Hmm. I'm torn on this quest.

The graphics and tileset are perfect, in my opinion. Everything looks awesome. I really love how zippy the gameplay is, and the overall pacing is great. The story is really interesting and original. The whole quest is extremely well done. It feels, looks and plays like an official release.

I thought it was near perfect and extremely enjoyable up to Level 8. From there it started to lose me. The difficulty spike came on abruptly after that, and it became way too hard, tedious and stressful. The fun was sucked out of it at The Sky Castle. It was so different in feel that it felt like 2 different games spliced together; the first half was a fun adventure and the rest was some sort roguelike bullet hell.

Bummer.

Good quest, can't lie.

This is a great quest that I loved playing. Nice music and good dungeons made for quite a few hours of fun. It's definitely worth playing.

Took only 6 to 7 hours to beat the quest

Having now completed from what I can tell is about 90% of the quest, my review is this:

Ain't bad.


There are definitely some issues, though.

"Thieves" and "shield" are spelled properly in this sentence. In this quest they are not.

It's obvious that the Pure Tileset got the best of you in a couple spots and, in my humble opinion, sticking to the original Shamanock for any inspiration or direction at all was a mistake. Dungeon layouts make no sense and are generally just linear progressions with maybe one branch most of the time.

The overworlds are just kind of a lot of random stuff thrown everywhere, but looks good, I guess, despite being kind of lazy-looking (this quest reminds me of my first quest.) There are certainly a lot of potion shops and bomb upgrade rooms to find, though (not to mention rupees. I never had a rupee shortage.)

Overall, it's a bit "simplistic and plain," to quote an old review I got on my first quest. It shows moderate effort; your understanding of the Pure Tileset and area design definitely improved as the quest went on.

However, I think things would have gone better had you made your own quest separate from Shamanock, with your own designs and ideas pushing things along. No disrespect to Joe Cracker but adhering to that old quest didn't help this one. I feel like this is the biggest problem the quest has -- it's definitely an improvement (though it'd not be hard to improve on the original) but the quest's root in Shamanock is still there to rear its ugly head and ruin things.

But the fact remains that you took an utter disaster like Shamanock, which was nearly the worst thing since sliced Hitler, and turned it into something genuinely enjoyable, and you ought to be commended for that.

That metaphor about Hitler makes me feel bad.

It ain't too bad, a bit on the dull and easy side, but not bad
So far im in the gate to shamanock (post level 4), so far it would get a 3 from me

I never played the previous versions

I've played up until level 3. I get to the boss and I don't have enough room to fight it; I just keep dying over and over. Those torches by the entrance to the room need to go.

The green LTTP Goriyas have way too much health.

I also found a ladder in a sideview section in level 2 that did not work.

Surprisingly, this quest is decent. A bit generic and a little simplistic, but genuinely enjoyable. It's not the greatest thing ever but it's not bad.