Edited 21 June 2018 - 06:20 PM
Flawless quest™. I can't see any flaws to be had. Game looks amazing and has really good puzzles.
You know what? I take it back. Screw it, I'll eat my own words. I was wrong about my initial opinion of this quest. I originally saw this, played a few minutes of it, saw some screenshots and others reactions, and assumed this was a 0 star quest, a quest that was Mario-Quest levels of bad. I was completely, 100% wrong.
Well, not 100% wrong, which is why this is a 4 instead of a 5. I'll bring up the issues I had with this quest first, since I do think they are issues that take away from the enjoyment.
Firstly, and most majorly, there is a huge overuse of Manhandla-2 clones used as bosses and minibosses. This wouldn't be so bad, if not for the fact that they are extremely tanky with absurd amounts of health, and half of them have invisible heads that you just have to guess which ones are left. The worst offender has to be the semi-final boss immediately after you get the infinite quiver; that fight takes over 10 minutes, regardless of whether you use arrows or use stomp boots (it's only 2 weaknesses). Very few of the manhandla's were enjoyable in the slightest, which is why I was disappointed when the entire later half of the game's bosses mostly consists of them. If you want an 8 way moving 2x2 enemy, use a 2x2 Patra with no eyes surrounding it.
Next up, the fact that you can screw yourself over in the beginning with the superbomb if you waste it instead of opening up level 1. This is 100% no. Even though there's a superbomb shop right after you get the first dungeon item of level, this is still really bad. A solution to this could be to have a shop that sells free super bombs, and have the superbomb entrance to level 1 be a carryover secret that closes that shop. I know you have understanding of carryovers and reset rooms, so this should be a simple fix.
Some secrets also don't make much sense: for example, a switch that opens up the path to level 9 is blocked by these dark blocks. The thing that unlocks these blocks is going to Migle's Sanctuary and beating a boss there. Considering I checked the blocks first and then went to Migle, how was I supposed to know what what I just did unlocked the blocks? There's also a lot of really obscure secrets that you wouldn't know without watching the walkthrough or using the lens, though most of the stuff did have at least a hint or two towards it, even if they were a bit vague.
Level 1 was also really heavy on "leave the dungeon with your new item to get another item, and then come back with the new item". I believe it used it 2, 3 times? It was really exhausting leaving the level and then having to make my entire way back to where the new item was required.
Finally, the final level was a letdown. I thought it was a decent minidungeon leading up to the final level, but instead it turned out to be the actual final level. Considering how good the final world is in general, I honestly feel a bit cheaped out. Maybe the final boss arena could be expanded into a full-on dungeon, instead of having the final level just be "collect keys from around the world"? I honestly feel like that would be better.
Now on to the good stuff.
This quest managed to capture a sense of exploration in me that I haven't felt in a long time. It gave me a huge world to explore and a lot of secrets to find. Every time I found something I felt an immense sense of satisfaction; something a lot of quests fail to achieve. Stuff is very rarely handed to you on a silver platter; you have to put in effort to find stuff, and man does it feel rewarding.
For a quest where every dungeon is 8x8, you do a really good job at making the levels stand out from eachother, whether through gimmicks, structure, or even little things. A lot of quests have dungeons that blend together even with freeform shapes and different graphics, yet here you took the same shape, same graphics, and stuff made each level feel unique and special.
You also managed to keep me on my toes throughout the entire game. At no point did I ever think "yeah, that's a bit predictable". I was kept guessing and wondering what was next through the quest, and that was really something.
The sequence here is also fairly light. You still have to mostly tackle dungeons in order (with the exception of level 7 and level 8 ), but you can go visit areas you aren't supposed to be in early to get slightly stronger. I liked being able to find an area previously gated off by an item that I now have, and not find any roadblocks further blocking me even though I wasn't supposed to be in that area yet.
The game is also really amazing in it's silliness. "One day Link fell asleep for 20 years", for example, is one of the best things I've ever heard. Armos making burp noises, keese making cuckoo clock noises; seriously this quest is like drugs.
Grinding here is also non-existent. Huuuuuge plus here. The overworld is also light enough on enemies where overworld exploration isn't a huge pain. Combine those, with a huge open world with minimal corridors and mostly huge open areas, and you have a huge plus huge plus right there.
The most important thing, however, is that I enjoyed myself throughout the majority of the quest in ways where I would have been bored playing any other quest, and to me, that deserves a good rating. This is probably one of the most split quests in the database at this moment, but I really, really enjoyed this, despite it's odd bumps and flaws.
4/5 stars.
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Epsalon ZX
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eduardas
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