I dropped my relative brief but candid thoughts here. Long story short, it's a very good quest that I wish I played sooner.

Just beat the superboss on Swindling two days ago; with that, I've done everything on that difficulty, including all of the endings. Easily the most boss-dense quest I've ever seen, let alone played. Considering that bosses are where Evan really shines, this is not a bad thing. Overall, I really enjoyed this one (though I admit I'm partial to challenging bosses), but it wasn't perfect. Let's break it down further:

First, a comment on the custom items. I never used the Flail and rarely used the water shield, but others have told me they're useful for a number of fights. I'd probably have used the Flail more were I playing on a lower difficulty setting; I can't deny it's a fun weapon. As for the water shield, all of the boss fights where I would have found exchanging stamina for durability useful included lightning attacks, so I only really used it to avoid catching fire. The only one that I really considered problematic was Quake. Evan and I have discussed this, and he seems to agree that he wrote himself into a corner between that one and the superboss. If a weapon like that needs to be used to beat something (which every offensive spell does for the superboss), it has to have at least some degree of aim, but this renders it overpowered against everything else. (As it is now, I was able to cheese a good number of spirits - including the one supposedly strong against its element! - and most minibosses with it, even on Swindling.) The only workaround I can think of would be to
When writing this, I'd initially planned to save discussing the bosses for last, but this connects to the item issue a bit. The wind spell, like the rest, is optional, but the final boss of Ending B has one attack that can't reliably be dodged without it (the one with the spinning lasers). Others have told me otherwise, mentioning something about running through the circles before they're fully grown, but this would require you to be standing so close to the boss before it starts charging that it could score a guaranteed hit on you with a different attack. That fight was probably my least favourite in the quest. The rest, barring Patra (seriously?), were spectacular. They're incredibly diverse and always kept me on my toes. Some have complained that they're "overdesigned" and too complicated for a ZC quest, but I personally don't see how boss complexity is bad; in fact, what I loved most about this quest was throwing myself at each one until I'd completely taken its attack patterns apart (which, on Swindling, you will need to do for the ones you can't cheese with Quake). Beating the superboss felt like a real accomplishment, the reward be damned.My only two complaints about the superboss are as follows:

• Its design more or less forces you to pause-buffer (because of all the weapon-switching you have to do). As a result, I had an easier time with this guy than with Tartaros in IoR, even though the former is clearly tougher on paper.
• Its second attack cycle includes both the time spell and a leaping attack that can't just be jumped over with wind on the spot. This is problematic because a good number of spells can't be used to cancel the former, creating a possibility (albeit a somewhat remote one) of forced damage when accounting for the immunity mechanic.

(EDIT: I forgot about one big issue I had with Trinexx. I had to be told that you can walk over the main head's neck, because it uses exactly the same palette as the head itself. It looked to me as though the neck would deal damage on contact. I'm not normally one to care much about palettes, but even I can't overlook this.)

I think the one place where this quest was weakest was the story. This might just be because I have a habit of over-thinking plots, but I felt like this one had more holes than a certain North American dairy product everyone thinks is from Central Europe:Still, the plot didn't seem to be the focus of this quest, and it was still fun despite the holes.

The music was also great. This quest really benefited from the OGG soundtrack, especially the tracks for the desert, story bosses, and superboss.
The enemies and map design were good, but I felt like a few places were downright unfair (and would be on any difficulty). The worst offender was definitely Miasma Keep, in which you can easily end up trapped until you win a lengthy race against a timed switch. This does not mix well with tracking Keese, and this part of the map was my least favourite as a result - yes, I hated it even more than lightning attacks in general (which were also frustrating). Also, I somehow reached the third key guardian without ever seeing random weather. I've been told this is rare, but it still stopped me from doing several sidequests until I figured out how the random trigger works (protip: it's time-based, not screen-based).

Other comments: There's one key and one inventory space you'll never use, due to what I've heard was a miscount and an unfulfilled contingency, respectively.

Final score: 4.5/5, because only the Quake, Trinexx, and map design issues really hurt my enjoyment of this near-masterpiece. Rounded up to 5 because that's how mathematicians do it for some reason.

I honestly didn't liked this quest very much. I don't think it's bad or anything, just average. I think the overworld and dungeon design is decent, but the backtracking can get annoying after a while. The music selection is okay, but rather forgettable. It has the Lanayru Sand Sea theme though and that's awesome.

My main gripe with this quest is the bosses. Well, i actually like the first one though, i thought it was a really well done boss battle. But then it goes downhill really, really fast. You picked Trinexx from ALTTP and made it really bad. Depending on a certain combo of attacks, you will get hit, no matter how hard you try. This also applies to several other bosses. This means luck plays a big role in several battles in this quest and i loathe that with a burning passion. The final boss is probably the worst case of this. Depending on the elemental types he changes into, the combination of attacks will ensure that you get hit, specially when he's near death with the constant type changing.


And why the hell there's no potions in this quest? Damn Gaius is the only one that gets to drink one.


I still finished the quest and i guess that means something. But i don't see myself ever replaying it.

It's time I start reviewing this quest.

This is personally one of my favorite quests in the database, and it is the perfect speed run quest. (Here's hoping to see a few people actually speed running it).

Unlike Isle of Rebirth that tends to drag on a bit at times, this quest is much shorter, and as a result IMO has a much better replay value. I can, if I had the freedom more than likely play this quest a dozen times and still love it. I believe the quest's replayability is its biggest strength.

The game is very polished and it does play relatively well despite at times the quest feeling a bit "rushed", and this is where the flaws begin to come in.

There is no point in this game where it becomes more obvious that it was a bit rushed but at Sky Keep or whatever that place is called. The final level in this game is average at best and doesn't do justice for Evan's design skills. Even he said that this particular level was rushed, but it's not just the level. This game contains a lot of mild quirks that seem to be a result of not well thought out design decisions mainly because Evan was either rushed or pressed for time, this aspect does bleed into this quest unfortunately.

However, despite it being rushed. It's still probably one of the best designed quests in the database. So that's saying something.

The bosses were great, but even I feel they were a little too hard at times. Even on Stronger I found myself pause buffering a lot to be able to damage control and manage some of these overall attacks that don't always mesh well together. Long story short, I feel all these bosses can be cheap sometimes. This is something that both this quest and Isle of Rebirth shared, but I hadn't really noticed how much I was pause buffering in Isle of Rebirth too and thus never put thought to it. But ever since pause buffering itself has come to my attention one time when James criticized Dimentio for pause buffering in his quest, it got me thinking that a good boss shouldn't encourage pause buffering or absolute mastery of the boss to beat. While I technically don't mind this because I'm sick in the head and will beat it anyways, I can take an objective look at it and see how this could be considered a design flaw to most people.

My other quirk in the game is the absence of fast travel in a world that can sometimes be a bit of a pain to backtrack in, and this game does encourage a lot of backtracking. Some form of fast travel system a player could earn sometime before or after beating Hauntrock would have done this game a huge favor, but unfortunately Evan missed that opportunity and it as a result hurt this quest in it's greatest strengths, which are replayability and a speed run quest.

In conclusion, this quest could have easily been a 5/5 quest for me, even if the bosses were a little unfair. But the lack of fast travel and painful backtracking are what brings this quest down. I can give this quest no higher than 4/5.

I've been putting off this rating forever cuz I wanted to right a really in-depth review. However, seeing as I'm apparently too lazy for that, I'll just leave the quick version here.

The bottom line is that it's amazing. It's a well done Metroidvania that eschews the normal overworld/dungeon format. The story is dark without being edgy, the puzzles are fun, the bosses are probably some of the best ever made in ZC, and the difficulty challenge means that anyone from a ZC newbie to a expert challenge-gamer can have a great time with the quest. I'd highly recommend to all types of players, whether you enjoy exploration or you love combat.

Finished this just the other day, you know you've got great bosses when you feel that sense of accomplishment winning after several losses.

For some bizarre reason, I seem to have rated this 3 stars 3 years ago? That seems really weird. Why did I think that? I'm going to give this another go in a bit.

So how could I replace some of the music for this quest?

I really need to give this a go sometime