Posted 05 July 2021 - 04:32 PM
When I saw that the United Dairy Farmers team was coming out with a new quest, I was pretty interested. After all Eiyuu is in my personal top-3 favorite ZC quests of all time. While Nayru's Odyssey is almost nothing like Eiyuu at all, this latest quest does succeed in being an excellent gameboy-style dungeon romper.
The overworld is designed in a similar manner to the LoZ overworld, but with the clever addition of some overworld dungeons and minidungeons. These above-ground dungeons really work in my opinion and fit well with the rest of the overworld aesthetic. Screen design is conistently aesthetically pleasing and while there are not a ton of secret to be found, there are enough overworld secrets to keep the player observant.
Dungeon design is definitely the highlight of NO. In addition to the overworld dungeons, there are plenty of subterranean dungeons and mini-dungeons. I might be reaching here, but I think a good way to describe the dungeon design is that these seems like dungeons that Nintendo would have put into an official Zelda game. By that i mean the dungeons are never very big, intricate, or particularly complex, but usually have a fair amount of interesting puzzles and navigational quirks. Some of the puzzles are novel and will make the player think a little bit and try various out-of-the-box tactics, for instance, the "phantom carnival" puzzle in level 8, but are never obtuse or downright stupefying in my opinion. Bombable and walk-through walls are almost always obvious, if not plainly marked, much like in the official Zelda games.
Difficulty is pretty mild overall. The quest seems to start out somewhat difficult, levels into a comfortable level, jumps up around the 3/4 point again, but then levels into a comfortable level again if you manage to find the L2 armor, L3 sword, and health upgrades. I found the final boss to be a big pushover after finding all of those defensive and offensive upgrades, so perhaps your mileage may vary. The quest makes extensive use of damage tiles and lava jumping, which I found to be the biggest difficulty challenges - especially in the later 1/4 of the quest. Again, Your mileage may vary if you're better at precise movements than I am.
Music choices are pretty ZC-standard and you have probably heard all of the midis in this quest before. Item triggers and puzzles are designed in such a way as to keep all of the items relevant throughout the quest, which while resulting in lots of item switching, does keep a good variety of different puzzles. The plot is indeed pretty limited, but seems to be in accordance with the Oracle games, which I have to admit, I still haven't ever played. This might be important, because like a lot of ZC quests, I get the impression that the creators are trying to create something on tier with an official Zelda release with NO. This quest does succeed in that endeavor quite well, and better than most. Overall, I enjoyed the play through quite a lot and took about 12 hours from beginning to end.
