Zelda: PuzzleDude's Quest
Oct. 27th, 2011 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI wasn't up for the impossible romhack that was Parallel Worlds, but there are several romhacks of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past that seemed much more playable, and I figured I should play them before recommending them. PuzzleDude's Quest is one of these.
First, my complaints: It's definitely a "master quest" of ALttP; most of the maps are unchanged and the difficulty is ramped up, and there are a bunch of puzzles that you'd never figure out if you hadn't played easier, similar puzzles in ALttP.
That difficulty is obvious from the start. Hyrule Castle is filled with red soldiers (4 hits to kill), there are some annoyingly-placed spikes, there's a tiny strip of corridor over pits that you'll need to navigate through, and Zelda is guarded by TWO flail guards. And it doesn't let up, especially in the dark world dungeons.
PuzzleDude LOVES space-filling mazes. The graveyard? A maze. The swamp? A maze. The desert? A maze. Lake Hylia? A maze. Problem is, these don't add much challenge or any fun, they just serve to slow the game down when you need to backtrack. Throwing in a whole bunch of powerful enemies makes for a tedious challenge, not an enjoyable one. (Though I was proud of my ability to sprint past the mini-armos statues outside the Eastern Palace.)
The entire light world moves slowly because you're constantly retreading maze areas and you don't have the boots. I understand why a hacker would want to keep you from getting the boots until later on, because there's a unique obstacle (rock piles) they can use to close off areas as long as you don't have the boots. But it's annoying in that I'm used to dashing everywhere and crossing the overworld quickly. (For that matter, most of the obstacles--heavy rocks and stone piles in particular--seem to have been added just to force you to take the longest possible path from dungeon to dungeon.)
On the praise side, though, PuzzleDude does a good job of making use of obstacles that require a specific item to pass (mostly involving creative ways to hit crystal switches). You need the Boomerang to hit a crystal switch on a diagonal. You need the Book to enter the Desert Palace, and it's not in the usual spot. In several cases, you need to freeze an enemy and throw them to hit a crystal switch, something I discovered only after trying every other item in my inventory. Each of the puzzles recurs, but once you've seen it the first time you start to recognize repeated appearances.
The insides of the dungeons aren't significantly rearranged; the maps are basically the same and most of the general sequences (like getting the girl and bringing her to the light in Blind's Dungeon) remain. He didn't try to make something brand new in the engine; he just edited what was there into a new shape. The map and compass items were all removed, but the auto-map still tracks to the dungeons reasonably well.
He uses a lot of disguised sprites--chests, pots or blocks that look like something other than what they are. But he also marks them all with star tiles so you know to look for something special there. That's really nice. (He's also very good about putting cracks on walls you're supposed to bomb. There's no unfair difficulty in the puzzles.)
The Dark World overworld is entirely closed off, with most of the transporters gone and only the pyramid and part of Death Mountain accessable. (The seven dungeons are all accessable from the pyramid.) I'm not going to complain about that: He knew his limits (in terms of both time and ideas) and produced a working, effectively complete game. And I was happy not to have to trek through overworld mazes again.
I ended up playing this with an infinite hearts code on, because I wasn't here for the crushing difficulty, just for the puzzles. (Game Genie: AE6E-DF2A) And I enjoyed it like that, because a lot of them were clever and forced me to think, and though I wanted to reach for an FAQ a bunch of times, since there wasn't one available, I eventually figured the puzzles out.
One warning: You need to patch onto a very specific ROM, "Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past (U) [!].smc" With any other ROM you can only play up through the sixth Dark World dungeon; the seventh is impassable. (If the seventh dungeon opens with a diagonal wall and unreachable door, then you've got the wrong ROM.) Also, the name-entry screen glitches no matter what ROM you use. Save/Load seems to work fine, but starting from the mountain cave dumps you in an inescapable pit of spikes.
Overall: If you think you're a Zelda badass who can take on anything, play this straight. If you play Zelda for the puzzles and don't care about the gaming challenge, use that infinite hearts code. The puzzles ARE clever and were fun to solve.
First, my complaints: It's definitely a "master quest" of ALttP; most of the maps are unchanged and the difficulty is ramped up, and there are a bunch of puzzles that you'd never figure out if you hadn't played easier, similar puzzles in ALttP.
That difficulty is obvious from the start. Hyrule Castle is filled with red soldiers (4 hits to kill), there are some annoyingly-placed spikes, there's a tiny strip of corridor over pits that you'll need to navigate through, and Zelda is guarded by TWO flail guards. And it doesn't let up, especially in the dark world dungeons.
PuzzleDude LOVES space-filling mazes. The graveyard? A maze. The swamp? A maze. The desert? A maze. Lake Hylia? A maze. Problem is, these don't add much challenge or any fun, they just serve to slow the game down when you need to backtrack. Throwing in a whole bunch of powerful enemies makes for a tedious challenge, not an enjoyable one. (Though I was proud of my ability to sprint past the mini-armos statues outside the Eastern Palace.)
The entire light world moves slowly because you're constantly retreading maze areas and you don't have the boots. I understand why a hacker would want to keep you from getting the boots until later on, because there's a unique obstacle (rock piles) they can use to close off areas as long as you don't have the boots. But it's annoying in that I'm used to dashing everywhere and crossing the overworld quickly. (For that matter, most of the obstacles--heavy rocks and stone piles in particular--seem to have been added just to force you to take the longest possible path from dungeon to dungeon.)
On the praise side, though, PuzzleDude does a good job of making use of obstacles that require a specific item to pass (mostly involving creative ways to hit crystal switches). You need the Boomerang to hit a crystal switch on a diagonal. You need the Book to enter the Desert Palace, and it's not in the usual spot. In several cases, you need to freeze an enemy and throw them to hit a crystal switch, something I discovered only after trying every other item in my inventory. Each of the puzzles recurs, but once you've seen it the first time you start to recognize repeated appearances.
The insides of the dungeons aren't significantly rearranged; the maps are basically the same and most of the general sequences (like getting the girl and bringing her to the light in Blind's Dungeon) remain. He didn't try to make something brand new in the engine; he just edited what was there into a new shape. The map and compass items were all removed, but the auto-map still tracks to the dungeons reasonably well.
He uses a lot of disguised sprites--chests, pots or blocks that look like something other than what they are. But he also marks them all with star tiles so you know to look for something special there. That's really nice. (He's also very good about putting cracks on walls you're supposed to bomb. There's no unfair difficulty in the puzzles.)
The Dark World overworld is entirely closed off, with most of the transporters gone and only the pyramid and part of Death Mountain accessable. (The seven dungeons are all accessable from the pyramid.) I'm not going to complain about that: He knew his limits (in terms of both time and ideas) and produced a working, effectively complete game. And I was happy not to have to trek through overworld mazes again.
I ended up playing this with an infinite hearts code on, because I wasn't here for the crushing difficulty, just for the puzzles. (Game Genie: AE6E-DF2A) And I enjoyed it like that, because a lot of them were clever and forced me to think, and though I wanted to reach for an FAQ a bunch of times, since there wasn't one available, I eventually figured the puzzles out.
One warning: You need to patch onto a very specific ROM, "Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past (U) [!].smc" With any other ROM you can only play up through the sixth Dark World dungeon; the seventh is impassable. (If the seventh dungeon opens with a diagonal wall and unreachable door, then you've got the wrong ROM.) Also, the name-entry screen glitches no matter what ROM you use. Save/Load seems to work fine, but starting from the mountain cave dumps you in an inescapable pit of spikes.
Overall: If you think you're a Zelda badass who can take on anything, play this straight. If you play Zelda for the puzzles and don't care about the gaming challenge, use that infinite hearts code. The puzzles ARE clever and were fun to solve.
