I originally played a demo for Dreams Realm back about two years ago, and I found it fun, but with a lot of little issues as one would expect from an early demo. Since then, and years prior alike, I have played various quests by both of DR's creators and generally enjoy them all. In fact, Herald of Heroes is one of my favorite Zelda Classic quests ever - like top 5 probably. So, like a Christmas present, I saw that a completed DR was posted to the front page and I had to get to playing. The "about" section of the quest advertises head-scratching puzzles, custom items, sprawling and complex dungeons and a long play-through time, which, hey, I quite often like all of those things. Well, I have to say that DR delivers on all of those promises; but how it delivers on those promises is, unfortunately, all over the place in terms of quality gameplay, technical execution, and an overall fun experience. Quite frankly, playing DR runs the gamete from "I'm going to stay up late and play some more" to a slogging chore in order to move forward in hopes of more great stuff, and all the way to "I can't believe this isn't still in the beta phase."

DR's greatest strength is almost certainly the dungeons and some of the dungeons in this quest are truly great. Levels 1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, and 13 all have pretty unique, creative gimmicks that draw you in and make you contemplate a strategy. Some of the gimmicks are truly novel and not something I have seen anywhere else before. More often than not, the strategy you need to use is very intuitive and simpler than it would appear necessary at first glance. These dungeons "flow" nicely, are pretty effortless to navigate and unlock. My favorites were probably level-7 and level-11. For how complicated and bewildering these places looks on paper, and at first glance, I found the levels played out very logically and had little to no problem navigating or solving them on intuitive auto pilot. In fact, I generally liked all of the dungeons in the quest, except for a select few, which I will expand on some more, and even liked some of the dungeons that other players seem to dislike. I found that, if you've played Land of Anarchy, Herald of Heroes, or Mayath Island: Remastered, the dungeons in DR are quite consistent with the design ethos from all of those earlier quests.

Many of the "mini" dungeons in DR are also very strong. I use the term "mini" here in a relative context, because the mini dungeons in this quest often take up a large part of a 8x8 map, but are indeed notably smaller than most of the main-quest levels. Specifically, I think the Sacred Realm, Starlight Ruins and Ruins of Miracles are my favorite mini dungeons, and as an added bonuns, they all contain a very useful prize. I got some strong Project Storm vibes from Ruins of Miracles, with the drop floor and hidden walk-through wall mechanics, as well as the midi lifted from PJ's Castle of the Fallen. The plot, or story of Dreams Realm seems very much like an afterthought or token vehicle to tie together the various dungeons and exploration. I don't hate the story that was laid out, and at least the dialogue is a lot better than in some of the creator's earlier quests, but it sure wasn't the story that kept me engaged.

There is also an enormous amount of exploration to endeavor upon, and secrets to find between main-quest dungeons, mini-dungeons, and the next main-quest dungeon. DR never feels like a one-dimensional dungeon romper, despite the many sprawling and complex dungeons and mini-dungeons, because of the multitude of overworlds and caves there are to unlock with new items and explore. Simply put, there is, in general, a lot of little things that one can do between key episodes of quest progression. There isn't anything Metroidvania-like to tie everything together; but if the dungeon you just played left a bad taste in your mouth, you can get out there and do something else, different, to keep moving forward. I like the continuous opportunity for sidequests, even though the only quest-wide sidequest, the trading sequence, felt artificially contained. As though the quest makers suddenly realized that the logical progression of the trading sequence was almost done by half-way through the quest, suddenly, you are item-blocked from completing the sequence until near the end of the main quest.

Now, I mentioned that DR is all over the place in terms of overall fun gameplay, so I suppose its time to start bringing the less-than dreamy elements of the quest to light. As I kept playing further and further into the quest, I started to realize, more and more, that the quest - for lack of a better description - would really benefit from more polishing. There are scores and scores of little nitpicks that an experienced game designer could probably find and list out, but there are also a lot of moderate issues that still need to be ironed out. Possibly the biggest issue is that the enhanced music and midis in the quest are wildly imbalanced in terms of volume, and you're probably going to be continually hitting the volume keys as you transition from overworld to overworld and dungeon. In many cases, the music clashes badly with sound effects, which makes important sounds, such as compass chime and sword tap, difficult to detect. As an aside that I want to mention at some point, some of the musical choices in DR are really appropriate and interesting. The music for the Dream Gate is as epic, pivotal and timeless in theme as the dungeon itself. Sometimes I got tired of listening to the same track through a long dungeon and deleted the music file, such as in level-3 (I think) and definitely in level-13, which is a massive dungeon that will probably take you a few hours to solve.

A few of the items in this quest are also broken, and many, if not most, are at least, poorly executed and at the level of MacGuffin in terms of actual usefulness. I posted more about these things in the help thread, if anyone really cares to read more. Suffice it to say, I dislike the seed satchel item and wish it was broken up into individual items. The seed shooter is a definite MacGuffin, as I probably only found two or three screens in the entire main quest where you need it to solve some sort of roadblock of a puzzle. The ability of long-jump over water and into caves or other screen transitions still hasn't been resolved, as far as I know, and will leave the player stranded if you haven't found the flippers yet. I also experienced numerous crashes while playing through DR. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why ZC player would shut down out of the blue - sometimes while merely traveling on innocuous dungeon or overworld screens, to in the middle of boss fights, to when some script-event happens. At first I thought this might be because I play ZC on the Linux build, and the developers cryptically warn that your mileage may vary while playing on Linux. Then, I realized that I can't recall ZC player randomly crashing on other quests, whether they be 2.55-specific quests or quests made on earlier versions. I've played a lot of quests, and ZC player almost never crashes in other quests besides DR. This is probably very difficult to narrow down why this might happen, but helps illustrate that something is not quite polished out. The shutter door script was a moderate issue, and empty chests were also a big issue that, to the creator's credit, have been ironed out since I first started playing. Overall, its just evident that DR probably needed more player testing to find these sorts of things. Maybe the testers did find these things and the creators want to keep things the way they are, because they believe in the spirit of the design - who knows.

While overworlds in this quest are numerous, and harken back to the trend of 2.10 quests coming with multiple overworlds, this comes at the expense of many, many screens amounting to nothing more than padding. I suppose its probably impossible to make a multiple overworld quest without there being a lot of padding, as just throwing in arbitrary secrets everywhere would cheapen the secrets themselves. There are only so many rupee, HCP, or item prizes to throw in before the rewards start to become meaningless. Usually, when there is a supplemental overworld thrown in, its to support a main-quest dungeon. I like this idea in theory, but in DR, these dungeon-support overworlds are commonly structured in such a way as to amount to little more than a winding, pseudo-confusing path to a switch that lowers some arbitrary barrier that prevents access to said dungeon. I don't see anything wrong with this idea in theory, but in execution, the paths to unlocking access to a given dungeon in DR almost always drags on and on for too long and outlives its welcome.

That's a good segue into Mt. Blaze, being the epitome of a serpentine path that goes on for too long before unlocking level-6. That leads to the elephant in the room: being level-6 itself. In short, I went from disliking level-6, to hating it, to outright loathing the dungeon before I was done. My problems in level-6 amount to this dungeon being a departure from the things that make the other dungeons good, despite the fundamental design ethos not being much different. In level-6, there is a large amount of clutter, barrier tiles, sideview pathways, and damage tiles that make the place an utter pain to navigate through. Even when I knew where I wanted to go, after moving through the sideview path, I became disoriented about where I ended up. I think if those sideview pathways were replaced by 2-way warps, that this dungeon would be immensely improved; however, almost all the screens have a superfluous degree of clutter that makes discerning a path overly difficult. I could write this off as a one-time thing, but the clutter problem also occurs in level-10, which I thought had the workings of a very nice dungeon save for the clutter everywhere making paths tough to spot. Maybe that terrible AWOL Nation song applies and I can just blame it on my ADD, baby; but I see things like this as just throwing things in, because, with no real purpose in mind.

So, as I suggested earlier, the dungeons seems to get a lot stronger in the second half of the quest. I get the feeling that the quest makers were maybe running out of energy by the end of the quest, as items that are introduced in later dungeons amount to little more than glorified puzzle-solving tools. The dungeon-support overworlds seem to grow less inspired as well, but generally the dungeons were fun enough that I found myself still motivated to play. Even when the later dungeons throw enemy spam around, where the best strategy is to clearly not engage and instead hop around said enemies with the Roc's feather - because you're still stuck with the level-2 sword until very near the end of the main quest - I still found the individual gimmick of each later dungeon interesting enough to tolerate the damage hordes. The numerous kill-all enemy rooms filled with strong enemies, especially splitting darknuts, which always respawn when you come back to said room, started to feel like a cheap-difficulty design strategy, but I wasn't really affected because I was diligent about finding HCPs and could tank damage like a champ.

Finally, though, at the end of level 13, I think the "final" boss has made me tap out. As a rule, like other parts of the quest, the bosses in DR seem to be all over the place in terms of difficulty and tedium, and you never really know what you're going to get with a boss in this quest. Towards the last 3/8 or so of the quest, I found the boss fights were dragging on and on for too long, with the bosses having numerous phases (lives) or prolonged periods of invulnerability to attack. The final boss fight is no exception. Not only is this fight a bullet-hell filled slog, but the final boss just seems to drag on into infinity with the extra lives. I made it to the - fifth, I think - phase before I didn't have any potions left to recover from the projectile spam that is nearly impossible to avoid, and the boss was still going strong on health when I died. I doubt I'm going to have patience to try again too many times, and really don't want to resort of lowering the difficulty level, so this might be as far as I go. I have learned, from the help thread, that I could go and complete the boss rush in order to obtain an item that would help a lot with the final boss. The problem with that is that, from dabbling with the boss rush already, I'm finding it to be a punishing slog fest just like the final boss, and ultimately, not fun enough to justify the effort. I mean, I'm not great at boss fights - mainly because I lack the patience to wait for opportunities to attack with finesse, and prefer to go aggressive mode - but I'm not bad at boss fights either; it's more like I just don't like grandiose, pseudo-epic boss fights that take 10, 20, 30 minutes or more.

I'm probably going to resort to lowering the difficulty so that I can see the fabeled post-game content, which I am interested about, but I think I had enough fun with the good parts from this quest, which I liked, that I feel complete enough to move on. Make no mistake: when DR is playing well, it's really good stuff. Some of the dungeons and sidequests in DR are a blast, and I would probably play the quest again in the future to revisit. On the other hand, when DR is playing less-than great, or relatively bad, its somewhere between not fun and a chore on par with cleaning spoke wheels. Honestly, after my first playthrough, I felt exactly the same about Isle of Rebirth, which everybody loves and considers the pinnacle of Zelda Classic. Oddly enough, I actually liked IoR a lot more upon my second playthrough of it. I mention IoR, because I think there are a lot of parallels and influence from IoR in DR. Maybe DR will gain something in replay value. Until then, it took me about 50 hours to reach the final boss in DR. While it may seem like I have a lot of gripes about DR, keep in mind that I invested a lot of time into this quest. More importantly, there was enough good stuff in DR that made me stick with it long enough to spend 50 hours playing.

i love this game so far, i wish there was a strategy guide for this lol

I love the difficulty of the dungeon and the massive maze like layout the level gives. At times, I did get turned around a little bit in trying to find my next spot, but was able to eventually figure it out. Been very busy the past few weeks so I have not had a chance to jump back in and finish it quite yet, but, I figured I would go ahead and give my thoughts/score on the quest overall.

Gameplay: 5/5--Great difficulty, but at times, it can be easy to lose knowledge of where you are at, or where you are going, especially if you factor in some of the extra items/hidden dungeons.
Puzzles: 5/5--Great variety, and difficulty, great usage of the item mechanics in some of the puzzles as well.
Story: 5/5
Replayability 4/5--While it seems fun, not sure how much replayability it has or can have if you can get everything on the first playthrough. Gave a 4/5 due to the great gameplay and overall feel of the quest.
Difficulty: 4/5 : While I played the quest on Normal difficulty, overall it was not too easy, while at the same time not being too difficult. There were times that the difficulty would be hard at a few spots, then very next boss, would be an easy push-over, then the next boss be a challenge again. Some of the extra dungeons, such as the one in the desert where you can get the Crystal Sword, the boss that protects it, seems a bit too easy for that point in the quest and for what it was protecting (in my opinion that is..)

Overall 23/25--Definitely a great quest, and quite possibility in the top 5 of my all time favorites that I have played, and possibly in the top 10 of all of the PureZC database (in my mind). Great Job overall!!!

I'm sorry but so far the quest is... not good.
One of the best design qualities of classic Zeldas is laconic and clever usage of space. There isn't a single meaningless screen in Link's Awakening.
Here the amount of empty space is terrifying. Empty screens are always boring to traverse and they don't even look pretty (Gorons' mountain is plain ugly). You will walk there for HOURS.
This game really needs scissors.
Combine this with the lack of directions or any real storytelling (at least at the start) and some questionable music choises.
I'm currently on level 2 and I just can't take it anymore.

Best of luck to the developers with their next projects.

I remember seeing this quest some time last year and having an interest in it. Gonna play through it. My goal is to need to use the help forum as little as possible, mainly for side things if I do. But I'm also oblivious at the best of times so uh we'll see how it goes

Outstanding so far. Still playing, but wanted to report a possible minor bug. It could be that I'm playing on 2.55 and not 2.53, but I've found several places where shutters that are supposed to open don't open after killing all the enemies. Whenever it happens, Zols are part of the enemy set.

If the way back is open, going into the previous room and returning will open the shutter; if all the doors are shuttered, I need to F6. It's a minor inconvenience, but not game breaking.

why does the title in the submission say "dream realm" but the title screen say dreams realm?