The Forbidden City

Played some of it almost two years ago, I liked it! The pace was a bit slow as compared to Nintendo licensed games, but hey, nevermind, I really enjoyed these few hours. Always glad to see that GB Zelda feel again.

I remember playing this quest a long time ago when it was originally released, and I recall not getting very far and lost interest. In recent months, I decided to give this quest another go and try to go all the way to the end, and today I finished it. What did I think? This was an absolutely amazing quest, and a massive improvement in almost every way to Promised Lands, and I loved every part of this quest.

The flow of this quest felt a lot smoother and nicer, I really loved how the overworld was laid out, and I like the unique areas for each section of the map. Some of the custom overworld tiles (mountains specifically) really added more to the overworld than your standard Z1 tiles, which is pretty nice to see. There were plenty of things to do in the overworld and nothing ever felt too empty or too overcluttered, and the difficulty balance throughout felt just right to me. The story was pretty simplistic but nice and easy to follow, and it still remained interesting. The dungeons were the massive highlight for me when playing the quest, they were all designed very well and got very complex. I love the themes for each one and how smooth each dungeon felt. The backtracking wasn't anything too extreme and was perfectly manageable for me, which is something that is hard to achieve with large dungeons IMO. The bosses and minibosses were all challenging and very unique, the final boss was pretty damn fun too, though surprisingly it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.

The custom items used throughout the quest were very cool, I was a huge fan of quite a lot of them. The Ocarina was one of my favourites, and I never thought a working one like that could ever be implemented in a ZC quest, so that was an amazing surprise for me. A lot of the songs were pretty cool, however I do wish there were more original songs rather than the Ocarina songs taken from OoT/MM, it would've made the item a bit more unique IMO, but that's a pretty minor thing. The Gasha seeds were a very nice addition too, and it was pretty nice to get that sense of surprise when collecting them, just like in the Oracles. I do wish some earlier items had a bit more of a use, like maybe bringing back some more puzzles with earlier items. There were a few spots where I saw this, but it would've been cooler to see a bit more IMO.

Besides I few things I pointed out, there aren't many other negatives I can think of, so this is pretty much almost flawless in my books. Overall, this was a fantastic quest to play through, and I enjoyed everything about it. Easy 5/5 from me, good job with this!

I tried to finish it, it is very splendid, this search was like a mode of history as of other games, although it is obvious ^^ ;, I liked your search a lot, the level that I liked the most was the minotaur of the maze and the Tank of war , I did not stop playing and finally I did , you deserve 5/5, this search looked like a TV show ^^;

I agree with Marv Albert on most of his points, he put it very well. This quest is obviously very well scripted and worked on for countless hours. But the end result is not an enjoyable quest, but a frustration. Dungeons are extremely frustrating, the way Marv Albert explained. The overworld is good mostly. Ocarina songs, rings, the custom bosses, the mini games and much more were all great. But overall the quest is just plain frustrating to play, it's a chore, not fun. I quit playing after I reached level 3, just like the quest you made before this.

I wanted to give this a 3, but I'll give it a 4 due to all the nice work you put into making this so unique in this database.

One of a kind with implementing a playable Ocarina and ring system. Well scripted bosses for the most part, and decent dungeon design. However, most items are never used more than a few times outside the dungeon they are found in, and the rings really don't do much except give you something to find during this short quest. One overworld, barely any use of layers and really no reply value or incentive. Reminds me of Isle of Rebirth, but with only a quarter of the time spent on it.

There's only one thing that keeps this quest from being absolutely perfect: side-scrolling swimming is horrifically slow.

Besides that, this quest was a complete joy.

Sorry for the late review, but it's better late than never right?

So, I'm not an actual great review writer, but I will try and explain what I loved and hated (*ejem*, disliked) about this quest. First of all, the story. The story is not your typical Zelda Formula, but involves a new simple background for Zelda and Link, and it's a new take on their destinies as the chosen ones. I loved the story, but some cutscenes could have been much better, for example, the cutscene after Level 1 which received some criticism for it's execution.

Secondly, the overworld design. Being honest, I liked the overworld, but it could have been split to a few minor areas with different layouts and design choices. The only place that almost executed this well was Western Hyrule, the rest was pretty much similar to other areas. However, its branching regions (Lost Woods, villages, etc) let me slip this one off of my mind. I also enjoyed exploring the main OW as well, there was a ton of secrets out there you could go out and find.

Thirdly, Dungeon Designing. Each dungeon had a theme, and some had memorable gimmicks, and I enjoyed all of them (except Level 6, that was a pain in the neck for me ). The dungeons were solid and the later ones were kind of a maze, since it involved a bit of backtracking here and there. Some people don't enjoy this design, but lucky you I'm one of the other people who does enjoy it, makes me think about what to do next. However, I did get lost multiple times for the reason that I missed a nearly invisible bombable wall in some random room. But again, the design makes up for these meaningless flaws.

The enemies and bosses were a great challenge as they were a good addition. Some were revamped versions of their Z1 counterparts while others were totally new. My favorite one was that... Patra one eyed ball thing found in Level 7, I'm really curious how you made their fireball movement work in a Zigzag pattern. A lot of creativity and effort is demonstrated on them, and you should be proud.

And last but not least, scripting. The Gasha seed system was a great OMG! moment for a quest, and I can imagine the work you had to do to make it work. The scripted items were cool also (most, as some were the default Z1 items), but I have a few doubts about the Ocarina. I did love it by a lot and it worked so flawlessly, but it was getting a bit of an annoyance playing one same song multiple times. An example was the Spike Song. I don't know if it was possible or not (because scripting needs some workarounds involved from time to time), but once they disappeared, they should have stayed like that permanently. And a curious fact is how many times you abused of it. From my point of view, it had its bittersweet moments, but fun most of the time.

So, to wrap it all up in a few words, this is an enjoyable quest and I loved most of my journey through it. This really deserves a 5/5 from me. Keep up the good work man

I wanted very much to love this quest, but alas playing through it felt almost like being in an abusive relationship. By that I mean there are some serious flashes of brilliance on display here that inspire the nostaglia in me of playing Zelda 1 and 2 as a kid, but plodding through the dungeons, I had a constant nagging feeling of wanting to just walk away that I had to constantly balance with the hope that "she can change."

I quite dislike the dungeons in this game, and by that I mean all of them. I chalk this down to a design philosophy that is polarizing in a love it or hate it way - in my case, I don't love it. There's a blantant overuse of artificial damage-boosting gimmicks like traps, shooters, 100% enemy respawn rooms, and more that I suppose is there to satisfy the difficulty-seeking masochists. I played through on normal mode, mind you. Jamian's dungeon-design philosophy also dramatically overuses warp tiles and passage-ways that are extremely difficult to remember unless you are actively taking notes while you play. In many cases, an obscure warp tile or passage way leads to an otherwise isolated room that contains an elusive key, and only an elusive key. In other words, the dungeons in this game have no coherent flow and are disjointed. This design philosophy results in an astounding amount of back-tracking and comes across to me as a grand scheme of time-wasting gimmickry. As others have already said, the dungeons all rely on orcarina songs that are tedious to input. I won't get into the use of total gimmick items like the magnet or deku stick, which you never use again until the very last level.

As a player, I have little short-term memory and I hate taking notes while I play. I like quests that feature a dungeon design that is methodical, and possibly complex, yet intuitive - Tower of Courage is one such recent quest that has these things that comes to mind. The dungeons in this game are counter-intuitive and rely too heavily on rote patterns and tedious plodding through gimmicky design features.

Some of that same design philosophy also spills over into the overworld, in the form of tedious plodding for passageways to reach level 5, but not nearly as bad as playing the actual level 5. There's also an overuse of gimmicky devices like spikes (which you can conveniently defeat with an orcarina song) that force the player to progress in an extremly linear manner. I prefer quests where the player is more or less free to explore the whole overworld - even though going to some areas might get the player dead in short order. However, I liked the overworld scenery a lot and appreciated the abundance of secrets - one on almost every screen.

On the positive side, the scripting in this quest is absolutely flawless. There are also zero layering issues, zero chance of walking through a wall somewhere and getting into no-man's land and having to F6 continune, or other technical flaws. This quest is really very, very well polished. Innovations, like the functional orcarina and the gasha-seed system are really interesting and pretty much what sucked me into this quest. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the ring system. While I appreciate the innovation of the ring system, some 70% of the rings you can find or win are completely useless. I found myself playing through this quest with just some variant of the spin-attack ring and a peril ring 95% of the time. For the level-6 boss(es), I equipped one of the potion-boosting rings, but I only did that because the potions in this game are artificially scripted to be under-restorative. On another positive side, I liked the plot and storyline in this quest, and appreciated the character development for both Link, Zelda, and the bad guys.

Overall, this quest is polished like few other Zelda Classic quests, and the orcarina, gasha-seed, and ring system are legitimately innovative and interesting. Unfortunately, the gimmicky nature of the dungeon design - and to a lesser extent the overworld - is a big flaw that keeps this quest from attaining real greatness. I would give this quest 3/5 but for the legitimate innovations and obvious display of hard work, and the fact that I stayed somewhat interested and played through level 7, I'll give out 4/5.

This was a good quest! I played it to the end, but there are some things I didn´t like at all in this quest. I will try to explain...

-first thing: the dungeons have many puzles and scripts, but most of those puzles are not fun at all, are a bit slow and tedius. I mean, most of them are predictable and easy to figure how to solve, but to solve them is slow... The dungeon design feels like a simply succesions of rooms, every one with a puzle, but behind of that, I feel the dungeon design was a bit poor.... and you said that this quest was specially centered in dungeons. No one dungeon was a challenge =P, I feel dungeons are technically amazing (scripts are really well done!), but thats all. The overword have a lot of cryptic secrets hidden in it, and it could be fun to find them, but ALL in dungeons is obvious. For example... In L7, a sign tells you "to dig in the contiguous room to find a secret"... WHY???? I could find it without that inopportuned message!! And there are many and many of similar examples of that in this quest. I think you didn´t want that nobody got lost in any dungeon. I think your best dungeon is the Shadow Temple in PL, so amazing and inspired!!... that is a really great dungeon of all Zelda classic. I think I really enjoyed only the War Factory in this quest, which is a nice dungeon...
I don´t know if you understand what I mean, I feel the overworld too cryptic and the dungeons too easy and slow to solve (and I am not refering to enemies or bosses in all this point). That was disappointing for me... but it could be only my opinion =)

-second: the use of items. It´s like in TP!. More people explained this, so I won´t do it again. But there is one thing I want to tell: the use of ocarina. It was not fun to play it in every room to read the stones, in order to receive, in the most part, obvius advises.

-third: the overworld is great, but I feel it is a little artificial, although there are good places like Kasuto. And you removed the feature of secret maps from Promised Lands, what I think was a bad choice. I think you could hidde maps around the world or dungeons, to find the locations of cryptic secrets in the overworld... And I dont like how the soliders block you to avoit to get in later zones, it makes the game a bit guided...

That´s all, sorry for grammar errors. I give 4 stars for the effort, but it could be 3 stars. I enjoyed the quest and it has lot of good features, like ocarina and rings, bosses,... but I think it could be much better =P. Promised Lands was better, in my opinion.

Really good quest jamian!