next »

[Paul Eres]

The dungeon design falls several notches when you reach the second quest. You're just catching the first whiffs of that design philosophy.

i like some of the dungeons in the second quest but the 'walk through walls' thing was probably way overused. i liked how the dungeons spelled 'zelda' in the second quest, though

[Richard Kain]

Just beat level 7 and I have to say level 7 was some horrible horrible level design.

I think the point of dungeon 7 was to mix things up. Up to that point, the dungeons had been getting increasingly difficult. With dungeon 7, they stepped back the difficulty of the enemies considerably, but compensated by increasing the challenge of navigating the dungeon and figuring out its secrets.

1.  The entrance was cool but the clues were to vague

True enough. Granted, there are three "ponds" in the game, and the other two have fairies. So a hint like "where fairies don't live" should have pointed you to the correct screen. From there it was a matter of figuring out what to do, and there are only so many items in your inventory. A lot of people don't figure this one out on their own, but I don't think its too much of a stretch.

3.  The new candle is super lame.  I have the flame from the wand so I can already get flame more then once on a screen if I want it.

The wand is useful for lighting up dark dungeon rooms. But it is completely impractical for burning bushes. If you are hunting for secrets under bushes in the overworld, the red candle is indispensable.

4.  WTF is up with the boss.  It shot like 2 energy balls which I lazily dodged and it went down in 2 hits.  It was ridiculously easy.  It was significantly easier then some of the non boss enemies.

Again, true enough. This is the exact same boss that you faced in the 1st dungeon, and in dungeon 7 he is a complete pushover. This was another instance of the designers showing you how far you had already come in the game.

5.  Make me go so far through the dungeon and then find out I needed some random meat to go any further.  No way I could have seen that coming and prepared ahead of time.

Heh heh...ha HA HAH! I can understand how this would be frustrating. But personally, it's one of my favorite parts of the whole game. It's just one random puzzle that involves an item that is largely optional for the rest of the game. I felt it added a bit of whimsy and unpredictability. You never see this sort of thing in games these days, and I for one would like to see it crop up more often. Every game should have at least one moment like this.

6.  Finding the starecase to the boss was again just trying tons of random stuff. At least I knew what room to look in from the clue which was cool.

After a fairly easy dungeon, the room with that staircase is just sadistic. Three sides of the room are comprised of narrow corridors formed by blocks, wall-masters are constantly threatening to drag you back to the entrance, and three ghosts are constantly patrolling the room and can disable your sword, or knock you into a wall-master.

[dustin]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who didn't like level 7 as much...

I can see it mixing things up/showing you how much you progressed.  Also now that you mention it I can see why the candle would be useful for finding secrets (which is helpful for level .

As for the meat puzzle yeah I think I would have been in a better mood for it if I liked the design of the rest of the dungeon more.  I didn't actually realize I could use the meat for anything other then that puzzle.  Is it worth buying more to try out?

I think at least some of the problems I found with it were from the order I played it in.  It was my last normal dungeon (I assume there's a final one which I'm currently looking for) so I was kinda disappointed by the lack of difficulty.  also the candle would have been nicer if I didn't have the magic book already and needed it to find level 8. Also, since I played level 2 before level 1 the boss wasn't a rehash of the first boss I faced it was just a random boss I had faced sometime so I didn't see it so symbolically.  The exploring around is great fun but there are a few things that the non linearity messes up every once in a while I guess.

[SirNiko]

The meat (Monster Bait) is also useful for distracting some enemies. It is reusable in all cases except feeding it to the "Grumble grumble" moblin.

[baconman]

So is anybody else planning on playing 2nd Quest, or interested in doing so?

[SirNiko]

At this point, I think the proper thing is to have a discussion about the game we've all just played. Kind of like I guess you do at a book club, except less pretentious, maybe. Let me lead off,

In my experience, the best thing about the original Zelda was the way the open design lets you progress at your own pace. You can dive directly into dungeons if you choose, or you can wander the map accumulating rupees and hearts. There are no "Solutions" to enemies or even bosses, since many foes can be defeated with a wide variety of weapons. Darknuts (the blue and orange soldiers) are a great example of this.

The biggest weakness for the game is capricious dungeon design. Hidden passages you can bomb through are hidden with very little and often no clues. Blocks for revealing secret passages are often hidden, forcing you to push everything. The second quest even introduces walls you have to walk through, a totally pointless mechanic that just serves to add a third thing you must inspect in every room. Especially cruel are the "Money or Life" rooms that appear in the later dungeons, which serve no purpose except to make the player grind for rupees before entering a dungeon or permanently lose health.

The difficulty of the game was just right, if not a little harder. The monsters you face grow more powerful at a steady pace with the player, and the combination of larger dungeons and more dangerous enemies means that even though you get better swords and more hearts, you still find each dungeon more challenging than the last. Dungeon 9, in particular, impressed me as exactly what a game should have - the player is confronted with the biggest, baddest maze of them all with two hidden items and tons of secrets passages. It builds upon the rest of the game in a very satisfying way. Since Ocarina of Time, the final dungeons of Zelda titles have turned into cinematic pieces with a few token puzzles but otherwise are relatively short and simple compared with the previous challenges.

If I was going to use something from the original Zelda in modern game design, it would be to keep the variety of the weapons and applications. Let the player have many choices, with no one choice being the "Correct" one. Expert players might eventually find a "Best" weapon, but let them work towards that. Even utility items like the Ladder and Monster Bait opened up a variety of strategic choices for defeating foes.

[Noah!]

I liked how the collision detection isn't just based on whether the hitboxes intersected but also on how "sassy" the game engine is feeling at the moment.

It gave combat an added zip that you don't get these days. Because sometimes you just don't know whether your sword's gonna go through the enemy but still miss and now he's humping your corpse!

[Ashkin]

I liked what I played. As Niko said, the open design was done well- it was refreshing to just wander around with no guidance instead of being pushed this way or that. I also liked drawing my own map to go along with the world.

[kukukupo]

I've played it a ton.  Some of my favorite things about Zelda I:

- Non-linear. There are a few roadblocks; but you can do many things in any order you want
- You get to jump right in and play.  You don't see 20 title screens and a 1/2 hour tutorial
- Dungeon design.  I know some people didn't like the design, but I feel it works.  Each dungeon has just enough keys and keeps you looking in the dungeon to find the end.  Sure, some of the hints (bomb walls, walk through walls) are a little weak due to the translation, but the mechanics work well
- Love the level/progression of hearts and items
- Love the 'secrets' in the game.  There is a lot of pride in knowing/remembering where they all are

[Kinimod]

What i don't like about this game is that it doesn't require any thinking to find secrets. I mean, most of the secret caves are in completely arbitrary places and the only way to find them is to bomb any wall there is and to burn any random bush. This becomes even more annoying due to the fact that you can only carry very few bombs with you. Even dungeon 8, which isn't even a secret place, is hidden in a completely random location. In my opinion there should be at least small hints for the secrets.

[Blademasterbobo]

We still have until the end of the month to beat it, right? I doubt I'll do the second part, but (even though I'm starting to really hate the dungeons) I'll probably finish the last two dungeons if we do. Otherwise I guess I can write up a thing on what I played.

[SirNiko]

You can obviously keep on playing it for as long as you like. I dunno when we're going to kick off La Mulana.

I just figured we'd start discussing since the conversation has petered off and I was worried folks were finishing up.

[dustin]

Yeah I'm close to finishing the game but I don't think anything I play now will change my opinions.  The big two seem to be in line with what everyone's saying...

  The openness is great!  It's not just that you can do things out of order but that if your just playing the game without a guide you will do things out of order and that's no problem.  Way different then other zelda games I've played were you often can do dungeons in slightly different order but it's obviously not meant for that.

  some of the secrets are ridiculous.  I've found 1 secret that was just burning some random bush and I'm sure there are more of them but I don't want to wander around burning every single bush looking for random ones.  Same with the walls in the dungeons.  Also I don't like that when I restart a dungeon I only have 3 hearts.  It means I can either beat every dungeon with 3 hearts or grind for hearts every time I die, neither of which is fun.  It just feels like it's adding artificial length to the game.

Combat is good but the sword play is so much smoother/nicer in LttP.  I do love that bombs don't hurt you.  This should be in all 2d zelda games, it makes them a much more interesting item. 

[baconman]

I love how you can't just farm grass and bushes for rupees and hearts. If you're looking for goodies, you either find a secret, or you fight for it. You can't just "duck out" of battling.

[Blademasterbobo]

Pretty much liked / disliked the same things as everyone else. I loved filling in blank spots on the map - definitely my favorite part. I liked the earlier dungeons, but they started getting really annoying and stupid (to the point where I just stopped playing.) I hated stuff like needing bombs to get past certain rooms (welp, time to leave the dungeon and grind for shit. Hope I don't die after I get past that room again!!!)

So basically, now I want to make a Zelda clone focused on exploring shit, and I hate the dungeons in this game.