Lost Isle RELEASED

[SpacemanDan]

Oh yeah!! I'm lookin' forward to this! Downloading it right now! (Actually, just finished downloading it...) Can't wait to boot it up...

[SpykStorm]

I have a question. I have the bow but I cant find the arrows. Where are the arrows?

[Petoe]

There is a small dark green-roofed building on the southern part of the village. Place a bomb on the cracked part on the wall and enter...

[C-Dawg]

So far, so good. Massive-ass over-world? Check. Bewilderingly large space to explore at the outset? Check. (I've got no idea where the hell to go, but I can wander all over the place.) Special effects used to good effect? Check.

I'm not cool with this whole "Link talking" nonsense (everyone knows he's mute!) but other than that, awesome so far.

[DarkFlameWolf]

he's actually thinking to himself rather than talking, so that's.....partially not talking, yes?

[Petoe]

Oh well, that's a valid annoyance since Link never speaks in the "real Zelda games", but yeah... he's not really speaking, he's just thinking to himself I guess.

I know the lack of scripts will surely disappoint you (there are only a few scripted enemies in the quest), C, but the overall flashiness/usage of ZC features should still satisfy. Though who cares about features and crap if the gameplay is good?

[C-Dawg]

Features matter. They encourage the player to keep going to see what happens next, and set some quests above others with equal gameplay. In some cases, features even offer expanded gameplay options (scripting especially comes to mind!) Now that you're done with Lost Isle, I hope you guys will join the crowd in the scripting forums cranking out new features so the devs don't have to.

I'm not dissapointed at all. You've put FFCs and scripts to use in a few subtle ways throughout the quest. (Orbiting spark enemies, moving ghosts in cut scenes, etc). Because FFCs and scripts let you part from the normally predictable ZClassic features, this really adds a touch of "I don't know what's about to happen next" to the quest. Makes me want to figure out WHERE THE HELL TO GO. I also like the creative use of the engine's normal features. For example, using the initial "title" string that displays when you enter a location to discuss the player's impression of the area. Much more immersive than just announcing the area's name. (Even if Link is talking, bah.)

The only use of scripts that might improve on what I've seen so far would be using signpost scripts rather than warps to make characters and signs speak. But the old methods work fine, so no trouble there.

I don't care for the muted music you chose, but that's such a personal decision that it doesn't make any difference. I prefer music that KICKS YOUR ASS. On the other side, I LOVE the cave tileset.

[Petoe]

I am glad to see you are enjoying some aspects of the quest, and hopefully the whole quest in general. Me being a big fan of your work, your comments mean a lot to me, like they did during the time I released the very first version of MMDWR. I remember you were impressed but said how the story sucked and how the sprites looked godawful and both of those issues were at least partially taken care of in the Director's Cut version, mostly thanks to your comments. Though do not expect a DC version of LI, but I am definitely interested in learning scripting and taking full advantage of it in my future quest projects (unless I get a life and forget about ZC).

Hopefully you will be able to get through this quest because even a ZQuest wizard like you might be impressed by some of the later levels and custom bosses. Sure, there aren't many custom bosses in the quest and I don't know if they're just as kick arse as C bosses, but using FFCs, direct timed warps, multi-warps and auto-warps I'd say the custom creatures in LI are pretty smooth and exciting.


Music is something that people either love, hate, or don't notice at all. We decided to go with dark, gloomy and kind of silent midis with LI because it just fits the mood so perfectly.

[Revfan9]

Hmm...

Since Lost Isle is such a big release, I'm going to have to give it a thorough review...

When reading this review, keep in mind that I have only made it up to level 3, and I have no intention of continuing any further into the game, honestly. I can imagine that a lot of worshiping newblets will read this review and disagree with it. So I give a warning now:

If you are one of the group of people who do not like me (in laments terms, all of you bastards), disregard this review entirely.

To start off, I expected Lost Isle to be one of the worst quests I had ever played. I mean, I hate DFW's quests, and I hate Peteo's work. So, by simple math, I can tell that I would loathe a combined work of theirs with every shard of my soul. On a positive note, it wasn't nearly as awful as I thought it would be. Let's start off with...

Sound

Okay. There's no excuse for this. The OW tracks sound like something out of a Barbara Strisand concert and the dungeon themes are repetitive and just make me feel not like playing. After I entered level 1 I shut off the MIDIs, opened my Media player, and played my own background theme as to spare me from the horror. Now, DFW's quests have bad music always, so this was to be expected. What I'm wondering is why I didn't just shut the MIDIs off in the first place. Don't make the same mistake I did, folks.

2/10

Now for:

Graphics

Hmm... The majority of the graphics of Lost Isle are ugly ugly uhhgly Pure graphics, with some custom work and rips that aren't much better. The palettes aren't very easy on the eyes and some tiles, like the castle, for instance, are just impossible to look at without barfing. The only graphics in Lost Isle that are somewhat pleasing are some of the interior wall tiles, and I emphasize greatly on some, that is, not all. I also see a number of ripped tiles from *b*'s works, most of which, to the best of my understanding, were ripped without his permission. At this, I cannot help but say "ololololo". With the dungeon walls saving this score by a lot, the final verdict comes to:

8/20

With the dungeon walls giving it a whopping +7 points. And for...

Originality

Originality, must I admit, was a high point in this quest. Instead of finding the pieces of the Triforce in dungeons, you find them in small caves floating around the OW. Personally, I don't think this works, but I'll come to that later in the Gameplay section. But this is about the ideas themselves, not the way they are executed. There are also some kinda nice uses of FFCs in the quest. You get a:

4/5

Now, for a bit of depressing stuff...

Plot

The plot of Lost Isle, I must say, is completely horrible and unexcusable even. It appears that a stab at having a plot was made, with a mysterious "plague" wiping out the island, but it stops there. There's no explanation as to what exactly is going on, nothing about what the hell the Triforce pieces are doing there at all. All in all, the plot feels like an old 1.90 quest where instead of "Save the princess", it's "Run around on this island with a bunch of dead people". No backstory for anything, and the dialouge is rather crude and feels hastened. On this, Link talks, which can work if done really really well, but it doesn't here. You get a...

9/25

With all 9 of those points coming from the plague thing that it tries to lead into. And now for the big one...

Gameplay

Sorry to say... But it kinda... Blows. Hard. The OW (and this is noticable right from the beginning) feels like there was really no planning to it at all, like each screen was made as it was gone along. It doesn't feel like you're exploring a real island, it feels like you're walking through a fabricated maze of tiles. "Let's go left! Ooh, now I can go up, or down! Let's go down! Oh look, another intersection!" I also do not like the sudden changes in scenery. "Wow! I'm in a forest! *screen down* Now I'm in a swamp where it starts raining for no reason!" I understand that part of this is because of limitations on ZC, but much more effort could have been put in that could have easily stopped this feeling. As for the dungeons, I've only gone through the first 2 and partially into the 3rd, but they all feel very linear. Unlike the OWs, where you actually have to try to figure out where the hell things are, in the dungeons, every path but 1 is blocked off, basically. It feels like any minute now, there's going to be this giant arrow that says "Shortcut to the end", which I really wish would happen because these dungeons are boooooooring. More on the dungeons, you don't have to fight the boss. You can just get the item and leave. The only boss I've fought was in level 1 (before I discovered that the rest of the dungeon after the item is found is optional), but it was lackluster at best. I also managed to completely skip level 2 for a while without much consequence, only going back after going through a portion of level 3 thinking that I might need the item sometime in the future, which I haven't yet had to do. For gameplay, Lost Isle gets...

24/40

Which is a rather generous score I might add. Now, for the final results...

Sound: 2/10
Graphics: 8/20
Originality: 4/5
Plot: 9/25
Gameplay: 24/40

Total Score: 57/100

Ouch... If this was a school assignment, you would get an F. For failure. It's a nice try, but all in all, it's not worth my time. Now, I said before that this was much higher than I predicted I would have given the quest, so here's my predicted scores:

Sound: 2/10

I nabbed this one. DFW can't pick out good music for shit.

Graphics: 1/20

Pure Pure Pure Pure Pure

Originality: 0/5

Old tricks, like playing Isle of the Winds all over again

Plot: 0/25

It still wasn't as much of a 1.90 quest as I thought it would have been.

Gameplay: 12/40

I expected it to be a steaming pile of shit. Classic dungeons, enemy bosses...

Total Score: 15/100

So yes. I expected Lost Isle to be much, much worse. Muuuch worse, than it actually was.

So, I hope this review impacts your opinion on Lost Isle, but it probably won't. You'll still buy into the hype and you'll still worship Peteo/DFW for no reason at all. I'm seeing a lot of negative rep in my future. I'm also seeing a few PMs from LI fans flaming me about how I "Suck monkey cock". Hell, I wouldn't be suprised if a mod deleted this, seeing how much the creators of LI kiss their asses.

Hating you all forever,

~Revfan9

[Fire Wizzrobe]

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