2
« on: September 10, 2016, 09:30:38 PM »
Important Note: The following comments are based on the first version of the game, not v2. If any of these comments do not apply to version 2, please disregard them.
This game... is something. An attempt was made, I suppose.
Let's start from the top. The first screen full of traps didn't exactly give me a good impression, since the traps were relatively bog-standard ones in the form of "a thing flies at you from somewhere", and having six of them in quick succession like they are arranged is irritating. Admittedly, this point in particular is perhaps the most subjective I'll make.
After this screen, we get a stage select? If that first screen was meant to be an intro stage, it really wasn't much of one.
The death pit on the right hand side of the stage select is unnecessary and I would recommend removing it.
The first Zelda screen has a bunch of invisible blocks, one of which being required to progress (and is not indicated whatsoever) and all the others existing to indicate the path you just took was the wrong way and then kill you on a nearby spike. Figuring out which way was correct was quite the tricky thing as the drop in question didn't look possible (to me, anyway), seemed to be rather precise, and ended with an unfriendly landing into what seemed to be a 16-pixel gap.
The next screen is just as bad, but in a very different way. The platform cycles are appalling. Even if you manage to catch the first platform - which is indeed doable - you have to wait for the second platform to come back. This takes a good 10 seconds. The platforms could easily be arranged such that they crossed together on the first cycle after entering the room without having to resort to only barely being able to catch the first platform.
The boomerang thrower enemy (I forget his name) is the only real problem of the screen after. He and the darknuts in a later screen are awful, if only because they can turn around whenever they feel like it. This is especially annoying when it comes to the three darknuts in one corridor, since you cannot predict when they will turn, and just have to hope that they don't change direction when you're over them.
Other than that there are the bosses... and oh boy.
Aquamentus is not too bad when you get used to him, but his random movements around the room can lead to some very irritating situations where you can't damage him safely for some time. The surprise barrage of shots near the end can also cause problems. A low-quality boss overall. Ganon blows that out of the water, though. He appears wherever he likes and shoots at you. This wouldn't be an issue except he's invisible - which while true to the source material, is incredibly irritating - and the fact that the locations of the platforms in the room are unclear. It seems you placed grey tiles to make the skull shape and then didn't think to differentiate some tiles to show the player where the blocks are. It feels extremely cheap, and to be honest I stopped at the Ganon boss because I couldn't take it.
As an important aside, the bosses can crash the game by firing an aimed projectile after you die, which I really hope is the fix mentioned in Version 2.
All in all, a bad game.