[5th Quest Entry] Imzogelmo

Use a different boss palette, make it red or something.

BTW, "oh shit" moment when I saw your 150 Rupee Leave Your Life or Money Room, lol, and I had 0. Save/Quit.

-James

Yeah, sorry about that money or life bit. I completely forgot about that... should've warned you. It's especially mean on a level where you use the arrows so much-- but it's level 8 of the 5th quest, right? :P
The wand counts as a "Ranged weapon" though, so it helps a bit.

I know you hate a certain item, and hopefully you can find it in your heart to forgive its inclusion here. Given the difficulty of this and the last level, it may be warranted.

Actually spent it on the bomb upgrade, that's how I ran out of money, lol.

-James

Yeah, I came >this< close to putting a wallet upgrade in this quest. Went for a few generous Moblins instead.


EDIT: Changes in pending update:
Level 1 - Darknuts gone, replaced with Stalfoses and Ropes.
Level 2 - Blue Goriyas replaced with Red in path to the raft, except the solo guy in the actual treasure room. Went from 7 to 3 Baby Dodongos in previous to treasure room.
Level 6 - Ladder room bumped up to 9 Darknuts.
Level 7 - whistle->secret room altered cosmetically, to make it more in line with similar secrets.
L2 Gibdo's animation fixed. Whoops!
Level 8 - Fire Gleeok has a much more menacing deep red color now. Fire still looks off somehow, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

EDIT 2:
Link for update with above:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_i...it?usp=sharing

Beat 8. That boss battle wasn't horrible.

-James

Oh, there's another Money or Life in level 9, so take some rupees with you. Also, it's got influence from Zelda II's Great Palace: Translation, long, complex, with dead ends and hard fights. What did you expect from me at this point?


Hope you're enjoying the quest despite the, ahem, hiccups.

I'm too tired for Lv. 9 tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

It's now a ROMhack. lol. (stupid Pols Voice)

Edit: I don't know where the bug is, been checking your file, but basically, your 9 is impassable puzzle-wise. I think it's where you intended to nail the Fire Gibdos with some other enemies with two statues on the bottom, but I'm not sure. But either way, it's not completable. You're going to have to re-think your puzzle and fix it. I think you outdid yourself.

BTW, just so you know, my music list for testing:

1. Frog's Theme, Chrono Trigger
2. TMNT Stage 5 Arcade
3. Final Fantasy Legend 2 - Aspiration
4. Blaster Master - Stage 7
5. Dance Dance Revolution - Butterfly
6. Dragon Warrior - Alefgard's Theme
7. Castlevania - Vampire Killer
8. Mega Man Battle Network 3 - Copyman
9. Battletoads and Double Dragon - Level 5 (really appropriate, since the level is Battletoads and Link: The Ultimate Disaster. ;-) )

Edit: More bugs:
1. Lanmolas shouldn't drop anything except when totally dead. NES quest.
2. Moas don't animate properly

I think I'll grade you at this point. It won't change much.

Difficulty: 98/100
Very balanced. Lv. 9's a bitch, but who cares at that point, the player has to earn it.

NES authenticity: 10/100
Where can I start? Mirror Shield? Conveyor Belts? Sword Swipe, double secrets (which I think are clearly against the rules, but we're not DQ'ing for it), among other things. I'm giving you 10 points for generally your class in handling these things, ESPECIALLY the Z2 message for the Sword Swipe, but mostly, terribly inaccurate. But I think you knew that.

Fun Factor: 95/100
Very creative, and except for the early Lv. 2, enjoyable.
Mini-Dodongo candidate for Best Normal Enemy

Overall: 67.6/100 Another "fun but not going to win" quest. Mostly fails for authenticity, but basically falls in line with LFF's, Shoelace's, and others: Good experience, but people just stayed truer to the NES and this will eliminate this eventually. Start working on the story and an alternate tileset and this will probably make a great custom quest.

-James

Spoilers:

Spoiler: show

Regarding the room in level 9 with the Gibdos:
You'll use your mirror shield to bounce the statues' fireballs into the Gibdos (See, mirror shield as a tool, not just pretty). A bridge is built when they die.

Regarding level 9:
It's passable. I've beaten it, but there are several one-way passages (think level 8 second quest) and passage loops (think my level 6). Of course, it goes off-map a lot (think my level 4), and features the combination of most of the tricks used throughout the quest. I'd make a video of it if I knew how, lol.

Regarding the Lanmolas:
I'm not sure about those, but I believe NES Moldorms drop items on a per-segment basis. Will have to check this. (Could be a case of being more NES authentic than the original ZC). It's like the situation with the statues-- Original NES statues will not fire on you if you're within a tile of the shooter (which is not centered on the statue). So 1st and 2nd quests need a bugfix, and 3rd and 4th can be considered to have "upgraded" statues.

Regarding the Baby Dodongos (and other custom enemies):
Thanks for the compliment on those. They were clearly inspired by the Ocarina of Time / Majora's Mask version of the enemy, so not completely original, but that's OK. I wanted to use something known to exist in the Zelda universe, so I pictured my level 2 as a sort of den of Dodongos.
Personally, I am more fond of my Moas though. I made them impossible to stab, but beatable by the sword beam (and other ranged items). The theory being that they fly too high to stab, obviously.
For the Fire Gibdos, I wanted to make an upgraded version of those, but did not want to be strictly "give them more HP and damage" which I find to be a lazy way to make an enemy, so I gave them a weakness on an item that isn't often thought of as a weapon. Making them weak to fire gives the Red Candle a reason to exist, and besides, it just makes sense that a mummy would burn up.

Regarding the message for the sword slash:
With that message particularly, but also a few others, I actually ran what i wanted to say through a translator into Japanese and then back to English, to give it that "almost but not quite right English translation" sense. I'm glad you picked up on that. I think that's a great boon to NES authenticity. :)

Overall:
I tried to build the quest as a successor to not just the first 2 quests, but to all the first 4 quests. So enemies and new tricks included in any of those will appear somewhere in here.
By doing so, it can be no more authentic than the least authentic of the first 4 quests, which is the 4th quest, and of course, by adding in new tricks, it becomes even less authentic.

I gave myself the additional constraints of having every level be skippable by at least one, for non-linearity, and using walk-through walls only in odd numbered levels, to keep you on your toes. Non-linear play is crucial to NES authenticity; the first 3 levels of the first quest can be played in any order, for instance. I do reward the intrepid player--if you play out of order, the quest is significantly easier in some places, but still not broken (2nd quest, I'm looking at you!).

Players should not be daunted by the difficulty too much. A lot of the difficulty arises from my assumption that, if you're playing the 5th quest, you know to go looking for sword upgrades and potions early. I can't beat it without dying, but I'm not the best player. The difficulty is more puzzle- and riddle-based than ZOMG killer enemies.

You cite my creativity here, and I think that perhaps got the best of me when making the puzzles. Each level I tried to defy some expectation that one has in an NES quest. I'll elaborate more on that later (let some others play it before I just outright point them out). So yes, you're right that I knew it was veering off of the NES quest authenticity, but to me, the most important thing in the NES quest is the unexpected (2nd quest: walk through walls, sword-shooting Stalfos, Red Bubbles, one-way passages...).

Imzogelmo: Download OBS. That takes videos of quests. That's what I use for the most part.

FRAPS don't work too well on ZC.

Now if I could only fix the sound card and not have to use the mic to record.

-James

Completed, except for the maze path at the end (which I HATED), it was not the hardest dungeon I've played, some of them in James Quest and 2 are nastier.

Few suggestions:

1. Slightly slow down the ROMhack Pols Voice. They're ridiculous in speed and un-Zelda like.
2. Switch the Red Ring and Silver Arrow. Most players will not survive that long.
3. You've got to color mark multiple secrets. I can't tell you how many times I took wrong passageways or reset in frustration because I didn't know. Mark them, ALL of them. Every level they're around.
4. Put a "Super Patra" (like a Red Patra) into the maze room. Whatever pattern you want, have the center shoot fireballs. (not a Patra 2). Be good for tradition.

Grade: Nothing changed. Enjoy!

-James