UPDATED REVIEW! In the spirit of fairness and respect for the creators time and effort I decided to play this quest more so I could give it a more well rounded review. I initially played for about an hour, couldnt figure out how to progress, got frustrated and quit.
ORIGINAL:
Nope. You lost me in the first minute with the esoteric "find the sword' puzzle and the stupid hard banana boss. It was on easy mode, too. If this is any indication of how the rest will be I'm out. Frustration is not my jam. Quest graphics look nice, though.
UPDATE:
After playing this quest for about 6 hours I can honestly say that I still feel the same. I just didnt get it. I did not think it was fun. I still think it looks pretty nice.
The overworld and dungeons often seem like lots of random areas stuck together. For me, there is a lack of flow and finesse. I didnt buy it as a cohesive "world". Its also got a lot of seeming unrelated and superflous cut scenes and strange narratives, too. Some of the puzzles and bosses are so out there and outside the Zelda universe that I just couldnt reconcile them.
Its really hard to know what to do and where to go. After playing it for 6 hours I still really had not figured out a lot. I didnt aquire many items. I was just aimlessly wandering around hoping I would stumble across something that would progress the quest, revisiting areas over and over. When I did finally find something the amount it advanced the game was minuscule. Not very gratifying. I was glad there was a YouTube playthrough so I could at least piece a few things together. Many of the puzzles were so obtuse and cryptic that I would never had figured them out in a million years without it, which I think is a big problem. In the video he even said that he felt like had been playing for a while and had not gotten anywhere. Its definitely frustration inducing, to say the least.
While I applaud new ideas and thinking out of the box, there are a few big accessibility issues. One is the record player puzzle that requires sound. In my opinion there should be some sort of transcribed alternative solution. I have noise sensitivity so I never play games with the sound on. I also noticed there was a comment from a deaf member with the same issue, but it was never responded to. The other issue is a puzzle in which you are fighting a boss and you need to press the K key on a keyboard. This was a game breaker for me, as I'm playing on a Steam deck and couldnt figure out how to change the controller mapping for the anomaly.
With all that being said I still appreciate and respect the effort it takes to make a quest like this. However, they arent all winners and you cant please everyone, and thats ok! Such is life...
Dragon Dream
Overview
Feature Quest
Creator:
Jamian
Genre: Dungeon Romper
Added: 15 Jun 2021
Updated: 01 Apr 2024
ZC Version: 2.55
Downloads: 704
Rating[?]:
|
Download Quest (7.67 MB) |
Information
Dragon Dream is a full quest with 6 main dungeons and some mini-dungeons, scripted bosses, a fairly silly story, and a few novelty puzzles. There are different difficulty settings to accommodate the player's preferences. Total gameplay time should be around 10 hours for a first playthrough.
About Reviews Comments Forum Topics
Eddy
Posted 20 December 2024 - 05:07 PM
I think this is a rather fascinating quest, really well done in a lot of places but isn't as great as some previous quests of yours IMO. With that said though, I had a really enjoyable time for the majority of it. I'll start off positive because there's a lot here. The main focus of this quest is certainly on the puzzles, there are SO many puzzles to be found in this quest it's actually nuts. The thing is though that the puzzles are CRAZY clever, the majority of the time I was just sitting there thinking for ages trying to understand what the hell was happening for it to be usually right there in my face. The more obtuse and complicated puzzles really threw me in for a loop and felt really satisfying to solve when I finally managed it. On several occasions I did look up videos of this quest to figure some out but when I did it's usually the kind where it's like "oh of course I didn't try that!" so it's nothing very bullshit which is great. The dungeons themselves were designed pretty well for the most part, I really enjoyed a lot of them with their own unique gimmicks and some got really complex further down the line, but they were all really cool and fun to play. A lot of the humour in this quest is also pretty good, I found myself just wondering ?????? for some bits, like using Looney Tunes to defeat a Siren (what the fuck) and the whole ending segment. I can kinda see the quest doesn't take itself seriously a lot of the time and tbh that's fine, it's hilarious. The other bosses in general were very clever, quite fun and the final boss was nuts. Also love how you just threw in the bug net for the Sideview Hills boss.
What I do feel however is unlike Promised Lands or Forbidden City, the graphical design took a bit of a hit this time. The quest generally looks fine but a lot of places seem kinda plain or just uninteresting imo. Dungeons looked better but there's still not much to talk about when it comes to that. Difficulty on the whole is fine with the exception of the last two dungeons where things start to skyrocket quite a lot, but I think enemy difficulty is not really the problem. What is the problem IMO is the design of Sideview Hills which I thought was not a good dungeon at all. In all fairness, sideview is very hard to do in ZC anyway so I can't be too hard on it, but the underground maze segment with the fire sparks was pretty awful to navigate through and the underwater segment is perhaps the worst part of the whole quest. I can see what you were doing with the swimming but for this it felt far too sensitive and clunky which made that whole part VERY frustrating, especially when you gotta navigate through tight places with electricity, bonefish and other obstacles in the way. I think having the swimming be more aligned to GB swimming would've made that 100x better. This is the only part of the quest where I can say is bad.
On the whole though, this was a very fun quest and I enjoyed it a lot! I do feel Forbidden City is better and maybe even Promised Lands in some parts, but this was still good fun in itself. I was considering giving this a 4, especially because of later segments but I think the really clever puzzles bumps this up to a 4.5/5 which rounds up to a 5. Very nice work!
What I do feel however is unlike Promised Lands or Forbidden City, the graphical design took a bit of a hit this time. The quest generally looks fine but a lot of places seem kinda plain or just uninteresting imo. Dungeons looked better but there's still not much to talk about when it comes to that. Difficulty on the whole is fine with the exception of the last two dungeons where things start to skyrocket quite a lot, but I think enemy difficulty is not really the problem. What is the problem IMO is the design of Sideview Hills which I thought was not a good dungeon at all. In all fairness, sideview is very hard to do in ZC anyway so I can't be too hard on it, but the underground maze segment with the fire sparks was pretty awful to navigate through and the underwater segment is perhaps the worst part of the whole quest. I can see what you were doing with the swimming but for this it felt far too sensitive and clunky which made that whole part VERY frustrating, especially when you gotta navigate through tight places with electricity, bonefish and other obstacles in the way. I think having the swimming be more aligned to GB swimming would've made that 100x better. This is the only part of the quest where I can say is bad.
On the whole though, this was a very fun quest and I enjoyed it a lot! I do feel Forbidden City is better and maybe even Promised Lands in some parts, but this was still good fun in itself. I was considering giving this a 4, especially because of later segments but I think the really clever puzzles bumps this up to a 4.5/5 which rounds up to a 5. Very nice work!
Demonlink
Edited 20 June 2021 - 08:55 PM
So, I finally finished this, 100% on hero mode. And I got to say, even though in some parts I was all "Damn it all!", it's actually a pretty fun quest. What I loved most of it were the puzzles, Jamian truly did a good job making me scratch my head now and then. Although, I have to say that these kind of puzzles might not be for everyone, and that's really okay. I enjoyed it, and I loved it for taking on a new spin on quest design. The story... yes, really silly too; the title is more literal than it seems at first.
If I had to suggest some improvements... maybe it would be to add more hints on some puzzles, but not actually give away the answer. Wind bosses, are the worst I do admit, although they were fun to be mad at as well; but thank you so much for:
I love this quest, it may not be as big as your previous entries (The Forbidden City, Promised Land), but this is another one I'll add to my personal favorites. Keep up the good work!
If I had to suggest some improvements... maybe it would be to add more hints on some puzzles, but not actually give away the answer. Wind bosses, are the worst I do admit, although they were fun to be mad at as well; but thank you so much for:
Spoiler
I love this quest, it may not be as big as your previous entries (The Forbidden City, Promised Land), but this is another one I'll add to my personal favorites. Keep up the good work!
- Shane likes this
Mani Kanina
Edited 19 June 2021 - 07:43 PM
I just finished this and, well, I was kinda disappointed with it, to be perfectly honest. Jamian has done some amazing quests in the past so I admit it might been on me for setting my expectations quite high. Regardless, I guess I will go over the various things I ended up feeling about the quest as I played it.
I think, firstly for anyone who considers playing this: I would recommend playing on Easy or whatever the equivalent is, even if you're a seasoned ZC player. I played on normal and while it's not impossible to get through the quest on that, I don't feel like the type of challenges on display here are very relevant to care about doing the "hard" way. If you're someone who normally plays quests on their easier difficulties than you might need to consider skipping this one.
I think the first thing I should open with is that I feel the economy is completely off for the quest on it's whole. Arrow and bomb drops are generally pitiful, this is usually not a huge concern but there is little leeway here. There were several segments in the quest where I felt the need to use arrows to help with a segment, and while I could do so the amount of arrow drops given would not really let me. In fact, on several occasions I had to backtrack out of dungeons to completely re-stock on arrows to the point where I ended up using save->retry cheese to get my ammo back after failed attempts. Bombs I didn't run out of nearly as often, mostly because I'm not a fan of using them in combat, even then I still ran out once or twice in my run so I can see it being a concern for people who do. Outside of the ammo I needed to buy I bought a single purple potion at the end of the game before the final boss (with the L2 wealth ring), at which point I was kinda broke. It's nice that there are potions avalible to buy as a crutch for players, but their pricing don't seem particularly accessible. Maybe I missed a crap ton of hidden rupees somewhere but idk. This all could probably easily be fixed if it's deemed an issue, so.
My second biggest concern is in relation to the quest's jokes. The quest has a lot of good jokes and a lot of humor, that's good. But there are less good things associate with this, I feel. There are a lot of times where this quest will make a joke (either explicitly or implicitly) that reads as following: "hey look, this is a bad design thing", the quest will then proceed to still have you do the thing. The most obvious one happens right before peahat island in which Link makes a humorous remark about how awful peahat gameplay is in a lot of quests, especially ones that have them where you need to kill all enemies. Now, granted, peahat island don't have standard peahats, they are instead reskinned bats, but instead it suffers from a lot of similar issues, enemies placed in dumb ways to block hookshot points so you stun them instead, etc. Other obvious jokes are: "hey look, I made a wind weapon boss, isn't that crazy, that's bad!", but then you actually have to fight it, multiple of them even throughout the quest. In fact that joke is probably the one that gets run into the ground the most. Highlighting things that are bad design or unfun can work as a good joke, but if you're then just subjecting the player to that same thing regardless it just stops being a joke or a highlight: you're just doing that same bad thing. This comes up a lot, but most of it is relegated to peahat island and the sideview dungeon.
The only other thing I took problem to in this quest is that some puzzles are a bit obscure, in the sense that you're given a puzzle then left on your own to figure out what it is you're suppose to solve before you can solve it. I guess another way to put it is that a traditional puzzle gives you the rules then asks you to follow the rules to get to the solution, where as these types of puzzles tell you that you got a puzzle, but not the rules; and in the case of this quest getting the solution once you know the rules is often trivial. These type of puzzles can work, but a lot of them either deteriorates into people making wild guesses till they see what sticks, or they immediately gets it. It's not that these can never work, in fact I have used them myself in my own quests at times, but there are a fair few instances where they just halt progress entirely till you solve them and you can't really make any meaningful progress by going elsewhere. But, I know the author has already addressed one of these things by adding another hint and I could see some of the other ones getting more hints/etc to ease them up. When I was personally playing if the author didn't tell me what to do at the one in the swamp, I would have been stuck there, and the one before the necropolis another person had to help me out with it.... after getting another hint from the author.
Other than that the quest has fairly good writing even if I feel it gets a bit too odd in places, and while the ending provides the answer as to why everything is the way it is, I'm not sure if I would call it a very satisfying ending (even if it was funny). Gameplay is generally good in most places, but as I mentioned earlier I would recommend easy because it's quite hard in many places and it often sets you back very far on failure/death. For what it's worth, I did actually like a lot of the quest, but there were just a lot of occurrences of things that really ruined the mood and wasn't fun for me.
All in all, I didn't find a single bunny in the quest, so, 0/10.
I think, firstly for anyone who considers playing this: I would recommend playing on Easy or whatever the equivalent is, even if you're a seasoned ZC player. I played on normal and while it's not impossible to get through the quest on that, I don't feel like the type of challenges on display here are very relevant to care about doing the "hard" way. If you're someone who normally plays quests on their easier difficulties than you might need to consider skipping this one.
I think the first thing I should open with is that I feel the economy is completely off for the quest on it's whole. Arrow and bomb drops are generally pitiful, this is usually not a huge concern but there is little leeway here. There were several segments in the quest where I felt the need to use arrows to help with a segment, and while I could do so the amount of arrow drops given would not really let me. In fact, on several occasions I had to backtrack out of dungeons to completely re-stock on arrows to the point where I ended up using save->retry cheese to get my ammo back after failed attempts. Bombs I didn't run out of nearly as often, mostly because I'm not a fan of using them in combat, even then I still ran out once or twice in my run so I can see it being a concern for people who do. Outside of the ammo I needed to buy I bought a single purple potion at the end of the game before the final boss (with the L2 wealth ring), at which point I was kinda broke. It's nice that there are potions avalible to buy as a crutch for players, but their pricing don't seem particularly accessible. Maybe I missed a crap ton of hidden rupees somewhere but idk. This all could probably easily be fixed if it's deemed an issue, so.
My second biggest concern is in relation to the quest's jokes. The quest has a lot of good jokes and a lot of humor, that's good. But there are less good things associate with this, I feel. There are a lot of times where this quest will make a joke (either explicitly or implicitly) that reads as following: "hey look, this is a bad design thing", the quest will then proceed to still have you do the thing. The most obvious one happens right before peahat island in which Link makes a humorous remark about how awful peahat gameplay is in a lot of quests, especially ones that have them where you need to kill all enemies. Now, granted, peahat island don't have standard peahats, they are instead reskinned bats, but instead it suffers from a lot of similar issues, enemies placed in dumb ways to block hookshot points so you stun them instead, etc. Other obvious jokes are: "hey look, I made a wind weapon boss, isn't that crazy, that's bad!", but then you actually have to fight it, multiple of them even throughout the quest. In fact that joke is probably the one that gets run into the ground the most. Highlighting things that are bad design or unfun can work as a good joke, but if you're then just subjecting the player to that same thing regardless it just stops being a joke or a highlight: you're just doing that same bad thing. This comes up a lot, but most of it is relegated to peahat island and the sideview dungeon.
The only other thing I took problem to in this quest is that some puzzles are a bit obscure, in the sense that you're given a puzzle then left on your own to figure out what it is you're suppose to solve before you can solve it. I guess another way to put it is that a traditional puzzle gives you the rules then asks you to follow the rules to get to the solution, where as these types of puzzles tell you that you got a puzzle, but not the rules; and in the case of this quest getting the solution once you know the rules is often trivial. These type of puzzles can work, but a lot of them either deteriorates into people making wild guesses till they see what sticks, or they immediately gets it. It's not that these can never work, in fact I have used them myself in my own quests at times, but there are a fair few instances where they just halt progress entirely till you solve them and you can't really make any meaningful progress by going elsewhere. But, I know the author has already addressed one of these things by adding another hint and I could see some of the other ones getting more hints/etc to ease them up. When I was personally playing if the author didn't tell me what to do at the one in the swamp, I would have been stuck there, and the one before the necropolis another person had to help me out with it.... after getting another hint from the author.
Other than that the quest has fairly good writing even if I feel it gets a bit too odd in places, and while the ending provides the answer as to why everything is the way it is, I'm not sure if I would call it a very satisfying ending (even if it was funny). Gameplay is generally good in most places, but as I mentioned earlier I would recommend easy because it's quite hard in many places and it often sets you back very far on failure/death. For what it's worth, I did actually like a lot of the quest, but there were just a lot of occurrences of things that really ruined the mood and wasn't fun for me.
All in all, I didn't find a single bunny in the quest, so, 0/10.
