A fun one! It looks and plays great. Super clean. It has good pacing and flow. I really enjoyed it.

The dungeons are well thought out and a perfect balance of challenge without being frustrating.

My only critique is that the overworld and dungeons could aesthetically use a little more diversity in design. The dungeons start to feel kind of the same just with different colors. They need a bit more individuality to feel like different places. Similarly if the overworld was broken up into a few more different looking sub areas, like the snowy part, it might feel a little more epic and exuberant.

I wrote a review in 2004 that wasn't very good (I was 13 when I wrote it). I wrote another review in 2020 that also was not very good. Here's yet another review. Hopefully I don't have to write another one in 2035!

It cannot be overstated the degree to which this quest reinvented Zelda Classic. Every questmaker since - whether they realize it or not - has, in some way, been influenced by this quest, either directly or indirectly (count how many of the mid-2000s greats were directly influenced by PrinceMSC - DFW, Peteo, Mr. Z, Exate - and then think about how far their influence extended). A lot of younger members might shrug their shoulders at this quest and go, "so what?" This is wrong in two ways, one understandable, one not so much.

The first is understandable because most younger members weren't around before Revenge 2 came out. The vast majority of quests - that is, the ones that weren't half-hearted 1st.qst edits or bland Newfirst scratchings - generally toed close to Zelda 1's design sensibilities. There were quests that attempted to do things that went beyond Zelda 1, but they often felt like limited tech demos or were broken or flawed. Prince changed that. He had an ambition that was - at the time - unparalleled in its execution.

Its feature set is still remarkable. Not just for the (at-the-time) novelty of the features it uses (it might be hard to believe today, but things like treasure chests, walls with multiple doors, individual houses with music, and animated sprites on the overworld were all novelties when this quest came out), but for the way it happily married these features with its level design. Revenge 2 stands as more than a tech demo, and its recognition of gameplay as the prime element elevated it head and shoulders above its contemporaries - this is something even modern designers should strive to emulate. Simply put, this quest strove to be fun. It means Revenge 2 can stand on its own merits even a quarter of a century later.

Perhaps more notable than the features it does use are the features it doesn't avail itself of. It features a streamlined enemy set that dispenses with Zelda 1's most annoying enemies entirely and relegates some of the more potentially troublesome overworld ones to dungeons. A lot of the worst tropes of Zelda Classic are avoided entirely - late dungeons don't become barrages of enemy spam, block puzzles are used to gate keys and items rather than being used freely in junction rooms, and secrets are telegraphed rather than merely leaving you to brute force guess which arbitrary item belongs to which arbitrary combo. True, this means it's less difficult than a lot of other quests, but it means every challenge it presents to you is fair and fun. It's a very accessible quest.

Which brings me to the second reason this quest is so influential: The game design is excellent. In a sleight-of-hand, Prince starts you off by subtly and deftly directing you to a breadcrumb trail of interesting things to do before Level 1 without you even realizing it. You're shown the potential of the world - what will be - before you even set foot in Level 1, in a way that feels organic and in a way that you don't even realize it's happening. Heart pieces on faraway peaks taunting you, strange white continents just a ladder's width away, a lone desert with a wall of leevers nestling the best shop in the early game. The world constantly entices and invites you, setting up a sense of mystery and intrigue throughout - the way the best Zelda games and adventure games do.

The dungeon design is hypnotic. Prince understands flow and spacing - he understands that the traversal of the dungeon is as much a part of the puzzle as the individual puzzles are - and this results in dungeons that feel intricate and deceptively complex despite having relatively simple structures on paper. They're dungeons you can get lost in, a rarity in 2001. All of this is particularly remarkable given the limited toolkit he had at his disposal with 1.90.

I keep seeing people complain about how awful and unlistenable the music is and how it destroyed their ears and robbed their houses of all their belongings, or whatever. I disagree with all of these people strongly. The swirling reverie of Terranigma's Light World, the dynamism and excitement of the Sailor Moon overworld theme, the spine-tingling first steps into Level 1 accompanied by the grandiose mystery of Illusion of Gaia's Sky Garden - all of this music sets a stage and makes the world come alive. It's true that in 2001, you were lucky to find a quest that used anything more than, like, the same 5 ALTTP MIDIs, so there was a novelty factor, but even by today's standards it's still an idiosyncratic soundtrack, one that I find enchanting and unforgettable and introduced me to some excellent games (the Soul Blazer trilogy and Life Force in particular).

I lament the fact that we never got a fully completed Mystic Land, Adventure Island, or the thing he was making in 2014 (edit: 9 Phantoms!!). (Honestly, Mystic Land was no less revolutionary than Revenge 2, given the influence it had on pretty much every tileset that came after and the feature set that came to define the mid-2000s era of questmaking.) I still daydream about peering into the myriad other worlds I'm sure he no doubt imbued with the spirit of adventure and joy of discovery that underpinned this quest. But if this is all we got, that's still a fantastic and incredible legacy. Thank you, Prince, for everything you did for the community.

Anyway, this quest is a masterpiece. Play it or I'll kick your ass.

A fantastic followup to PrinceMSC's Revenge 1, Revenge 2 takes nearly every aspect of the the first quest and improves upon it tenfold. Great tileset, great overworld, and great music (love the midi version of Live and Learn in Dungeon 8 )! The dungeon design is fantastic; each one has it's own theme and puzzle style, and these are almost always well executed. Dungeon difficulty has also been improved, as each dungeon gets progressively more complex than the last. A couple of mini-dungeons were also added, both very fun. I only have a couple of issues. One is that a few of the early puzzles are trial and error, and they require you to go back 3 or 4 screens and reset the whole puzzle if you mess up. My other issue is that while the difficulty has overall improved, enemy encounters still get a bit too simple near the end of the quest.

These minor problems aren't enough to severely lower my score. This is a fantastic quest, and it stands up to the test of time. If you are looking for a 1.90 quest to play, don't skip out on this one! 9/10

This is a much better effort than the first one.

1. I like this tileset. Even used it once.
2. My biggest complaint is the length of time it takes to solve the puzzles and the kill-traps associated with it. I find this kinda disruptive and frustrating. While it didn't lead to a lot of deaths, it got really aggravating doing it again, especially in the 4-area puzzle in 9, going out of the room and having to backtrack 4 rooms and permanently remembering stuff.

Probably the best 1.90 quest. The graphics still hold up today, and is not a joke like the first one in difficulty.

This is a great quest!

I opened it up to play it as it was a rainy day... and Im glad I did!

The levels are cleverly designed, and will keep you puzzled for a good while.

Now Ive got to find the first revenge quest... want to master that too!