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[Haylee]

The Hero's Memory by Aevin

Aevin's debut quest. It is a love letter to the Legend of Zelda series packaged in a modernised first quest experience. Explore an original overworld to find dungeons that hearken back to the classic Zelda titles.

 
This is a quest I literally have not touched since 2013, which is before I was actually really conscious of what I actually did and didn't enjoy! Revisiting this one should be fascinating.
 
As always, a discord thread can be found here. I look forward to this one!

[P-Tux7]

A good quest and a great example of how the new features introduced in ZC 2.50 can benefit a quest. Be warned that while the quest doesn't enforce you entering the levels in order (and it's easy to get Din's Fire and Remote Bombs early), certain levels will ask you to use items from more easily-accessible levels, like how it's easy to get to level 5 in Zelda 1 but you need the ladder to make any serious progress in it. Getting stuck on one part can often cause a complete blockage in the game flow, so don't feel afraid to ask for help - I think one of its only flaws is that there's often not a lot of in-game help or directions if you miss something, and this will definitely take up a chunk of the predicted 8-10 hour playtime if you try to do it all by yourself.

[Haylee]

My first session is done, and I completed levels 1, 2, and 4, as well as a side dungeon. This one is pretty fun so far! There are some absolutely fascinating peculiarities with this quest, lending to a similar feeling I feel when playing older quests from the mid 2000s. Iirc, Aevin had zero contact with the community before making this quest, and you can definitely tell, and that's pretty neat. There's some stuff as you go from levels 1, to 2 to 4 that really like, scream "I was learning the program and learning new cool shit and retroactively going back and making stuff cooler" and it's such a vibe of design.

 

Design wise, there's definitely some messiness here, however. Areas intended to be done later are beyond brutal, and there's a couple cases where you can actually get quite far into an area before realizing you're missing a check. Checkpointing for dungeons can also be quite mean, with most of the boss treks so far being quite long, leading to dying being absolutely brutal at times. There's also the Trial of Courage, which is an entertaining, if pointless challenge, thanks to the prize for completing it being pretty much completely useless. There's definitely some balance issues here that are indicative of it being Aevin's first project, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just an observation that makes it clear what mindset I need to be in when playing the quest.

 

Level 4 is a great dungeon. The dungeon item is really cool, and the core gimmick of diving into the water to explore an underwater section was great. I was impressed with this idea already, and was even more pleased to see that you can actually continue to go underwater in the overworld. I thought this was already pretty cool, only to be absolutely impressed by the fact that it works in level 2 as well, a dungeon you otherwise have no reason to return to! Attention to detail like this absolutely rules to see, and it makes the quest feel very thought through in some interesting places.

 

I very much look forward to playing more of this. It definitely has potential to get frustrating in places, but it's a pretty solid quest so far!

[Haylee]

Session 2, and while I'm still having fun, a lot of the aforementioned flaws from before are definitely really starting to get a little more difficult to deal with. I did Level 3, Trial of Power, and Level 5 this time around. Level 5 is definitely the roughest dungeon so far, due to the scaling issues mentioned before. A dungeon with both likelikes and the magic shield is always going to be a pretty ruthless combination, and with how confusing the early bit of this dungeon is, and how easy missing progression items is before having to double back to get them, it leads to probably the weakest main dungeon so far. Outside of that, I like the way the pipes are handled, those are usually always fun. Trial of Power didn't fair much better, albeit you're definitely intended to do it way later, but I was stubborn and wanted Din's Fire. I'm a sucker for any quest with easy access to that spell.

 

Level 3 really picks up in the second half with a really cool puzzle, and interesting navigation required to progress. I like this dungeon a fair amount, and it's probably my 2nd favorite one in the quest so far.

 

I'm sure the quest is only gonna get harder, but I'm still enjoying my time a fair amount, and with that expectation in mind, I'll probably enjoy the latter end of the quest much more than this middle point.

[Haylee]

Session 3, 4 dungeons covered, levels 6-8, and the Trial of Wisdom. Ocean Temple is really good, probably the best dungeon in the quest. It's got a lot going on, and it's really rewarding looking at the map, to figure out where to go. Trial of Wisdom is really fun, and honestly, honestly kind of teaches you about how the rest of the quest design is, specifically to have the player paranoyingly looking at the map and using it to determine where to actually go, and it's pretty fun and entertaining to figure out. Spirit Temple is generally pretty solid, and there's some stuff with the dungeon's symmetry that made me feel smart figuring out, so even with some of its weaker elements (It's a little more on the generic side, but it's still a fun dungeon.). Lastly Stone Tower Temple is fine, albeit incredibly backtracky, in a way that if I were not on VC making conversation, probably would've gotten tedious very quickly. I do think this latter half of the quest is generally a lot better than the first half, and I had a good time playing this batch of dungeons.

 

With that said, hoooo I am feeling the way this quest really wants you using bombs, to the point that I poked my head into Level 9 at the end of the session, and immediately realized my bomb count is not doing it. I will probably go looking for some bomb expansions in the next session before trecking level 9.

 

Overall, I'm still having a fairly fun time of it. I don't think last session will change much in terms of my thoughts, but I am very entertained by level 9 immediately.

[Haylee]

Shorter final session, but I beat the final dungeon! I'm aware that there's some postgame stuff, but I figured I would just cover the main game for this whole review to really get my impressions put out there in a much more cohesive manner.

 

Before the dungeon, I had done some overworld searching, and eventually found a shop that had the Lens. I'm sure the final dungeon would've taken far more without it, but I would actually like to speak on that dungeon, as I think it's actually a fairly good final dungeon, with some critques here and there.

 

In general, this quest goes out of its way to really tell you to be paranoid about secrets, and this final dungeon is no exception. It expects a lot, both from the player in terms of combat, as well as navigation, and if that it something you don't have the means to be prepared for, it can lead to a lot of misery. A far as critiques to that end go, there are many many secrets and enemies in this quest that require spending a resource to kill, and while this is really only abundantly an issue with bombs, it's still an issue nonetheless, and I think finding the lens before the dungeon probably saved a bunch of headache in that regard, as this dungeon has so many walk through and bombable walls, that I was actually occasionally finding myself low on bombs even just bombing the correct walls every single time.

 

With that aside, the continued trend of this quest's exceptional usage of the map continues to floor me. On top of the fact that the map itself is hard to find, actively complimenting just how useful it actually is, this dungeon has many 1 way shutters, and that map was an absolutely essential tool in figuring out which doors to NOT go through were, and I think that makes for actually fairly engaging dungeon navigation. I think the quest in general has had very good use of the map, and I'm glad that stayed the case until the endgame.

 

With that said, this dungeon definitely asks for a lot, and I do mean a lot. As mentioned before, the volume of one ways on display here is intimidating at times, and if you hadn't found them the way I had, you could definitely get into a situation where said one ways trick you fairly badly. There's actually one exceptionally bad instance of this where you get the final key of the dungeon, where you go around into a room with a secret you seemingly can't activate, but hints at the fact that you actually need to bomb from the top room. The issue is the hidden wall that's required to get there is a one way, meaning that in order to get an attempt to bomb the wall, you need to do the entire cycle of rooms over again. I think the fact that you already need to find a secret walk-through wall in order to get to the fail state side of the room in the first place, and not even giving you the luxury of going back is... pretty rude, to put it lightly. With that MASSIVE stumble aside, I think the remainder of the dungeon is actually very good, and I had a good time solving its navigational puzzles a lot.

 

I plan to give a proper review on the database at some point, but overall, I found what I played fairly solid, not at all what I expected, and, despite some pretty big stumbles here and there, quite fun as well. I think my reevaluated rating of it is probably a 4? It's got some pretty clear issues, but it's a good older quest with a fairly unique feel for it. If you're the type of person who likes their quests on the more punishing side, it's actually a pretty good quest to try out!