So, I finally finished this, 100% on hero mode. And I got to say, even though in some parts I was all "Damn it all!", it's actually a pretty fun quest. What I loved most of it were the puzzles, Jamian truly did a good job making me scratch my head now and then. Although, I have to say that these kind of puzzles might not be for everyone, and that's really okay. I enjoyed it, and I loved it for taking on a new spin on quest design. The story... yes, really silly too; the title is more literal than it seems at first.

If I had to suggest some improvements... maybe it would be to add more hints on some puzzles, but not actually give away the answer. Wind bosses, are the worst I do admit, although they were fun to be mad at as well; but thank you so much for:



I love this quest, it may not be as big as your previous entries (The Forbidden City, Promised Land), but this is another one I'll add to my personal favorites. Keep up the good work!

I just finished this and, well, I was kinda disappointed with it, to be perfectly honest. Jamian has done some amazing quests in the past so I admit it might been on me for setting my expectations quite high. Regardless, I guess I will go over the various things I ended up feeling about the quest as I played it.

I think, firstly for anyone who considers playing this: I would recommend playing on Easy or whatever the equivalent is, even if you're a seasoned ZC player. I played on normal and while it's not impossible to get through the quest on that, I don't feel like the type of challenges on display here are very relevant to care about doing the "hard" way. If you're someone who normally plays quests on their easier difficulties than you might need to consider skipping this one.

I think the first thing I should open with is that I feel the economy is completely off for the quest on it's whole. Arrow and bomb drops are generally pitiful, this is usually not a huge concern but there is little leeway here. There were several segments in the quest where I felt the need to use arrows to help with a segment, and while I could do so the amount of arrow drops given would not really let me. In fact, on several occasions I had to backtrack out of dungeons to completely re-stock on arrows to the point where I ended up using save->retry cheese to get my ammo back after failed attempts. Bombs I didn't run out of nearly as often, mostly because I'm not a fan of using them in combat, even then I still ran out once or twice in my run so I can see it being a concern for people who do. Outside of the ammo I needed to buy I bought a single purple potion at the end of the game before the final boss (with the L2 wealth ring), at which point I was kinda broke. It's nice that there are potions avalible to buy as a crutch for players, but their pricing don't seem particularly accessible. Maybe I missed a crap ton of hidden rupees somewhere but idk. This all could probably easily be fixed if it's deemed an issue, so.

My second biggest concern is in relation to the quest's jokes. The quest has a lot of good jokes and a lot of humor, that's good. But there are less good things associate with this, I feel. There are a lot of times where this quest will make a joke (either explicitly or implicitly) that reads as following: "hey look, this is a bad design thing", the quest will then proceed to still have you do the thing. The most obvious one happens right before peahat island in which Link makes a humorous remark about how awful peahat gameplay is in a lot of quests, especially ones that have them where you need to kill all enemies. Now, granted, peahat island don't have standard peahats, they are instead reskinned bats, but instead it suffers from a lot of similar issues, enemies placed in dumb ways to block hookshot points so you stun them instead, etc. Other obvious jokes are: "hey look, I made a wind weapon boss, isn't that crazy, that's bad!", but then you actually have to fight it, multiple of them even throughout the quest. In fact that joke is probably the one that gets run into the ground the most. Highlighting things that are bad design or unfun can work as a good joke, but if you're then just subjecting the player to that same thing regardless it just stops being a joke or a highlight: you're just doing that same bad thing. This comes up a lot, but most of it is relegated to peahat island and the sideview dungeon.

The only other thing I took problem to in this quest is that some puzzles are a bit obscure, in the sense that you're given a puzzle then left on your own to figure out what it is you're suppose to solve before you can solve it. I guess another way to put it is that a traditional puzzle gives you the rules then asks you to follow the rules to get to the solution, where as these types of puzzles tell you that you got a puzzle, but not the rules; and in the case of this quest getting the solution once you know the rules is often trivial. These type of puzzles can work, but a lot of them either deteriorates into people making wild guesses till they see what sticks, or they immediately gets it. It's not that these can never work, in fact I have used them myself in my own quests at times, but there are a fair few instances where they just halt progress entirely till you solve them and you can't really make any meaningful progress by going elsewhere. But, I know the author has already addressed one of these things by adding another hint and I could see some of the other ones getting more hints/etc to ease them up. When I was personally playing if the author didn't tell me what to do at the one in the swamp, I would have been stuck there, and the one before the necropolis another person had to help me out with it.... after getting another hint from the author.

Other than that the quest has fairly good writing even if I feel it gets a bit too odd in places, and while the ending provides the answer as to why everything is the way it is, I'm not sure if I would call it a very satisfying ending (even if it was funny). Gameplay is generally good in most places, but as I mentioned earlier I would recommend easy because it's quite hard in many places and it often sets you back very far on failure/death. For what it's worth, I did actually like a lot of the quest, but there were just a lot of occurrences of things that really ruined the mood and wasn't fun for me.


All in all, I didn't find a single bunny in the quest, so, 0/10.

I guess I'll get the obligatory statement out of the way and say that when I saw a new Jamian quest was out, I was pretty intrigued and a little excited to play. I remember pretty fondly to Forbidden City from 2015, which I actually didn't like nearly as much on the first play-through as I do now having done a second play through. Given that high bar, how does Dragon Dream stack up? DD begins somewhat similar to Forbidden City, actually, with the starting village and overworld both giving strong throwbacks to FC; however, upon looking a little bit deeper, you can see that DD is not just a retread of FC and is, in fact, something special in its own right.

The plot, script, meta-humor, and ending are all indeed pretty silly throughout DD. Yet ynderneath the silliness there's some pretty substantial nostalgia, throwbacks to old Nintendo games, and commentary that unless you're also an 80s kid, you might not get, or at least really appreciate.

The dungeons are all nicely detailed and labyrinthine without being needlessly large and causing the player to run in circles after forgetting the path, nor do the dungeons require much back tracking. That happy medium of dungeon design is pretty rare, and a welcome sight. Instead, the important goals of each dungeon seem to be fairly close to the starting point, or at least accessible by a convenient warp from the starting point. Thus, backtracking through already-cleared rooms is kept to a minimum. There's a decent amount of enemy variety and enemy selection to keep the player alert, but not so much as to slow the player down and kill the pacing of the dungeon. Cheap difficulty-boosting gimmicks like damage tiles and conveyor floors, which were pretty common in the FC dungeons, are thankfully used a lot more sparingly in DD.

The puzzles in this quest are definitely my favorite part, and many of which I haven't seen elsewhere. Case in point: those letter and number-entrance puzzles throughout the quest. Without spoiling much, the puzzles in DD often, if not always, come across as obtuse or even frustrating at times. That is, until you have that "aha" moment and realize the solution to the puzzle, wherein you see that the solution was pretty obvious all along. The puzzle solutions are one big part of DD that will punish the player for overthinking things and not slowing down, taking a breath, and looking very closely at the clues that the quest generously provides. The quest always provides a solid hint for each puzzle if you are observant enough to notice and comprehend those hints. For another case in point: the mini-boss in the blue fort is seemingly impossible to defeat at first, second, or even third glance. That is, until you have that "I wonder if this might work" thought and try a trick passingly mentioned by an NPC earlier in the quest. Looney Tunes to the rescue, and that seemingly impossible mini-boss is actually a real pushover. Those sorts of puzzles that strike the player as impossible, or extremely obtuse, but then appear completely obvious in retrospect, are the best sorts of puzzles and something that I personally enjoy very much.

Difficulty wise, DD is not nearly as difficult and combat focused as FC. Playing on the normal difficulty level, I found the difficulty advanced very smoothly and was never much of a problem at any point. If anything, I found the quest started on the difficult side, then became pretty mild by the 1/4 point. Then, around the 3/4 point, the difficulty kicked back up markedly. The final level becomes quite difficult after lulling you into a false sense of complacency. The final level is difficult not so much in terms to survivability, but rather in that "what am I supposed to do" sort of way. The final boss, however, is one of those chaotic and prolonged fights which wrecks havoc on my attention span - and I'll admit I went back and chose easy mode just so that I could finish and see the end credits. Progress is quite linear, much like FC, requiring an item from each dungeon in order to explore the next dungeon. Unlike FC, though, DD does a better job of actually keeping the dungeon items pretty relevant throughout the whole quest, which is a definite improvement.

The overworld is pretty unremarkable in my opinion. Though smartly designed as a whole, and allowing quick travel, the scenery isn't all that scenic. I found the music choices throughout to be nicely above average, but not quite as great in terms of novelty and setting as the music choices in FC. The custom bosses are all smooth and well crafted, though there are certain screens in the game where there are obviously a lot of moving parts in the background and the frame-rate can get choppy if you're playing with a humble computer like I do.

Overall, DD is not nearly as epic and ground-breaking as FC, but then again, a lot of the things I didn't like so much about FC are also thankfully absent. The puzzles in DD, and out-of-the-box solutions are some of the better ones I've seen in my years and years of playing ZC. While I wouldn't call this a puzzle quest, it's not really a traditional dungeon romper either. Instead, I guess you could call this a pretty novel, puzzle-heavy medium-length quest. Whatever you want to call it. Dragon Dream is a unique and enjoyable experience and is well worth the play through if you like to use your brain a little bit while you play.

April 2024 update: I removed the initial "ZC version check" that prevented you from playing if you didn't have a sufficient version, as that script no longer works with the latest ZC builds and can prevent you from playing even if you have a suitable ZC version. Everything else is the same as before.

I'm not stuck, but want to say I'm enjoying this quest so far! I'm at the monastery. I do think some puzzles are pretty ridiculous but they never not made sense, so I'm not too mad.