Edited 03 June 2016 - 06:29 PM
You promised a combat-centric quest, and you delivered. This quest is good and overall better than Triforce of Terror, but it still suffers from several flaws it had while fixing several. I played this on Mild, by the way; which feels like the standard difficulty for the quest given the earlygame and the portions of the quest that did not delve into unfair difficulty.
First, let's address the good things about this quest.
First off, the Overworld is fairly well done. While not as good or interesting as Triforce of Terror's, the overworld lets the player go off and explore before touching any of the key locations and many of the sub areas were pretty decent. It also keeps itself interesting by giving the player things to do before they get bored and decide to head off to the first couple of dungeons. There is also significantly less filler in the quest; the quest having fewer filler caves and areas that only serve to pad out the quest's length than your previous quests while the block puzzles were fewer in number and generally much simpler. Speaking of puzzles, this quest was not afraid to implement new puzzles. I liked the puzzles involving you having to shoot arrows past electric barriers and race the burning of Wand Magic the most, as they were fresh and enjoyable.
The Rupee economy is significantly better this time around as there are far fewer Rupees just given out in caves, prices of items are more appropriate and there are actually points in the quest past the start where you had to watch your wallet if you wanted to buy the supplies you need. Though, it could still be better (higher item prices, more things to spend money on or fewer rupees obtained on the overworld).
The custom enemies were generally better too. Whereas familiar foes like the Walkers and Flares from Triforce of Terror return, this quest introduces a slew of new enemies that serve to put you on your toes or to bring a fresh breath of air into the enemy lineup; some of which being questionable rips from other tilesets (esp. the Minimentuses). Outside of their higher levels, they generally were well balanced, fresh and enjoyable to fight for the most part. Even multiple non-custom enemies were changed up. Darknuts now shoot swords, Blue Octorocks shoot rocks faster, Blue Mobins shoot their spears at an angle, etc. These were all well-welcomed changes, except for when they pushed the enemies into unfair territory like how the Splitting Darknuts split into four Blue Darknuts.
But then there are also the bad things about the quest.
This quest's difficulty curve is inconsistent. Between dealing with the Enemies Always Return quest rule and the powerful enemies at the start, the start of the game is brutal, which gradually becomes less so as you progress through the quest. And then it spikes up when you get to Mountain Base, with everything being too fast to evade and dealing heavy damage, and it continues to climb as you progress. Tower of Turmoil is particularly baloney for this - You fight numbers of really overpowered enemies that you can't really avoid - the Purple Walkers, Purple Minimentuses, Splitting Darknuts, Metal Buzzies and Level 2 Bomb Shooters are all overpowered and you end up fighting multiple of these at once; which quickly take a toll on your health and make potions or smart use of the healing tiles scattered about practically required. The quest also has a habit of spamming large numbers of earlier rank boss enemies in the endgame and Dojo of Ordeals, which includes Solarettes (why spam her so much?) and rooms with two Lanas. The lower rank bosses are not too bad, as the Solarettes and Skillmores are easy to deal with at that point, but rooms with two Lanas and one with three Evil Kids? One of them are strong enough as it is, don't add any more.
Related to difficulty; the quest is balanced around the optional items, particularly the rewards for beating the Dojo of Ordeals trials (which, especially the final trial, are unfair hellholes in their own right depending on what point in the game you take them on at), far too much. If I didn't find Nayru's Love (which by the way is very overpowered) or obtain the Level 2 Magic Ring, both of which being very missable items, there would have been no way I could have beaten the final boss due to how much health it has and damage it deals.
Off the subject of difficulty, the bosses feel that they could use a lot of polishing despite being much better than Triforce of Terror's bosses. The 1.92-styled bosses are outdated and surely you can move entirely onto 2.5 stuff now that you have had more experience with the editor by now. FFCs and custom enemies as bosses have a lot of potential that were not tapped in this quest, which is a shame considering that your custom enemies were generally unique and worked well in their jobs. Even in the realm of 1.92 bosses, there were several bad moments with these bosses. Rank V's boss had a ton of bullet spam, which you had to dodge while tediously pushing Armos to find a switch under one of them and the Shriken can get lost. Rank III's boss warps the player to the center of the screen and then they are expected to find their way to the spot where they have to attack it in a very short timeframe lest they risk getting zapped for heavy damage. Also, why does Knil never attack on his own; outside of the final time you encounter him, and just throw hordes and hordes of powerful enemies at you?
