Edited 07 December 2023 - 02:37 AM
I was pretty surprised on the day that I saw this quest uploaded on PureZC. It had been months since I can recall something that looked interesting to me, in terms of new quests, and even longer since I've seen anything that seeks to break the mold of what a Zelda Classic quest is supposed to be. Too often, I think, quest makers get trapped inside of a mindset of trying to make a quest that Nintendo would actually make. By that I mean, people try to hard to make new Zelda games, for someone else, instead of trying to make a quest that is a reflection of what they want. Don't get me wrong, some of those quasi-Zelda game quests are pretty great, but my favorite quests are pretty much always the ones that defy conventions and bring something novel to the table. For instance, the Yeto quests, Mike's Funhouse, and Eiyuu are some of my favorite ZC quests of all time, and all are unconventional by ZC standards. With that convention established, Journey into the Novel Ruins takes the standard of unconventional-by-ZC standards and kicks it up a few notches. I don't think I've ever played anything quite like JitNR, for better or for worse.
JitNR starts off a lot like other Metroidvanias, with the big central dungeon that somehow ties everything together. You're probably going to be wondering what to do and where to go at first, but things are still relatively conventional and familiar at first. Then, somewhere around the 1/3-1/2-game point, everything you thought you know takes a 180-turn and you're suddenly writing pages, and pages of notes trying to keep up with the information the quest gives you in order to - maybe - solve the riddles, errands, and wild-goose-chases that are thrown at you. Seriously, I usually have a text file that I keep notes on while playing ZC quests and other games, because I tend to forget a lot of details. To put things in perspective, my text file for JitNR is undoubtedly the longest, most extensive text file that I've ever had to compose for a ZC quest. This is because the secret sidequests that JitNR puts forth - which are necessary to complete the game - are some legitimate head-scratching puzzles. OK, maybe the secret sidequests aren't technically necessary to complete, but realistically, yeah, they're necessary.
In certain instances, these secret sidequests are really creative and engaging. Without being too specific and spoiling anything, one of the sidequests can't even be initiated unless you have a certain consumable in your inventory. Then, you get a hint on what to do. From there, you have to find the screen to do it on. But wait, there's more. You can do the required action on the screen for hours, but it won't matter unless you do the required action after diminishing your health down to 1/4 of one heart and get the action done before your heart ring starts healing you. In another sidequest, you have to look for subtle letters that are formed by the grass across 4 or 5 screens and arrange the alphabet soup into a real Scrabble word. From there, you can unlock one of the passworded zip files and you're given a screen shot. On that screen, you have to use an item you would never consider using to perform an action you would probably never even consider performing in the first place. I had fun and was legitimately intrigued when solving out-of-the box puzzles like these.
On the not-so-bright side, some of the sidequests, while still being creative, are flawed by some really questionable choices on the questmaker's part. For instance, you're given a block puzzle task where you have to move seven blocks into the same position that these blocks were in on seven other screens all throughout the rest of the quest. That's fine, I don't find hunting for colored eggs and taking screenshots and the hints on location are pretty good. However, when it comes time to execute the actual puzzle and move the blocks, there's no definition on what "position" actually means. Are you supposed to follow a relative arrangement? Or, are you supposed to get it down to the pixel-by-pixel level? Who knows, but after an hour or more of trying different things, I finally found the answer. That's actually somewhat forgivable, because one way or another, the quest gave me enough information to solve the puzzle. Unfortunately, some other sidequests are downright obtuse and made me question why the questmaker decided to do that. Again, without being too specific, at least two of the "necessary" secrets have keywords that you would never intuitively guess. One is a riddle whose answer amounts to an expression that, being American, I have ever heard in my entire life. You end up being able to divine the answer by mashing a button on a certain unusual tile on the same screen where the riddle is posed; but even if you notice the unusual tile and only then notice that there's a subtle sound when you press random buttons, you ponder why the questmaker decided to go this route for a solution instead of just asking a riddle that it is possible to answer after some thinking.
Another secret involves an answer that makes little-no sense in the context of the NPC that is asking the question, and which the questmaker seemed to have thrown in as a nod to an online buddy. But wait, it turns out the answer is actually written there on the same wall in the same room as the NPC, but good luck noticing that. Good luck even deciphering the text without some CSI-trope enhance, enhance buttons, because the text is so jumbled you'll need to squint with your eyes three inches away from the monitor to make out the letters. Often, though, the answers to puzzles and secrets are probably easier than you might think. I'd say that the quest will definitely punish you for overthinking things, as a rule, but often times, the solution you need is probably one of the last things you would consider trying. I would consider this a neutral as I really favor intuitive problem solving and puzzles that are modeled in that vein, but tolerate the obtuse as long as a solution can be achieved with a little bit of trial and error. Lucky for you, if you're not masochistic enough to solve the entirety of this quest yourself, the help thread has the answers to these and other seemingly impossible tasks contained within JitNR.
The Metroidvania sensibilities of JitNR are solid, with the core dungeon being pretty easy to navigate and containing useful paths to subdungeons. You might consider making a custom chart of the 8x16 map, which contains the main dungeon and subs, but I didn't feel the need to. I say this because the spacebar-map crutch is taken away, and the subscreen map is, in fact, pretty useless due to being literally inverted from reality. To my surprise, there are no wild surprises like hidden rooms that you would never know are there without actually carefully charting the dungeon out and counting screens. In keeping with the Metroidvania aspect of JitNR, the boss fights are pretty fun and can be pretty challenging if you go into the fight under-prepared. The 4-button-selectable items feature of Vintage Dreams makes actually playing through these dungeons more convenient and opens new options for your boss fights and dealing with obstacles. Keeping with the puzzle-heavy dynamics that the quest is based on, though, you'll also have to solve some more puzzles just to get into the boss fights. If you're the type who is looking for combat and whooping enemies and getting the triforce piece, you're probably not going to like JitNR.
I think the screen design, colors, sprites, and custom artistic touches are nicely done. There are a ton of details on most every screen, with none of them - except maybe the volcanic section of the overworld - feeling superfluous and there for filler. Sometimes these details actually clash with your looking for subtle hints and details to solve puzzles, which is a sort of obfuscation that I actually like. I'll admit that I don't "get" the furry fandom that the questmaker inserted into JitNR. I used to read and post at SomethingAwful a lot like 15-25 years ago, well before SA became a sad and pathetic parody of itself more recently, and furries (along with bronies and every other weird niche of the internet) were mocked relentlessly. I really don't think about furries at all, one way or another, but at the same time, I really can't take this kind of thing seriously without giggling a little inside. But hey, the furry stuff is handled *pretty* tastefully at least in JitNR and certainly doesn't ruin the experience of playing through. Again, I applaud any quest maker who wants to put polarizing stuff like that in a quest. If you're going to make something that is as far out of the box as JitNR, I guess you might as well go the whole way out of the box and really make the quest what you want it to be.
The music choices are also pretty good, and set a calm and collected mood while you play. This is a good thing, because you're probably going to be wandering through places like the central dungeon and certain sub dungeons for hours, so an annoying musical track would get old pretty damn fast. The quest throws tons and tons of rupees at you, which is a pet peeve of mine that I look for when playing ZC quests, but you have a high max-rupee count and useful stuff to spend all of that cash on. All of the scripts seem to play pretty smooth and the quest is pretty well refined and bug tested, as I can only recall technical bugs like lack of under combos making me have to F6-continue once or twice. I did encounter some other technical bugs, which the quest maker acknowledges in the accompanying readme as possible and presently unsolvable.
I'd be remiss to say that I didn't have a lot of fun grinding through JitNR, as a whole, even though there were times that I most definitely wasn't having fun and was almost hate-playing out of sheer frustration. I can say the same thing about Mike's Funhouse and other quests that I really like as a whole, and maybe an excellent game needs some anti-fun to help balance out your sense of enjoyment - lest you end up poopsocking through 24 hours straight without rage quitting at some point and going to work or going to bed. I found the quest pretty hard to quit playing, and even played in the evening hours before sleep - which I almost never do anymore with video games. The quest reminds me a bit of Project Storm, another really unconventional quest, where you have no clue what to do most of the time, that really hooked me in like JitNR did. Objectively, I would rate JitNR a 4/5, but I ended up voting 5, because the subjective experience of playing hooked me. I always want to see these sorts of mold-breaking ZC quests, and hope there are more in the future, so want to give encouragement where it is due.
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rabbitking
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Malstygian
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Demonlink
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