This one looked great and played pretty well. A few small bugs here and there.

After hours of butting heads with dungeons I finally threw in the towel near the end of Lvl 5. Getting stuck for hours with some of the most cryptic puzzle mechanics totally killed the flow and enjoyment for me. Circling the same map over and over and over and not progressing isnt fun to me. Its too bad. Tons of interesting and original ideas in there, but ultimately way too fiddly.

Desperately needs a video wakthrough. Looking through the 25 pages of the help thread was almost as tedious as the quest.

Quoting Sofakings review:

So let's talk about the dungeons. Don't play this unless you are OK going to the help thread. Possibly a lot. The number of random secrets in this game is somewhere just south of infinity. You will be trying every item you have on every statue and structure in dungeon room after room. What worked once won't work next time. You will be pushing, pulling, whistling, wanding, shooting, you name it. I don't like having solutions spoon-fed but this is kind of the polar opposite. There is no rhyme or reason to what will finally work. You just have to keep trying. I understand this is by design, and it worked, but for me it took away a little of the fun factor and was tedious by the end.

I admittedly had a bit of a love-hate relationship with this quest, but it kept me engaged and I played through the end, so four stars. It looks and plays nice and only the overworld is familiar. The dungeons are completely original.

So let's talk about the dungeons. Don't play this unless you are OK going to the help thread. Possibly a lot. The number of random secrets in this game is somewhere just south of infinity. You will be trying every item you have on every statue and structure in dungeon room after room. What worked once won't work next time. You will be pushing, pulling, whistling, wanding, shooting, you name it. I don't like having solutions spoon-fed but this is kind of the polar opposite. There is no rhyme or reason to what will finally work. You just have to keep trying. I understand this is by design, and it worked, but for me it took away a little of the fun factor and was tedious by the end. But again, if you know what you're getting into, it's a fun and well-designed quest, hence four stars.

Very nice, solid quest based on original Zelda 1 overworld.
What you could improve in future:
-Some midi tunes, extend cave systems (I love these Links Awakening style caves), bonus dungeons, broader usage of items and so on. But ok, you based it on the original LoZ.So it's quite good.
Very nice thoughtful dungeon design (hidden tiles etc.), you are fascinating with a limited number of rooms in your dungeons, graphics are solid.

Link a.k.a. Rocksfan is in the top tier of questmakers, and that is a small exclusive group. This quest along with his retirement series of quests are top-notch efforts. You actually need a brain and of course some reflex prowess doesn't hurt. His quests deserve so much credit than what he has been given. This quest is a 5+. You may need help so check the thread. Enjoy!

The only thing I disliked was the puzzle to get the Magic Boomerang. I never would have figured that out on my own as there's no hints or visual cues what to do there, and suspect only the most exhaustive player would discover it without reading the help thread.

Everything else is fantastic. This is a shining example of what a TLOZ 1st Quest remake *ought* to be.

Nothing delivers the satisfaction quite like convincing yourself you've broken a badly designed dungeon key sequence, and ruined things by saving w/out backup, then conceded defeat and prayed you've overlooked something as you post for help, only to discover the missing key while the author is responding to your post heh heh. 5/5, 2nd best quest I've played so far.

Fully playable with ver 2.55.
One of the best remakes of original Z1 first quest. Worth playing.

I have found a game-breaking bug on lv5 on one of the big chests (with the bow in it). It won't let me open chest on Z2.5.