Positives:
* Good UI. Nothing weird or broken, everything was in its place.
* Very open overworld. I liked how while items opened shortcuts around the overworld, they weren't usually required to access a screen - good design decisions.
* Good difficulty curve, with opportunities to sequence break. After finishing Level 4 I stumbled into Level 8, and on a whim decided to run through it- and it was very possible and reasonable to full clear it right then and there.
* Good length. I finished in one session, in about 4 hours. It's a quest that has a mission, does it, and lets you be done with it. Nicely done- restraint is important.
* Good secret count, if with a little less variety than there should be. I found myself wishing there were maybe a few more minor caves scattered around in places I thought were notable (Maybe some Money Making Games? I think there's only the one in the entire game, unless I somehow missed all of them), but if you go secret hunting you can afford anything you need. That's a very fine balance that you did well with, IMHO.
* EDIT: Oh, I didn't even mention the music! Was it all original, or did you use tracks from other people? I didn't recognize any of the songs, but they were all pretty good. Overworld theme is catchy without being an ear-worm, and I liked that there were several dungeon tracks instead of just the two.
Negatives:
* Nothing really new- I'm pretty sure all of the non-Zelda 1 enemies and bosses are just in the devkit without modification. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially since this quest aims to be close to Zelda 1, but something worth noting.
* The boss of Level 7 was the most irritating boss in the game. They weren't fun to fight since they were just too fast and you don't exactly have good options to deal with them.
* I found myself needing to grind for bombs in Level 9 a lot. I can't tell if I just got unlucky or what, but there were quite a few instances where I knew exactly what I needed to bomb and had to grind bombs in the entrance area over and over.
*
Spoiler
* Very minor, but the pushable statue on one of the Take Any Road screens has a blank tile under it. This was the only visual mistake I saw, though!
Overall, I had a good time with this one! Nothing super outstanding, but what's here is well polished and definitely worth playing. 4/5, I'd rate it a 4.5/5 if I could.
