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[WelcomeToAwesomeness]

  next time use spoiler tags dude!!

[Fallsburg]

Ok, so I've played a little bit, and it is the first time that I have played this game since kindergarten, so it's been ~23 years, enough time for most of my memories of the game to evaporate (at least about concrete things, I remember some loose details).
Thoughts:

1) I don't think I ever knew about the ability to trade bombs/keys as I think I always explored every dungeon to its fullest, using all available keys.  I also didn't realize that one could take keys into different dungeons, and in fact since that is gone in all of the later Zeldas, I think I assumed that was the way it had always been.  But I'm a huge fan of it.  It allows people with more knowledge/curiosity to find shortcuts, but it allows anyone (I'm assuming that if I can beat the game at 5, then it should be accessible to just about everyone) to play through the game.

2) The world is very small. A lot smaller than I remembered, but that's ok. Because a lot of the screens look pretty darn similar, and the geography can be a little hard to follow without the physical map.

3) Combat is pretty dour.  You are pretty clunky in the game, and I feel it is pretty hard to avoid getting hit (unless you just don't engage in combat).  I had forgotten how much the holding out of your sword/spin attack really makes a difference in making LttP easier/more fluid in its combat.



Temporary conclusion:
In some ways this game is better in some ways than in my memory (the bomb/key thing, the need for exploration and trial/error) and worse in others (the clunky controls, the baffling "clue", the sameiness of some of the screens).  I feel that a game that combines the best parts of this and LttP would probably be the last game I ever need to play.  So, someone get on that (or perhaps I should).

[Dragonmaw]

Does anyone know any top-down games like Zelda except with an emphasis on fighting enemies and not on puzzles/NPCs/villages/dialogue/grinding? I only know of Nazo no Murasame Jo, but surely there are more?

illusion of gaia
terranigma
soul blazer
alundra
the ys games
crystalis
guardian legend
lagoon (has some grinding)
blood omen: legacy of kain

there are tons more, that's just a start

To note, one of the Ys games was just released on Steam today

http://store.steampowered.com/app/207320/

[s0]

and it's a good one too!

[SirNiko]

Huh. Wikipedia says that the english translation was actually purchased from a fan translation group. That's kind of refreshing.

[Capntastic]

One thing that I love about LoZ is the sound effects, and how despite being pretty abstracted, they indicate immediately what sort of effect they are.  The sword noise, the 'you got hit' noise, and the ever-famous 'you are low on life' bleeps all come across clean and quick.  Sound design is one of the little things that, for me, makes or breaks classic games, since in they will set up shop in the back of your mind and strongly dictate how 'into it' you can get, at least for me.

[dustin]

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

1.  The entrance was cool but the clues were to vague
2.  I needed to blow up so many random walls.  One of which was not even on the map!  I'm supposed to be able to trust the game not have it cheat.  I was just placing bombs randomly.
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.
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.
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.
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.

[baconman]

The point of L7 is to feature a lot of enemies from L1-3, L1 in particular, to demonstrate how much tougher you've gotten since then. And yeah, the sneakily placed room is pretty mean, although if you recall how you found L8, it kinda makes sense to give you an infinite-uses candle.

[SirNiko]

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

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

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

1.  The entrance was cool but the clues were to vague
2.  I needed to blow up so many random walls.  One of which was not even on the map!  I'm supposed to be able to trust the game not have it cheat.  I was just placing bombs randomly.
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.
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.
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.
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.

i agree with all these points; level 7 is the "black sheep" of zelda1's dungeons. it's a pretty strange place

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (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.