The Bounds of Waterford

Pretty decent quest all things considered, as a first quest it's quite good too! Annoyingly ZC froze near the very end causing me to lose progress and ngl I can't be bothered to replay the whole final dungeon so I'd say I technically beat it lol. Either way, very nice callback to classic Z1 style stuff, I really like the theming of making stuff based on your childhood locations. The quest itself was pretty fun, nothing too crazy difficult or easy and a lot of the concepts in some dungeons were pretty clever. The concept of finding "shadow" keys to open up through the final dungeon was very nicely done, I enjoyed that a lot, although that dungeon did feel way too linear for my tastes imo.

Like others said, some of the spawn points of enemies can be changed a little since I find myself scrolling into enemies which was a bit annoying. A couple tile errors here and there as well, but nothing too crazy. Overall, yeah this was pretty fun, definitely needs a few touch ups in places, but generally it's quite a fun quest! I'd say probably a 3.5-4 /5

Just finished this quest after chewing on it for the last two months. Overall I had a very enjoyable time and it was easy to put down and come back to. I died 22 times and finished in 10 hours. The best part, for me anyway, was that I never really got stuck anywhere for too long and was able to finish without any help. Yes, the overworld could use a little more detail to help remember which shop is which and a few more iconic landmarks. But the dungeon design doesn't disappoint. There is an unbroken line of clever twists on the old formula that goes all the way to level 9. A favorite (tiny spoiler) was a dark room in Salamander with just one keese and unless you used a candle, wouldn't see the lone block that needed pushing. The various tweeks on the triforce rooms were also fun. Speaking of fun, there is a humor sprinkled throughout that was consistently amusing. I for one am glad that movement was limited to 4-way and no slashing. To me it just ain't NES Zelda without those limitations.
So good work, Lynel Richie! Thanks for your quest!

Bounds of Waterford is a major nostalgia load, which mostly piles on the good things that we recall about the old NES and Legend of Zelda, but also a few of the not-so-good and dated things.

In terms of technical design elements, I really agree with most of what Moosh stated. While finding the overworld concept to be very interesting, I also found it rather bland and plain in some areas. I suppose in order to mimic a real-world location, there will be some empty areas. I have to admit, though, at least half of the (empty) grassland screens in the northwest to north central area of the overworld were superfluous, as the gimmick associated with these screens could well have been done over a much shorter course. Ditto with the SW area of the overworld, which besides being a good rupee grinding spot, offers very little for all of those screens. While there were lots of burnable trees and other secrets to find, in the eastern half of the overworld, there were also a lot of plain screens with rocks or static trees thrown in seemingly to mimic a real-world location. I, too, had some trouble recalling important overworld caves and landmarks for lack of distinguishing features. Perhaps this is because I almost never take note of shops or hint-seller NPCs.

I found the dungeons to be pretty solid, with a few good puzzles here and there - the block puzzle in Doe comes to mind - but also left me wanting more while I played. I would have preferred some bigger maps, but I suppose the dungeon-map gimmick - mainly to mimic the shapes of various animals - limits that possibility. I would have also preferred some more good puzzles, but I understand the inspiration from the LoZ's dungeon design and mechanics are heavily influential in this quest. Enemy variety and combat overall was good, if not on the easy side if the player is diligent like me in finding defensive and offensive upgrades. One small suggestion I might offer is that the red candle - in lieu of the blue candle - really nerfs some challenge in the early course of the game, because the red candle is so much more useful as a weapon than the wooden sword (who uses a pointy wooden branch as a sword anyway). The wand and Nintendo Power magazine (now you're playing with power) really nerf the challenge in the final tier of the game, but these are optional items so not a real concern.

One other critique I can offer is that 4-way movement and lack of sword slash are not things I feel nostalgic about. Particularly in navigating around damage tiles in level 9, the 4 way movement was frustrating and kind of unforgiving. Sword stab is very clunky when trying to deal precision attacks on, say, the mini bosses in level 9. Others probably disagree, but 4-way movement and lack of sword slash are at least two things best left back in the 80s.

Overall, I admire what has been accomplished here in BoW. Especially when one considers the quest description that BoW doesn't have any scripting, here is more proof that a good quest can definitely be done without scripting. If you are looking for a quest faithful to the NES LoZ spirit, BoW certainly delivers in that regard - even if it also delivers some of the things that aren't so great about LoZ. I'm pretty sure I finished the quest 100% and did so over the course of 7.5 hours.

The overworld was really well done and some of the text made me chuckle. Additionally, the idea to scatter 8 different keys across the overworld was a novel concept which I think worked. The dungeons were just as good if not better. As it has already been pointed out, they were really well-designed in terms of items, enemies, and rooms. I also liked the fact that you extended the animal theme from Zelda 1 and came up with some really creative layouts.



Oh, and the music - the music. What a nostalgic trip down memory lane I may be dating myself, but some of my favorites:
- the level 4 music from Blaster Master (Tadpole)
- the overworld forest theme from The Guardian Legend (Railroad tracks on the overworld)
- the main theme from Rambo (Blue Gill)
- the moon from Ducktales (Over the bridge on the overworld)
- something from the original Castlevania - maybe Dracula's castle (The stream on the overworld)

This quest was really fun to play and I highly recommend it.

The Bounds of Waterford is a distillation of all the best vanilla ZC has to offer. On first glance it might look like much looking at the first few screens of the overworld, but there's a lot of depth hidden in what might otherwise look like your average quest.

Starting with the overworld, it can be a bit of a mixed bag. At times it's filled with a sense of wonder and discovery, with notable landmarks like the train tracks running from end to end, the hedge maze, or the big hill in the woods. Other areas feel a little barren, though if you look close enough, there's still plenty of secrets to be found. If you look at the quest's description you'll see the overworld layout is actually based on areas around where the quest's creator grew up. I think that's really cool and adds to the mystique some, as well as explaining some of the nonstandard design in places. Overall the overworld is fitting, fun to explore, and just hitting on the boundary of what I can handle for open ended design; it never gets overwhelming. If there's one downside I can say about it, it's that it can be somewhat difficult to remember where some things are in it. While the world is not lacking for important landmarks, some of the important cave locations can blend together and so it's easy to get lost trying to remember where an item was being sold.

Now the dungeons I think are where the quest really comes together. Inheriting from the overworld's open ended design, the quest also has somewhat open ended dungeon progression as well. None of them are numbered, you have to feel out where you're supposed to be as you progress through the game. Generally though, the curve never gets too out of hand to where you can't go out of sequence. I'm pretty sure I did level 8 as my level 5 and it was still very fun and satisfying, albeit a bit more challenging. Each dungeon has its own unique gimmicks and each manages to be compact and well designed. None of the dungeons overstayed their welcome for me, which is an incredible feat for a NES quest. The quest is also ingenious with its placement of bomb walls, in one dungeon being absolutely chock full of them, yet still giving me a roughly 80% accuracy rate on figuring out where they are. You rarely see dungeon design this smart. Lastly on the subject of dungeons, I want to give a shoutout to boss rooms. They're great! While most quests just put their bosses in an empty room, this quest puts a twist on most of them and it really enhances the experience and caps off each dungeon well.

This quest has no rings or tunics. Actually that's a blatant lie, but a lot of the time it felt like it really didn't need them. The difficulty curve felt absolutely perfect with the green tunic, and due to the earlier mentioned losing track of shops, I actually ended up doing 8 dungeons without being able to buy a ring upgrade. Only during the last dungeon did the difficulty feel like it took a major jump.

There were a couple small miscellaneous snags I did run into on my playthrough. For one, this quest has a fascination with slow walk combos. They're scattered all over the overworld and you often run into them at the start. It's kinda like the feeling of tripping over some loose pebbles. But you get used to it in time. Something a little less easy to get used to is the occasional cheap hit on screen scrolling. Some of the enemy placements can be questionable and several times I scrolled into a new screen only for an enemy to spawn on top of me or right in front of me. I don't know what parts were the quest and what parts were faulty logic on ZC's part. The funniest offender was when I was walking down from the northeastern hill in the north end of the woods and three enemies spawned in a tiny 1 tile high pocket with me. I think that one had to be done with enemy placement flags. Lastly, towards the end of the game there's a key hunt required to clear out the final dungeon and one of the enemies that drops a key was hidden rather deviously, taking me a disproportionately long time to find. I'm not sure if this was intentionally this mean but I ended up asking a friend who'd gotten stuck at the same place and I can see lots of people getting tripped up by it. Was there a hint I missed?

All in all, I'd highly recommend this quest to any fans of old school ZC. It's a grand old time.

For fans of old school NES Zelda this is definitely a must-play.