail that I put into it. I'd like to thank Sludge, the creator of the Cooldungeon tileset. I loved working with it. It was easy to use and had a lot of good tiles. Thanks to Warlock for his sprites for the newfirst tileset. There were a couple other guys that had made sprites that I used. I don't remember who, but don't think I'm taking credit for everything used in the quest.

terahubbard is the level 4 cheat. The quest is pretty buggy from what I've been told, so you'll need this. Just try to find stuff on your own and rely on the cheat just to get you out of walls.

Another older one and I don't know how well it's aged, but I recall really enjoying it back in the day and it got a lot of good feedback.

 
This is another one I've never heard of. (I'm, uhhh...not much of a 2.10 connoisseur.) Deedee said it's an attempt to make a metroidvania in 2.10, so that's interesting.
 
Since this is February, a shorter month, I'm going to do the next roll on the 15th instead of the 16th.

[SofaKing]

Anyone playing this?  I'm stuck somewhat early on but I'm going to check the help thread and see if I'm missing something dumb.

 

Edit:  I missed something slightly dumb.  There's a common stuck point relatively early where the solution is hinted at, but probably should be a little better hinted at.  This is pretty fun so far, especially for the era of ZC it was created.

Edited by SofaKing, 03 February 2024 - 01:38 PM.

[Ether]

Started this today. So far I've gone through most of the Pit, couldn't get past the boss, turned around and went to Haunted Gallery and beat the boss there. I think I'm enjoying this more than I enjoy most 2.10 quests, although admittedly that's a pretty low bar. But the smallish dungeons with multiple exits into other smallish dungeons are kind of refreshing. Some of the graphics are also pretty distinctive--I love how Haunted Gallery portrays a thunderstorm outside with the flashes at the windows. That's super cool, and not just by 2.10 standards either.

 

I do think some of its areas rely too hard on kill-all-enemies rooms full of, just, waaaay too many bulky enemies. That's...not really fun to fight through, especially since the shutters of course don't stay open, and there's a couple points where you have to read the creator's mind to figure out which direction to go or be sent backward.

 

The blue tunic's palette is really dark--that's fine for Link, but it also throws off his MP bar (which always looks empty now unless I squint) and his placement on the map (he blends in a bit too well, especially on the smaller passive subscreen map).

[Moosh]

This was a very short one but decently fun. Pretty much exactly the kind of thing I wanted to roll in Quest Club. The idea of doing a Metroidvania map layout is very unique for a 2.10 quest, though the world isn't actually all that interconnected and most areas are still connected end to end.

 

Towards the end it starts to go a little nutty on the enemy placements, as was tradition in 2.10. I missed out on my chance to buy the red ring and got trapped in the final dungeon with only the blue ring, no potions, and a 40 headed fire gleeok in the way of the gold ring. That was a puzzling scenario to get around and ended up being a bit of a grind. 

 

The secret triggers also leave something to be desired. This was a common issue with quests of the time and this one on the whole skirts around the issue by being more combat focused but there's this one tile that's used for most triggers in the quest with little consistency. It'd be nice if there'd been more types of trigger tiles.

 

That telegraphing aside, the visuals really do go the extra mile for the time. There's some custom palettes, an area that plays with shadows, and another area with a cool lightning effect where you can see the outline of the windows when it flashes. Very cool all around and not something you often see in older quests. It did a good job giving the areas and even the player unique personality.

 

The story was fairly goofy and nothing to write home about as usual. But it had some good quotes in a semi ironic sense and had the sense to not take itself too seriously. 

 

On the whole I had a lot of fun with this one. It's a really solid quest.

[SofaKing]

I agree these shorter, kinda quirky quests are good for Quest Club.  I might change a couple of my recommendations based on that.  

 

Edit: I beat this last night.  Overall it's pretty good.  There was too much rupee grinding in places and you can miss a couple really useful items.  Then there were items that seemed to have no use whatsoever.  I also agree the blue ring effect is way too dark.  The last level was really good overall.  There are a couple super weird difficulty spikes, the Water Works in particular was incredibly frustrating.  If you go through it normally you WILL lose your magic shield period.  There were random rooms late in the game with things like four windrobes and four mirrorobes, or a whole bunch of L3 Stalfos, rooms that felt borderline unfair.  But as noted some of the graphical effects are terrific, and this is a nice, quick dose of ZC that for me had a high fun factor.  

 

Since I've had the last two why don't you take mine out of the running on the next roll, as I'm also gone on vacation the entire week of February 19 with no ZC access, and will almost certainly end up sitting the next one out.  

Edited by SofaKing, 05 February 2024 - 10:15 PM.

[Deedee]

Beat the quest in 4 hours (one hour of which was spent fully exploring the final area). Negatives first: the boss quality in the latter half of the quest isn't very good, expecting you to win through attrition, and while I could blame this on the poor 2.10 enemy additions, there was a deliberate choice with these room layouts to make already kinda unfair enemies actually impossible to dodge. The gimmick of the water works is poorly exeuted, choosing enemies which don't work well being invisible (Likelikes for instance). Getting from the curtain maze end of the labyrinth to the gallery end of the labyrinth takes a tad too long for my liking, and I wish a more convenient shortcut opened up at some point. The Ocarina telegraphing is a bit messy; I get the impression a specific barrier tile is meant to be the telegraph, but they're also used elsewhere so it's hard to associate the ocarina with them. Kill all enemies doors don't stay open and it can make backtracking annoying sometimes. There are some items right before the final area you can buy that aren't really helpful both due to how expensive they are and because the main challenging things in the final area are immune to them; I think these items should have been cheaper so as to facilitate doing last-minute cleanup (I avoided buying the wand and book and I still couldn't afford the fire boomerang, and 100 rupees per super bomb is a big ask). The final area relies on Mirror Wizzrobes too much, especially in rooms they have no business being in, and it makes fully exploring said final area a bit obnoxious even though most are optional. Lastly, the quest has some bugs and oversights; there's visual oddities with the lock blocks where unlocking them turns them into a glitchy tile instead of the unlocked combo; the digdogger boss fight can drop the key inside a wall and if you leave and come back the key will be in the topleft corner; and most importantly, if you skip getting the Ocarina and you make it all the way through the waterway boss and beat it, you'll be softlocked as the way backwards is blocked and you need the Ocarina to proceed, which is a massive oversight for a metroidvania.

With all that out of the way, this is one of the best 2.10 experiences on the database IMO. The pacing is excellent; you always feel like you're making progress with no area overstaying its welcome. Exploring feels worth your while, but also never strictly necessary. The visuals are really good for their time; Haunted Gallery especially is fantastic. Music choices are all very fitting and help the atmosphere a lot. It's just... fun? It's hard to really explain what makes it fun to play, but  where most 2.10 quests I'm usually bored and only playing for the sake of finishing, this is one of those exceptions where I'm vibing. Would absolutely recommend this.

[Russ]

I was going to write up a long post, but I feel like Deedee summed up most of my thoughts pretty well. The game start outs pretty well. The design is semi-Metroidvania, semi strung-together-dungeons, but it mostly works. The pacing is good, rewards for backtracking feel worth it, and the way everything connects feels pretty logical. An overarching map would've been nice, but I recognize how difficult that would've been to do in 2.10. In later areas, things start to waver in quality a little bit. It's still fun, but the enemy spam gets a bit much in same places, and a few of the later areas feel a little less smartly designed, especially with backtracking. There's also the bugs Deedeee mentioned. The final dungeon... I'm torn on. I do like the idea of chunks of it being optional, giving it a feeling of... well, a Labyrinth, but it also gets a bit frustrating throwing yourself at a mirrorobe room repeatedly only to find it just drops money you have no need for. Not sure what the best balance would be there.

 

Outside of gameplay, I do wanna speak to the graphics. The style is pretty cool, and has some really nice graphical flare to it. There's one area with dark rooms that light up as lightning flashes outside the windows that are really quite impressive. The music generally fits pretty well, even if some tracks we've all heard plenty of times in 2.10 and earlier quests. The story... well there was an attempt, so I can at least respect that there's something, but it does feel slightly goofy.

 

Overall, it's pretty fun. It's got some oversights and bugs, and a dew design issues later on, but it's still enjoyable to play and can be finished in one or two sittings. Thanks for picking this one, SofaKing! Discovering this kind of quest that I've heard of vaguely but never played before is one of the things I was really hoping for in Quest Club.