Two-Week Contest Review #10
Nostalrul by Goriya
This fun quest is almost exactly the same as tLoZ in terms of gameplay. You start in an overworld, fight through dungeons, and beat Ganon in the end. Does this mean that it is good or that it is bad? Let's find out!
Gameplay
This quest starts you out in an overworld screen, but in a town area:
Is that my own house? Yay!
After that, you must find your sword and the overworld opens up from there.
The progression in the overworld is linear, but that's not bad at all. Obviously, this means that dungeons must be completed in a certain order which is fine by me. The overworld is a perfect 8x8 map, which is nicely big for a quest made in two weeks.
In the overworld, a pretty big amount of exploration is required to find all of the dungeons and such. The overworld also progresses nicely, and doesn't open too much once you beat the first dungeon, which isn't bad because you don't have to explore so much and then have nothing to explore later on. There are also some sections in the overworld, which can be summed up into two towns, a forest, and an ice world. It was creative to have them, and I always like to have sections in an overworld.
In addition, the overworld is littered with secrets. There are a lot of them, most of them being heart containers, which are really helpful. The only problem with this is that the secrets are actually really easy to find an would benefit from being hidden more intelligently sometimes. But other than that, it felt rewarding and nice to get all of those heart containers!! 
Before I move on, I just want to say that rupees were used very nicely! There were shops in the overworld that could sell you very nice items, like the second shop in the game which sold you the magical shield and the white sword! Awesome! Because of that, getting rupees was great since there was no point in the game where you could be super rich, since you had to buy the items in the shops if you even wanted to beat the dungeons.
Now on to the dungeons. I think they were very creatively made, and I really enjoyed them. They were typical NES rooms for the most part, though the room shape isn't always rectangular, which is good! I was really pleased with the dungeons, as they really creative and well made. I especially liked Level 3's creativity, because you had to go from an ice side to the fire side to get the items and move on:
Ooooh, nice!
Another thing about the ice side versus the fire side is that they have different enemies, which I thought was good! Really great job on the dungeons!
Now let's talk about the difficulty flow of this quest. The quest starts out pretty easy, and remains that way through Level 2. However, once you reach the ice part of the overworld, they difficulty increases massively, especially in the dungeon, which in this case is Level 3. Basically, we go from Moblins, Zoras, and Stalfos in Level 2 to Wizzrobes and Level 3 Octoroks in Level 3? I think that is WAY to much of a difficulty spike. And the fact that your equipment isn't much different since there isn't a shop right before Level 3 doesn't help at all. And then once I reach Level 4 with super powered up equipment I was kind of disappointed since Level 4 was underwhelming. The only thing inside was the final boss. Really? I really wish that Level 4 was actually a big dungeon, but, I guess it is what it is.
Before I move on to the next section, I just want to say that this quest does have some puzzles! Yay! Even though they are really simple. I really wish there were more and that there were some harder ones as that would make the puzzles more effective. But at least there are some!
Story
This quest doesn't really have a story; it is similar to tLoZ. But this quest is humorous and did make me laugh quite a bit. I guess Goriya is know for that! But ya, really like the humorousness!
Design Attention
This quest screen design is very solid, and it looks good. Using Goriya's favorite tileset, Revenge, this quest looks good because he uses it well! Also, there were no screen design bugs that I could find, so yay! Now for the screenshots that I know all of you have been waiting for 
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Very solid screen design!
Now with that said, I did feel that there could have been a bit more detail in the screens, since some of them do fell a little empty. But the screens are still solid so that is good!
Now for the dungeon design. The dungeons are very nicely designed, and are nonlinear most of the time. While there isn't many side warps or stuff like that, it is still decent and I enjoyed the dungeons nicely. Very solid and great job on that!
Music
The music of this quest is very good, and very well chosen. I really like it, to be honest. Each section of the overworld has different music, which is good because it defines those areas much more effectively. Also, the new sound effects make everything seem fresh, which I really liked. The sound effects were really good on that note too. All in all, the sound area of this quest is phenomenal and was very nicely chosen and picked out.
Concluding Thoughts/Summary
Nostalrul is a must-play quest that is also very fun and solid though it does suffer a bit from difficulty balancing issues and easily found secrets that would otherwise make this an almost perfect quest.
Strengths
- Solid overworld and solid progression
- Nice use of rupees in terms of shopping
- Creative and nicely designed dungeons
- Some puzzles
- Humorous dialogue and "story"
- Decent screen design with no bugs
- Amazing music and sound effect choices
Weaknesses
- Easily found secrets
- Sharp difficulty spike around Level 3
- Underwhelming Level 4
- Some screens were a little empty
Rating: 8.5/10 (Great)
Database Rating: 4/5 (Good)
Edited by DaviAwesome, 23 November 2013 - 08:48 PM.
Yes, you'll get the info later about that, promise!
