Of course, people are going to ask why I bothered playing through if I didn't enjoy myself. To that I would say: think in terms of the addict's brain. The addict feels a pervasive sense of wanting the substance or release of choice, even though, especially as the addict falls deeper into the whole, the substance or release ceases to be pleasurable. In fact, often the addict comes to hate that which he or she so wants, even though the pathways of wanting continue to reinforce and strengthen. In short, I played through TtT because I have an addict brain and the quest is addictive. To be more specific, TtT showed me flashes and signs of brilliance early on, and continued to string me along with these carrots on a stick, so I continued to play in hopes of re-experiencing that awesome gameplay I knew was in there somewhere. Even though I was mostly plodding through a tiresome and masochistic experience as a whole, and gradually growing to hate the quest, I continued to want to see what was there at the top of the tower. In this sense, I suppose TtT is incredibly successful, putting the player into the mentality of the quest's protagonist, who is inexplicably compelled, despite much hardship, to reach the top.
Indeed, TtT has some of the most incredible puzzles, mechanics, and dungeon crawling I have ever seen - even harkening back to the Atari days. To think that these things were realized with some sort of trick and technique-filled ZC 2.10 voodoo, and that the whole apparatus plays (almost entirely) bug free even on modern Zelda Classic, makes the quest even more impressive. The story, dialogue, most of the music, and screen designs are all quite strong as well. In regards to the gameplay, I went into the quest virtually blind and the floor-9 twist, the Inception-esque quest-within-a-quest-within-a-quest really piqued my interest. Floor 9 was quite likely the peak of the quest for me, where my motivation to keep going was at it's highest, even though the quest continued to throw anti-rewards at me just as much, if not more. than ever. Unfortunately, the quest really started to slide once I reached floor 10, and I threw in the towel before the final boss. Sunk costs, in terms of the 30+ hours and mental energy I spent to get here be damned, I want to go back To the Bottom.
The biggest problem I see with TtT is that the various dungeons, their unique gimmicks, and obstacle screens really, and almost entirely, outlive their welcome. I saw Mani/Lunaria mention this in her review. Old drama about her reviews aside, and though the review was slammed, she was spot on in the assessment that the quest really makes things outlive their welcome. I would add, TtT grinds good ideas into the ground while simultaneously killing the pacing of the tower-climbing odyssey with cheap difficulty. TtT has a strange quality of being mild-moderate in difficulty overall, despite there being so many screens that were either designed with cheap difficulty in mind, or just play cheap due to ZC 2.10 limitations. I honestly don't know which of those two choices it is, or even if that's a false dichotomy, but I suspect there is a mixture of both.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the quest is the 4-way movement, which makes the various narrow pathways throughout the quest a slog fest. Trying to navigate damage tiles, drop floors, raft mazes, and timed puzzles with 4-way movement is not fun, because there is so little precision. Link has a less-than-endearing tendency to accidentally slip and fall every single time he makes a hard 90-degree turn if you are not positioned just so and perfectly within the pathway. Then when you get into the timed floor switches, which you have to step on perfectly squarely and not offset, have fun trying to make the necessary turns with clunky 4-way movement to reach the next switch before it disappears. All too often, TtT demands perfect timing and perfect movement in spite of the inherent imprecision of 4-way movement. A perfect example of this problem would be some screen shots below. All of these screens are mandatory, if I recall, and you will have to slog through screens with perfect timing and control inputs in order to make it. This is virtually impossible to do having not seen the screen before, such as on a first playthrough, which necessitates a bunch of trial and error to gain the finger memory to get through. Pacing suffers and falls by the wayside.
Often, I found myself simply and intentionally tanking damage to get through these cheaply-difficult and tedious screens. For instance, I vowed, pretty early on, not to bother solving those sliding-path-over-lava puzzles as intended and to just tank damage and walk across the lava. Other times, such as during the 2.10-style boss fights, with lovably quirky screen/phase transitions causing unavoidable damage, I would break my personal rule about avoiding potions at all costs and happily chug that vigor juice just so that I wouldn't "have to do this stupid" fight again. The boss of floor 7 is a perfect example of what I mean here. ZC 2.10 bosses are what they are, and this is hardly the only quest that has quirky 2.10 bosses that you have to experiment in order to find how to damage, or where unintentional damage is hard or impossible to avoid; but in this case, is another bullet point to put on the shit list.
Going down my shit list some more, and in interest of not airing all of my gripes, I'll try to finish up on the assessment I mentioned earlier: that the new elements in this quest almost always outlive their welcome. Floor 10 might be an obvious example, but I'll posit floor 4 instead. Here, the dungeon is not just an 8x8 map with different phases, but also introduces the MacGuffin sidequest in having to find all of Richard's golden leaves if you want to keep on climbing to the top. As is most always the case, you usually aren't too sure where you are inside the dungeon, because there is no spacebar or subscreen map, and you can't obtain the actual dungeon map (which gives a mini map on the main screen) until you are 1/2-2/3 of the way through the dungeon. This is actually the point where I tapped out during my first attempted play through, and I nearly tapped out again this second time. In fact, the first six floors are an unenjoyable chore and almost kill the good will of the quest. I think around floor 7 the dungeons, while still being overly long and tedious for the same reasons as the previous ones, somehow start to become a lot more fun. Maybe it's just a misconception of mind, one born because the addictiveness of the quest was starting to take hold and make me ignore the malaise in the wretched name of wanting. There are many more specific examples I can recall where a dungeon, subquest, obstacle screen(s), and even individual mechanics just dragged on and on for too long.
While TtT has a lot of brilliant content - especially if you're like me and enjoy puzzles and complex dungeons - you better be prepared to take that brilliant content with a big fat grain of salt. I honestly don't understand and am unsure how to speculate about why so much of what weighs this quest down was left in there as is. Maybe this quest really, really needs a modern remaster because much of the bad elements seem to be based on ZC 2.10 limitations. More likely, I hazard to guess that the quest maker is one of those personalities that finds the "Nintendo Hard" trope to be the pinnacle of video game design. By that I mean, for those hyper-focused and obsessive autistic types who love to sit down and grind through gauntlets that require perfect control inputs, movements, and learning patterns, lest you be unceremoniously dumped back at the beginning of the gauntlet. To the rest of us, even someone like me who grew up playing Atari and NES games, this sort of gameplay is cheap, merciless, and not particularly fun or enjoyable, and best left in the past.
To be a little more constructive, I think one can look at certain other quests like Land of Anarchy, which is very heavily influenced by To the Top, in so many ways, as a way to do a game like To the Top without the problems that weigh down the original. Mike's Funhouse is another obvious comparison, especially if you enjoy more Metrovania elements or are one of those types that like "Nintendo Hard" difficulty without cheap biases or unintended chunkiness. To be fair, I have to admit that TtT still hooked me in on some level, which makes me philosophize on the nature of addiction. To my dismay, though, I think ultimately the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze and I am reminded that I should learn better to trust my instincts.
, secrets to find and an overworld within the quest where you wouldn't expect there to be one, this one surprised me over and over again!
