Dropping another update here into this thread. As of last night I've completed both Magic and Fantasy by @King Aquamentus and Yuurei by @Aevin. Those videos have been sent over to Youtube and are on the playlist above. However I've got a couple Content ID hits from both Magic and Fantasy as well as Yuurei. According to Youtube, the Yuurei vids may be blocked, this is due to Yuurei's enhanced music and the water area using Abyss of Thor from Tales of Phantasia.
My final thoughts on Magic and Fantasy
Magic and Fantasy is a classic Zelda 1 quest. A bit on the linear side at first, but other than that its well polished (aside from ... well, a bit of a sequence-breaking "bug" to say) ... (Watch the videos to see what I mean.) ... The tileset is well done, I like the multi-colored dungeon walls. However the "crystal caves" tiles are a bit ... of an eyesore. The overall difficulty of the quest was decent to start off, but I will agree that level 8 was far too easy to be considered a level 8. The hint for level 6 was a bit cryptic, couldn't even
find level six until after I had cleared out levels 8 and 7 beforehand. My progression through the quest was Levels 1-5 in sequential order, then I stumbled-upon level 8, completed it. Felt like a level 4 in overall difficulty. Then found myself in level 7 while I was once again searching for level 6. ... completed that one as well, so by the time I got to level 6 I had quite a few more treasures than I would've had if I had done them in sequential order. I felt the difficulty of level 6 was that of a level 8, but that could've been my horribad playstyle. Overall the quest is well-done, however a few additional tweaks could make this a perfect quest. Gonna give this one a 4/5 stars. Keep it up King Aquamentus.
My final thoughts on Yuurei
Yuurei is a completely different style of game than a traditional ZC quest. However, from the description it's a sequel to Hitodama, which is a quest that I have yet to play. I spent over 10 hours on my initial playthrough, quite a bit of it was due to backtracking and/or walking around in circles having absolutely NO idea where to go or what to do. I've only done -one- playthrough until the credits scrolled, so I've done little to no "post-game content" which I hear this quest has a decent amount of. The quest itself is definitely a metroidvania style quest, there's no real dungeons at all but there's plenty of areas to explore, lots of secrets to find, etc.
To start off, you're given a choice between choosing a character randomly or taking a short quiz to select a character. I decided to go for the quiz and ended up using Jack as my playable character. I played through the quest on Normal difficulty, which may skew this review a bit, but I wanted to see what Aevin intended as the normal difficulty. ... I completed the quest with 127 deaths, most of which were in boss rooms.
Speaking of boss rooms, good god there's -far- too much going on the screen at once to even dodge in a good manner. Most (if not all) of my boss kills left me with either a half heart or one heart remaining, and that's only because I felt I got lucky on my dodging, and not because I got better at dodging. Quite a few times I had it where bosses would teleport directly on top of me giving me very little to NO chance to dodge, making it rather difficult to get through the boss fights.
However, with that one complaint aside, the rest of the things in the quest are very well done. All of the custom "spells" (as they're called) in the game are very well done, love the fact that there's no "true" base ZC items in the quest. The timed "puzzles" in the Rose Gardens were well done. First time I'd ever see a timed switch that operates across multiple screens. The hidden spikes in the rose garden are a different story, but that's to be expected from a late-game area. The overall story I got out of Jack is very well done, thinking of giving this quest a second playthrough off stream just to experience a bit more of the post-game content.
All of the custom scripted enemies also gave it that non-ZC feel and almost made me forget that I was even playing a Zelda Classic quest. The amount of polish that went into this quest definitely shows, and I'd love to see additional quests put out by you. Overall rating: 4.5/5 stars, (Rounds up to 5/5). This quest is one of the better quests I've played. Keep it up Aevin.
Edited by Sephiroth, 28 January 2017 - 11:14 AM.