Just finished up this quest and yeah it was quite an enjoyable experience with some odd things here and there. I'll start with the positive stuff which is that the quest has some pretty cool dungeon design. There are some issues but generally they were quite creative and fairly complex, but not too long and didn't drag out enough (although Level 7 was kind of annoying after a while). The custom items and concepts were very awesome, I really enjoyed using the new items throughout the quest. The overworld was neat too with different areas connecting up with the warp zone which was very convenient. I can certainly see a lot of inspiration from other quests so it kinda felt like I was playing a bunch of different quests mashed together at some points lmao. The difficulty was also generally fine although I do feel there's a bit of imbalance in some places (for example the first boss was ridiculously difficult compared to everything else in game) so some tweaks can be beneficial here and there. The optional content was really neat too, and I absolutely loved that dungeon for the Yellow Tunic I think it was called. The postgame dungeon was also very fun.

So while I did enjoy the dungeons, I think my biggest problem with them is that it can be difficult to know where to go sometimes, since there are many instances where you hit a switch and then you don't know what it does. This is a persistent problem throughout the ENTIRE quest and sometimes got frustrating having to do loops around the dungeon to see maybe one random door open. Sometimes there's signs on where you can go with colour-coded switches and stuff and other times you get text boxes to let you know something happened in a vague area. That is fine but I wish all of them were like this since otherwise it felt very inconsistent and annoying. I've already mentioned that the overworld was neat, but imo it was the weakest part of the quest for me since it generally felt like a straight line without much branching paths (if any) and they were all fairly small too. Things also felt quite cramped because you usually have a lot of enemies in narrow places, so I'd suggest to reduce the enemy numbers quite a bit. The single most annoying thing was the stealth segments (mostly the thieves' place) because the sensitivity on the guards/thieves were REALLY bad and just made things not fun in the slightest. If there's some way to modify the script to make them less sensitive then I'd suggest to please do that. If that isn't possible then I understand.

Also another issue I have is the general palettes of the quest, where sometimes they're fine but others can be kind of difficult to look at since some can be a bit too bright for me (see the desert mini dungeon for example). I'd also work to varying up the monochrome palettes since more colour variety would benefit a lot for the quest's dungeons. And one last thing, while the custom items were really cool, some had pretty annoying bugs, although I'm not sure how much of this was out of your control. For example, the Deku Leaf is really cool, but if you use it onto a pit or lava, you'll find yourself endlessly falling into it until the whirlwinds disappear, which costed a few deaths. The Old Rod is also really cool but for some reason it launched me into lava when using it sometimes instead of pushing blocks. I found that leaving and re-entering rooms fixed that problem but yeah that should be looked into if possible.

As for weird oddities and bugs, I compiled a quick Imgur album to look over for some fixes. You can find that here

Overall this was fun, sometimes a bit rough around the edges with some frustrating item bugs and some annoying dungeon design in places but I still enjoyed it. I'm torn between anywhere in the 3.5-4 range so I guess I'll just round it up to a 4/5. Nice work, certainly a massive improvement over the original game.

I originally played Mayath Island back in 2016 - and didn't make it that far in the original quest, because I was both bored with the gameplay and frustrated by the disjointed storyline. I think I made it to level 3 or so before I completely lost interest in the formulaic and sloppily presented plot, as well as the bland screen and dungeon design. With that said, I don't have a whole lot of baseline to compare this remastered version to, but I will try.

First, the plot, NPC dialogue, most signs, and even some important hints are still presented in a very English-as-a-fourth-language sort of way. The bulk of the script has not been touched, so the storyline still comes across as very disjointed and in very broken English. I think the only script changes may be in the new dungeons, where there are some hints and event boxes that are more coherent. I do often tune out of the story when I play ZC quests, because let's face it, there are a lot of quests out there without much depth or originality in the story. In Mayath Island Remastered, as best as I can tell - because I was tuning out due to the broken English - the plot is pretty similar to Isle or Rebirth with the hero on a mysterious island. Our hero is guided to various objectives by a mysterious mentor, who might just have sinister intentions, and the quest does pretty well to show the player where to go.

The big, big improvement in MI:R is the dungeon and overworld design. Be prepared for lots of puzzles, multi-phase maps, item-trickery, and obstacles galore. One can easily spend several hours trying to complete some of the more complex dungeons. Being that two people designed the main and mini dungeons in this quest, all seem to flow together in a way that I would have sworn just one person designed all of the dungeons. Sans definitely improved his share of the dungeons from what I recall of the original Mayath Island, and The Rock's work is solid as what I expected from playing his other quests. Unfortunately, one big thing that is lacking is the total lack of spacebar map in dungeons and mini dungeons. This isn't much of a problem on the mini-dungeons and earlier main dungeons, because the maps are small, but becomes a problem in the large maps of level 4 and then 7-9. Be prepared to be going around in circles a lot, and forgetting where you've already been, unless your short-term memory is hero-like. I get it, the spacebar map is going to look weird and buggy due to the complexity of the dungeons. One alternative might be a detailed mini-map, but I have no clue about the technical requirements to implement such a change.

There are some very interesting items and associated gimmicks in MI:R which I haven't seen often before - or at all. The arrow of light is a great and novel concept that works very well. The kanui (sp?) is something I've seen before, but is well implemented as well. On the other hand, I did not like the deku leaf and its associated puzzles at all. Using the deku leaf and doing associated jump puzzles requires a lot of going into the subscreen to switch back and fourth between the leaf and the roc's feather, which gets very tiresome. The jumping puzzles were also an unpleasant chore - mainly because the whirlwind/spring tiles are so sensitive that there is very, very little room for error for landing. Most of these jumping puzzles also need to be done at least twice by the player, for instance, a certain jumping puzzle on the 2nd floor of level 7; it would be a great idea to put a switch at the end of the puzzle which would allow the player a shortcut after completing the puzzle for the first time.

The combat and accordant challenge in MI:R is very well balanced. There is a good progression of difficulty, without any spikes, and until the end, where it is possible to get the L-4 tunic and L-3 sword, it's pretty easy to die if the player is careless. Mini and main boss fights are challenging without requiring luck or avoiding damage at all costs, wherein most challenge quests and quests in the higher difficulty modes sadly tend to go for the former. The bosses and mini bosses in MI:R require a lot of dodging and careful strikes, and do tend to utilize a lot of "bullet hell" type attacks, but won't kill the player in 3 hits like some unfair examples in challenge quests that we have all seen. My only complaint about the combat is that sometimes the boss fights are a little protracted and some bosses have big HP, but a lot of this can be mitigated by exploring and finding good defense, offense, and health upgrades.

I do have to say the real challenge in MI:R lies in navigating dungeons and to a lesser extend the overworld. The player will have to think and probably take notes while playing - like I did. I wouldn't go so far as to call this a puzzle quest, because the puzzles aren't that hard and don't kill the pacing of the dungeons, but there are a lot of puzzles to navigate. Usually, this theme is executed in an excellent manner, but there are one or two exceptions, such as the "Twieves Hideout," where some screens are downright unfair and seem to be based on luck in order to complete. I have to admit, I was dismayed when I learned that

Another big con is the fact that the deku leaf is a broken item, and I don't just mean in relation to the jumping puzzles I have already talked about. The deku leaf can easily lead to the player getting stuck in walls and necessitating an F6-continue. I see there are a number of bugs that have been fixed, in relation to the deku leaf allowing the player to reach switches prematurely, but believe me, there are still a whole lot of places where one can still exploit the leaf to skip obstacles and make a shortcut. I believe the only way to fix this problem is to recode the deku leaf. On the other hand, I have to wonder how many instances where I exploited the deku leaf, that was, in fact, the intended solution. If so, that would be a new level of design genius or design laziness - depending on perspective.

In summary, I had a good 22 hours of gameplay in MI:R and would play again. My enjoyment of the quest is purely because I like the screen design, maps, dungeons, and gameplay. These things redeem a plot and storyline that is presented in broken English and thus, quite hard to follow along with. 4.5 stars/5 - rounded up to 5.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty good, but somewhat frustrating at times quest. It has a nice Link's Awakening atmosphere, which was evident by the tile sets and some of the music. One thing that does detract from this quest is the myriad of spelling and grammatical mistakes in the text, but I would recommend others to play this quest.

Specifics

I'll be honest with ya: My quest is not really perfect as many peoples would think ^^' This one is maybe the remastered version of my original quest but it's only my 3th quest and i'm still sucks with scripting but i started to make a huge improvement in dungeons design and stuffs. Recently i've started to make my own palettes for another quest i currently making with TheRock. But hey i'm glad you enjoyed this quest dispites of... many bugs such as the deku leaf item. I didn't really liked the item the moment when i've discovered the fall glitch caused by that item. ^^'

Thank you for your great quest.I got stuck a couple of times but then I go back and and check what I missed.