---------
Edit: Staff contacted me an basically told me that I'd have to bump up my rating for all quests I have ever reviewed by one star. Note that this does not reflect my own opinion on the matter, or the quest, but just that it was something I was made required to do.
---------
I'll be going through this quest in details here, if you don't want to be spoiled, don't bloody read this! >;D

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this quest, from a technical perspective it's certainly very impressive, having a large amount of scripted bosses and items. Yet I'm not sure I'd argue that the production value is high despite that, because everything else in the quest never really reaches the same level.

Rating wise I'm giving this quest a 3(good), because it it is a good quest, but it didn't amaze me, and I certainly think there is room for improvement. 100% games isn't really my cup of tea, but I did do a fair amount of side questing and I did get the true ending.


So I'll get right into it and comment on the design. The level design in this quest is mediocre, it get's the job down but is all around not very interesting or that enjoyable. The quest started off with some good and interesting ideas, such as the first area locking you in and you have to figure out how to escape it with your new item. This is probably the most interesting part of the quest though in regards to level design. The later underground dungeon feature a puzzle where you get a combination to a lock on one screen and have to input it on another. This is interesting in theory, but it doesn't really mesh with how the rest of that area is constructed. Since it barely opens up at all when you have gone through it the first time, back tracking to get the solution (which you couldn't get earlier) and then backtracking back to the point where you need to insert it becomes a chore.

Then there is also the matter of how this quest generally don't follow metroidvania conventions, despite being one. This quest has a large world with several interconnected areas, but getting around to them is a major chore, even late game when you have all the upgrades. The castlevania series generally sidetracks this issue by having warp points (to better or worse success), where as the metroid series have a very clear and cut "main path". If you're heading from crateria to norfair in super metroid you just go down the elevator to red brinstar and down from there. Relative to the games size it does not take long to get from point A to point B assuming you have been through those areas before and have the right upgrades. I don't feel the same holds true here, there are some shortcuts that opens when you have the flippers, and some shortcuts that open up when you can walk on spikes..., but in the grand scheme of things when I had to get from one end of the map to the other for end game side questing it still took forever. Maybe there are paths that are more optimal than the ones I took, but if so then the game didn't do a good enough job at making that fact clear. I think this quest would do well with a progression warp system that unlocks more points the further you get into the quest, it would cut down on the tedium of backtracking. Since enemies generally don't drop rupees anyway it's not as if there would be that much lost in regards to what players have in resources, should this extra travelling be cut out.

Another problem that this quest faces is that it's very bad at letting players know where to go next. I think the best example is the hookshot, there are plenty of obvious hookshot points throughout the quest so when you pick up the item there are plenty of places to go. But..., where you actually need to go is not the most memorable location. The screen in question is one players likely went through and opened a chest in at the start of the game, and yes it does have a hookshot structure, but that fact is not immediately obvious on that screen. And this is before you see any other hookshot points in the quest, so unless you realise that it's a hookshot point the first time through you're unlikely to memorise it, and consider instead the screen to be "completed" and done with. The only reason I figured out I needed to go there was by process of elimination, because I had been to all other hookshot points in the quest, and I couldn't progress at any of those. And this is not just with the hookshot, I feel I spent a lot of time just walking around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go next, but having no obvious path to do so.

I mean, a lot of people just go around and say that it's "dumbing" a game down to have subtle hints on where to go next, but personally I think that it's simply good design. I don't think super metroid would be praised so highly these days by so many people if it weren't for that inclusion. I mean, just look at metroid 1 and metroid 2, most people look back on these games and consider them to be pretty garbage. Of course those games have other flaws too, but I can't imagine if metroid 1 was released today that it would do very well, because it is a lot of walking around aimlessly to progress and bombing random floor tiles in random rooms. I'm not saying this quest is even close to as bad as metroid 1, mind you, but I do think that the lack of flow on where to go next is a flaw. As much as I like exploration, you can't really go off the main path and explore if you can't see the main path in the first place.

Right, enough japing about that, onto to ACTUAL meat of this game: The bosses. If people called this a boss rush quest I wouldn't disagree with them. (Though it would maybe be missing the point a bit...). This quest has a lot of bosses, and I do mean A LOT. Personally all these constant back to back boss fights is not exactly what I enjoy, but I can appreciate that this is what the author wanted to make. Now, a lot of the bosses in the quest are actually pretty good. The first guardian (the ice one) was pretty good, and so was the last one (the statue thing), though I do have some complaints about that one. The ice tablet boss was very interesting, though I personally found it rather hard to be able to damage it in phase 1 without using cheese bees. All of the final bosses I got to right were pretty good, I did like the sun one a lot simply from concept and how it looked, but it played pretty well too. And the final bosses does do a good job in feeling like there are high stacks in the fights.

But, and this is a decently big but, there are some less good bosses. The fire witch minibosses are kind of tosh. Once you have the hookshot, and realise that it does a ton of damage, they aren't that hard to cheese. But, the fight with them ended up not being enjoyable, and there many situations where I felt I had no location to dodge too, because there was fire everywhere. The earth tablet boss is kind of weird, if you got the beese the entire fight is a joke that is over right away, but otherwise it seems to go on for quite a bit longer than needed..., or rather maybe not enough? It's so weird. I didn't have a problem avoiding the spike pit in the middle of the room, but I didn't feel like I was doing any damage too it and I ran out stamina constantly. It's also not an obvious fact that the stamina refills for this (only?) screen don't actually despawn, this is not something a player could possibly pick-up on unless they waited to see what would happen to it. And though I only saw it very briefly, the thunder tablet guardian didn't seem that great either. I'm not really a huge fan of the wave effect in general, because it just seems to be a case of "oh you got hit, here now you can't see shit and actually attempt to dodge for a while!" "Oh, you got hit again when you couldn't dodge? Let me just keep that wave effect going for you!" As you might be able to tell, I wasn't fan of the wizzrobes that shoot that either, in fact, I think this quest might rely on this mechanic a bit too much, it's not even a particularly good one.

Anyway back to bosses. I really don't like either of the fights with your in-game brother. I mean, I could cheese the second one fairly easily, because bees and other crap. But it feels like the type of boss that should be able to fight with your sword, but honestly dodging a lot of those moves and also attacking? Yeah that's kind of absurd for the most part. I mean I guess it's not a huge deal since you don't need to win the first fight, and you can cheese the second one. But honestly, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth having to use a cheese solution for such a pivotal fight in the story. From one thing to another, the fire guardian feels very awkward to fight. Phase one is very awkward to fight, and if the fire head shoots something that can actually reach and hit the ice head feels more luck based than it should be. I would also have liked if the head segments in phase 2 were possibly coloured a bit differently. It was not at all obvious to me that you could walk over those segments, and until I was told otherwise I assumed I'd take damage walking into those. (And trying to walk into something to see if you take damage or not is not a situation that should generally exist). There are more bosses that I think could maybe be tweaked a bit more so it feels less like the game fucked me over rather than feeling like I was the one being bad, but I'm not going to go over them all.


Right, onto graphics!

None of the palettes in this quest impressed me, they ranged from okay to mediocre without really any outliers in either direction. Graphically this tileset have a lot of style clash, and this quest introduces even more by having sprites seemingly from a wide range of different games with very different perspectives and graphical styles. The tilework on most screens look nice and the terrain structures makes sense and looks decently interesting. I didn't personally find anything that explored any new ideas, you have your general themed areas of snow, lava, sand, forest, etc, nothing really stood out. I can't really praise anything other than possible the amazing spectacle some of the bosses throw out, but that's about it. Graphically, this quest is merely okay.


And now, audio.

I'm glad to see that the moblin yelling when they dies does [u]not[/n] make a return from IoR! Audio engineering is what you'd expect for this type of game. Which means that the audio engineering is actually pretty good! This is one of those things which everyone just assumes is okay because they don't think about it, because good audio engineering isn't noticeable. In contrast, it's very noticeable when something isn't good. Which is the music engineering in the case of this quest! Many tracks loop rather poorly in this quest, either because the loop point isn't very good (the being of the point has an intro that should probably not be played in the middle of the song), or there is a delay in between each loop, or a combination of both. There might be a slight delay in ZC between loops, I'm not sure, but if so that's not fixable. But a lot of these songs could use some editing to make them loop better, or make the audio longer (by manually looping) so it doesn't run out as quickly. This specifically comes up in relation to the boss music that often seemed to run out and loop before the boss fights were over.

Speaking of the music, it's "okay". I didn't hear any song in the soundtrack which jumped out to me as "bad", and the tracks generally fit the areas in which they played. But the overall soundtrack is a freaking mess, and it really breaks the thematics of the entire quest. The graphical look of the quest and the plot seem to suggest that this is a fairly dark story (and this is further reinforced by the endings). Going into the snow area I wouldn't have expected it to play freaking paper mario music, it's such a tonal shift from most other things, and it's probably the track that sticks out as the most not fitting in the entire soundtrack. The guardian boss theme sticks out as not fitting either, it's a song that goes for this whole "movie" epic sense of large scale. But graphically, this quest don't really match that perspective at all. Like, don't get me wrong, it's a very impressive boss fight, but it's not this cinematic epic thing. I think maybe a more rock based track would fit the thematics a bit better. Most of the rest of the music was fairly forgettable, the only other track that stands out as really fitting to me is the goron mines theme for the first dungeon. It's a completely different themed area than in the original game that track is from, but it really fits well and build a lot of suspense.


Story telling~

I didn't have any high hopes going into this quest, most quests generally handles narrative very lacklustre, or not at all. I'd love to say that this quest is an exception, but it's kinda not. The quest opens up with an exposition dump that could probably have been halved, a lot of the concepts explained into details there most players would probably have picked up on from NPCs and going through the quest. That being said, this quest does at least do a fair amount of things right, the dialogue feels in general to be rather realistic, and when exposition dumps happen, it's at least far and few in-between. And while the quest does beat the player over the head with the idea that perhaps what they are doing isn't that great of an idea, at least the point comes across. The build up for the endgame twists exists, and there is some degree of payoff, even if the entire thing was fairly predictable. The game of course twists again with the true ending, but that one feels a bit more phoned-in and makes the true ending maybe a bit less interesting than it should have been.

The core of a story exists here, but that's kind of it. If you asked me how I'd describe any of the characters as characters..., well I couldn't tell you. There is no character development to be seen, and we don't really learn all that much about who any of these people are. Who cares about whether or not I save the main characters sister, literally all I know about her is that she likes eating crunched ice. Not that Zelda games themselves really very often cares too much about some of this crap either, like, who cares about if I save Zelda in ALBW, I know next to nothing about her aside from her name. (That being said, ALBW actually does okay at narrative in most regards, but that's not a discussion for this review). But this quest puts an emphasis (however small) on the story, so it's kinda hard not to notice the flaws.

I wouldn't recommend this quest for the story, and it's not the appeal of it anyway, but it's there so I gotta comment on it.



Miscellaneous things. (/Luna's nitpick list!)

The NPC that informs you of how the time slow spell can be countered is introduced way after these enemies are. If you hadn't picked it up before this point you probably wouldn't even have made it here in the first place!

There are no footstep sound effects when walking without the iron boots, but there are with. This actually creates the illusion that you're walking faster with them on than off.

The entire weather system feels a bit poorly implemented, especially when you have to grind these conditional drops late game to get enough money to buy the rest of the items. This is not "exploration based" content to get rupees as the quest advertises it as. It doesn't have a huge impact on the game, but this thing should probably be reworked, because it just feels tedious.

I can't see an item % counter anywhere. It makes it hard to tell if you have everything. I mean, I know I missed a lot of life and stamina upgrades, but I honestly think this is something that would benefit the quest.

That one spot in the lava area (in the middle west end of the map) where you have to walk behind a hookshot pillar and go west? Yeah, the visual cue for that is not very obvious. I mean, I have seen this type of thing in other quests, but it was the first time for this one so it kinda came out of the left field. And due to the ground colouring blending fairly well with the lava, it was not something I picked up on until after I brute forced into the area and realise that, "wait, you can't actually get into here from the other side" and started looking for the path that HAD to exist.

The lens that displays enemies life is awkward in it's entirety. For a boss focused quest, this is something I would have implemented as a free feature available from the outset. But I can understand giving this to players a bit into the game after they got a taste of it. What I can't understand is hiding it behind a completely optional, very miss-able, sidequest! And then for the cherry on the top it also uses your stamina! If you want to keep mostly the same set-up I'd recommend starting the player off with, or giving them fairly early on, the currently lens. (Maybe have it drain slightly more stamina if you like handicapping people). And then from the side quest provide one that doesn't drain stamina. I can't see what there possibly is to gain from hiding the boss's health in this quest, it doesn't make them harder, it just makes fighting them more awkward since it's hard to tell if what you're doing is effective. And that's essential what happens, because you're gonna have to turn it off in boss fights to optimise your stamina recovery.

The palette in the forest on the mountain tiles have weird colouration, compared to how the tile was made, the lighter colour is dark here, and the dark colour is light. Most people don't care about this, but I think it looks ugly. It's as if having a light coloured mountain can't work, but the entire palette should follow that logic then.



Anyway, those are my current thoughts on this quest after just having finished it. I think it's a good quest, and if you want to be impressed by highly scripted bosses, then this is currently the best quest on pure that does that. But it's not great experience overall, and I wouldn't recommend this quest on it's metroidvania merits.

Note: I didn't proof read this, there might be grammar, spelling, and a few logical errors as a result.