Without further ado, let's start this:
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So I was introduced to this gem of a quest by Rover, who told me (I hope) jokingly to give it a 5/5. I knew from just a glance that this quest was obviously not 5/5 material, so off I went to play it. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into...I thought I knew the nature of the beast I was about to play...
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Gameplay:
So where to begin on this...if I were to sum up Twitch TV Invasion Lunatic's gameplay in one word, it would be "Confusing". You're dropped into the overworld in front of a cave in typical classic quest style. So an old man gives you a sword, right? WRONG! Not in this quest. In this quest you get 4 bombs and I assume (I'll admit right now I couldn't even find the sword before the quest's horribleness got to me and I ragequitted) that if you run out of them (there's a few money giving Goriyas but in the end you still have a limited supply of bombs) you're SOL and have to start all over again.
There are many suspicious rocks like these and only some are bombable. They're just there to waste your limited supply of bombs.
Then there's the overworld setup. Ignoring the actual screen design for now, the place is a maze and the hints you're given are little help. I've been told things that I'm not sure are even correct. I was told at the beginning to go west into the forest maze to find the sword. I didn't find any form of maze to the west but I did find some mazelike screens to the east. Does the author have a confused sense of direction like the old woman in LQftH? Am I just missing something? I honestly have no clue.
Is this the maze he's talking about? Also, dat CSet 6.
So the overworld's gameplay is horridly confusing, but what about the dungeon gameplay? I honestly can't know because I can't find any dungeons and quite frankly after my experience with the overworld, I don't want to. All I can give is some speculation based on a certain NPC's hint that the dungeons are probably very confusing with bombable and walk through walls everywhere. Not that that's unusual for a classic quest.
Then why even bother having a dungeon map!?
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Story:
This is going to be very short because this is a classic quest with a very simple story. Basically there's this bad guy named Daos that Link met in a dream that's somehow real and Link wakes up in the land of Twitch which has changed since he was last there and he has to restore the land and SAAAAVE the world and stop Ganon from reviving Daos (at least I assume it's Daos). Pretty basic and I don't think it adds or takes away from the experience. What DOES take away from the experience is string errors where words get repeated and spaces are left out and the such. It would have been nice to at least proofread the quest's strings a little.
I think it's safe to say Arek1985 is a Lufia fan. 1 awesome point for him.
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Design:
Here's where the quest really falls flat. I'll start with one positive thing about the design by stating that the overworld music is very nice, although it doesn't loop right. Other than that, this quest's design is pretty dang bad. Often times ground terrain style and color will randomly change between screens, for example having a random screen use a different palette. Sometimes the author just randomly changes the floor palette onscreen. It generally looks very ugly going between a screen with plain ground and a screen with dotted ground. It's honestly quite jarring. Just because Zelda 1 did it does not make it good design.
This screen looks like something my 7-year-old sister would design. It's clear he just scribbled those trees in with the tile brush.
There's also, surprisingly enough, cutoff! Oh my old friend cutoff, I don't see you nearly enough in Zelda Classic quests. How I've missed you actually no I haven't. It's clear that the author either didn't know how to properly use mountain tiles or simply didn't want to.
Here are some of the worst offenders.
Notice almost all of the screens I've shown are of The Known Lands? That's because only SOME of the differently colored areas have unique titles. Either label every area or just use one area name for the whole map. Then we get to the enemy placement. Almost every screen looks like it was randomly made in 10 seconds, but the enemy placements are the worst offenders. Enemies appear to be chosen almost completely at random with no care at all for balance dodging lynels and leevers without a sword or any renewable weapon is bad design.
Now how is anyone supposed to dodge this? You're not. You have to rely on lucky spawns.
Sometimes enemies will get stuck because of the "enemies enter from sides" flag being used incorrectly. Other times you just don't have enough space to move. I found one spot where you randomly walk through trees (bad design right there IMO) only to encounter a screen full of blue lynels and leevers that quickly killed me before I could inspect the armos on the screen. And speaking of armos, on another screen I could only trigger one armos at a time because of sprite limitations. As a result I had to leave and re-enter the screen SIX TIMES only to find that there was nothing there. When it comes to design, the quest's title is very accurate: Sheer lunacy.
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Extra Effort:
Now I have to give credit where credit is due, Arek1985 did include both a map (it was a low definition JPEG and for the most part completely useless) and a readme with hints and version changes. This unfortunately did not save me from the problem of how damn confusing the overworld was.
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Concluding Thoughts:
This is a bad quest quite honestly. There's no other way I'd describe it. I'd say it's best avoided at all costs for the sake of your sanity. But that's just my opinion. This is all just my opinion. If you still want to play it, go ahead.
For now, let's look at the quest's strengths and weaknesses:
Strengths:
- Good overworld MIDI
- Fairly bugfree as far as gameplay goes
- Rushed screen design
- Bad enemy placement
- Palette issues
- Too difficult/unfair (I'm all for fair difficulty, but this isn't it; I'm a real hypocrite considering the stuff I did in LQftH so yeah. I've CHANGED! Really!
)
Rating: 1/5
Comments/Responses are welcome BTW.
Edited by Moosh, 07 October 2012 - 02:23 PM.
