It's Dangerous To Go AT ALL: Let's Play Zelda Classic

Oh, I'm sure it's quite popular in the ZC universe. I'm just confused why it wasn't like the level 2 boss instead of, what, level 5?

Looking forward to whatever weird crap they throw at me next level.

For questionable values of weird things.

Meanwhile, I'm masochistically checking out this Third Quest business.

It is Somewhat Absurd in its dungeon difficulty, in the sense that I did not feel prepared for level 1 until I found a heart container and blue ring (this one only makes you wait for level 3 to find the boomerang... locked in a wide open kill room with fireball spitters in the corners and like 8 blue darknuts). So far though it's being pretty good about not throwing anything at me that can't be found in the back half of the second quest. Just... hey could I maybe have some heart containers before dealing with all of this over here?

I am looking forward to McClain tackling the Third Quest too, yes.

I think I said that I plan on at least trying the third quest after this, so maybe spoiler text that.

Nothing really spoilery there but sure, better safe than sorry.

You guys, I just recorded a double-feature of pure, uncut bullshit. This game, you guys. This fucking game.

"What do you mean, "too many projectiles?" I don't understand."

In this episode, Ganon is really glad he has a boomerang, is really annoyed by modified enemies, and is really dead by the end of it.

This level is terrible. I recorded the next video right after this, so I'll upload it tomorrow. Look forward to more stupidity and suffering!

Well, thankfully, the third quest won't throw new enemies that weren't in the original game at you if you decide to LP it.

Unfortunately, it compensates by firing thousands of fireballs at you in extremely cramped quarters and having incredibly obtuse push blocks you'd never think of triggering. You'd better know that blocks can be pushed onto solid tiles in the original game!

This quest's dungeon's mostly follow a similar pattern. Mostly linear, with deviations off the main path to find keys or dungeon items. Wonder if the designer was even aware of it. The HP and damage boosted but otherwise unaltered enemies thing is really popular for ZC quests, and like most things popular among ZC quest makers it's terrible. Makes it feel like your sword and armor upgrades aren't really upgrades at all. You're kind of terrible at fighting darknuts, I've noticed! The next couple dungeons will be magical. Just remember: let them come to you! Their AI is more or less designed to fuck with you if you try to chase them. It's also possible to abuse their shield's hit detection to damage them head-on and walk through them unharmed. But there's no way you'd be forced to do something like that! That would be unreasonable.

If you're going to play another ZC quest after this one, might I recommend something other than the official third quest? That one is the same overworld and sounds like it's even more bullshit than this one. Fireball shooters are the worst thing. Link's Quest for the Hookshot 2 came out semi-recently and does a great job of showing off 2.5's new features. It's amazing and complete horse shit in equal measures. It also cuts out the Zelda 1 style methodical overworld exploration. Progression from dungeon to dungeon is mostly linear, bomb walls are always marked, etc. An example of what the quest's author, Moosh, can do with 2.5's scripting features: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzLQpcH5M68

Link to the quest: http://www.purezc.net/index.php?page=quests&id=373

I was planning on starting the third quest as a bonus video or two and quitting when it got to be too bullshit for me. I don't think I want to jump right into another ZC LP right after this, though I would like to get some suggestions for ones that are (mostly) devoid of bullshit.

I think that reputation is actually pretty undeserved. Again, inspired by this LP, I grabbed this sucker, started from the beginning, as in First Quest, and I'm trying to play through the whole thing (skipping a Second Quest heart container) to make sure I had fresh memories of the original and knew what quirks the ZC engine itself tosses in (there are a few and they are awful).

I still have 5 dungeons to go at this point, so it's entirely possible I'll be proven wrong, but so far anyway, there is a very clear design philosophy here. It's Hard, but it's never BS. Very important distinction.

For instance- Max enemy placement HP boosted ropes in an open room as seen here? Those are absolute, total, this game was created by a hack with no clue what he's doing BS. There is no real way to deal with those. You are going to take a lot of hits and just muscle your way through with a truckload of hearts and medicine and that's all there is to it. The boss of... what was it? Level 2 that had the Gleeok in a room with absolutely no room to maneuver? Also total BS.

What the 3rd quest tends to do fairly constantly is toss out things like wide open blue darknut kill rooms ludicrously early on. That's super hard to deal with because it is impossible to come in with enough HP to just power through, but if you know, generally, how to deal with darknuts, you can get through without taking a hit (unless the monsters randomly wander into one of those rare patterns where they accidentally coordinate to pin you in the corner). There's also a sense of design at hand (again, so far at least), where it doesn't just toss in the max enemy count in every room because it can like this here does. There's a pretty good progression of here's some wimps to farm hearts off, here's a mini-version of the big challenge we're going to toss at you (here's 3 red darknuts and a load bearing blue, in a non-kill room) to practice on, then the main event. Also I could be wrong, but when I ended up continuing from the boss in level 3, I swear every nasty kill room stayed empty on the way back, as mini-bosses do.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to call it "tough but fair" or "reasonable" or anything like that, I had the blue ring and magic shield before the first triforce piece after all, but, again, barring late-onset BS, it feels like it's shouting "Suck less!" not "Screw you!" when I repeatedly die.

That both looks and sounds terrible, honestly.

One thing I realized when this LP here first started is that I actually really really like the basic design philosophy of Zelda 1's overworld, and wish more games would do that sort of thing. You can go (almost) anywhere from the very start, provided you aren't killed along the way. There's a nice macro-level sense of design (the ocean is over here, the mountains are here, watch out for rockslides, there's some old ruins in the forest here, and so on). It's all set up on a nice grid with a crude GPS up in the corner of the screen so you can't really get lost, and it's divided into discreet unambiguous screens (very few of which are hard to reach just by heading directly towards them), which are generally all uniquely distinct little PLACES that stick out (like those two green armos statues flanking the entrance to the green woods, everyone can picture those just from that I assume). And then each of these little places is a very finite area containing at most one single little secret to be found. Seriously, that's great.

The only halfway modern game that comes to mind, Zelda or otherwise, that embraces this sort of approach is Wind Waker. Same basic deal. We have a huge wide open griddy overworld. Each grid space contains 1 island. Poke around that island and there's probably a secret.

Maybe someday someone will design a game that uses this concept in a way that isn't stupid and boring.

The big difference between Third and Fourth Quest, in a non spoilery way?

Third Quest was done entirely by one person.

Fourth Quest combined one mans overworld with another mans dungeons.

I think McClain noted the different feels of the two in the Fourth Quest.

Somebody in a youtube comment said I should try Zelda Randomizer, which from what I've seen, holly shit. Basically, it take all the item locations and completely randomizes it at the start of the quest. Then it has two overworlds (based on the original and second quests, but still shuffled more) and 45 dungeons based on the 5 semi-offical ZC quests (though I'm having troubled finding information on this 5th quest).

I have to be honest, the idea of a randomized Zelda is cool. Kind of a Binding of Issac without the perma-death. But I'm really not sure how I feel about 45 fucking dungeons, especially when the bulk of them are fan-made. I wish there was a way to do with just first or first two normal quests. Oh well.

...I want to try this. Do you have a link handy?

Yo.

So I started with the cane of circle magic killing stuff, and found the magic wand and the wooden sword on the overworld. Basically, if you roll an attack item first you shouldn't have any problem. I'm ignoring the wooden sword because the wand does white sword damage. I'm thinking if I stick to the first and second quest dungeons early this shoudln't really be that hard, but I could get fucked and not get many heart containers. We'll see how it goes!

I also just picked up a cross and have no idea what the hell it does.

E: Also, because there are too many dungeons for more than 9 of them to give you triforces, many of them give you items. I just got the blue ring for beating level 1-1 (level 1 in the first quest). I'm thinking this may be a blessed run, at least early.

HOWEVER, dungeon bossed only drop pieces of hearts, so I'm still at three hearts ...


This is the one I'm playing. There's also "classic" randomizer, but as far as I can tell it's not as good.

It reveals invisible enemies.

Huh. The creator is HeroOfFire? I remember him from the ZC community a long time ago, and he's done a few other creative endeavors as well. Once he made a gauntlet-style quest comprised entirely of dungeons, in which you could make your own avatar, level up, and find dungeons. The game was wildly unbalanced - if you put all your level up points into a single stat, the game became practically trivial, but it was fun.

I haven't seen this before! I'll have to try this out too.

Okay, so I guess my next question is invisible enemies????

Yup, that's a thing that can be done in Zelda Classic. Enemies can be rendered invisible ala the Moas from Adventure of Link.

It's good fun. And by "fun" I mean it makes you want to tear your eyes out if the quest makers are particularly merciless with them.

HAHAHAHA, okay, so beating Level 2-1 just gave me the red ring. This quest is hilariously broken. I still have three hearts and the wooden sword but I have the freaking red ring. I really wish I had been recording this. No way I get this lucking again.

E: huh, so I'm starting to wonder if it's possible to get stuck in this quest. I have gotten lots of cool items, but none of the critical ones, like the candle, flute, or raft. I wonder if I could get to a point where I run out of dungeons I can beat.

E2: Finally decided to call it a night when I got trapped in a room with a digdodger but no whistle. Interesting concept, but it's stretching things a bit too thin, and needed more testing. Still, a fun little distraction. I may come back to it again, but I doubt I would ever want to LP a quest so massively bloated.

In this episode, Ganon gets a delivery, can't find the correct random invisible door, does the worm, and finishes a terrible, terrible dungeon.

I managed to get to the end of dungeon 6 without the stepladder or boss key. To answer your question, yes, you do get stuck if you walk through that wall after the red candle without the stepladder.

This randomizer thing is addicting. It's like the Ancient Cave in Lufia II. Adding roguelike elements to games not originally designed for them turns out strangely well. I didn't have McClain's luck, as I've finished about a thousand dungeons (approximately) and still haven't found any armor rings. I do have a level 5 sword, which kills blue darknuts in a single hit, so it's not all bad. It's interesting that this quest hasn't thrown anything at me as bad as those HP boosted blue ropes, despite drowning you in piles of overpowered equipment.

Try Red Candle vs. Insane Moldorm And then you did.

The more I watch of this the angrier I get at the "person" responsible for these dungeons.

Wait... I don't think responsible is the right word. Let's go with culpable instead.

...do you remember what that was called? That sounds like fun.

As long as they were making this game, they could at least have made it so you can switch items without pausing with some kind of extra button or something.

...they did.

I've mentioned many times that I can use the shoulder buttons, but I don't like having to cycle through all the items, so I usually just go to the submenu. But if you watch closely you'll see my items change many times without pausing.