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This hack has several different major changes to the overworld that make it fresh and new with a fun pathing to complete the game and thankfully the map is good enough to get by and it was fun to explore. Dungeons are intuitive and fresh, they never really felt too long or short, and I never got so frustrated with where to go that I wanted to quit or save playing for another time.

There aren't many graphical changes but the some that are there are fun, minus how link looks directly at the camera. Very minor graphical glitches on occasion but I really understood where the hacker was going and what they intended for the game to look like in terms of design and where to go.

All in all I would recommended it for anyone who has played the original and wants something new and fair in challenge.

Introduction

Now that I have completed A Link to the Islands, I found this Wind Waker inspired hack to be a fascinating concept and intrigued me to try it out for myself. Along the way, I have noticed a number of issues that need to be worked on as well as areas that could be improved upon. I will address them below:

Game-play Review

Each dungeon received a significant increased in difficulty as you progress, which lines up according to the Zelda format. The addition of the ASM hacks was an improvement to the game to be able to explore more freely with this layout. The graveyard being more useful was a great addition, it reminded me of Link Awakening DX and became more than a space. The lack of indicators on the map on where the dungeons could be found was a fun concept because it forced you to speak to anyone in order to find them and how. This concept felt similar to the NES version of Zelda, where you are free to explore almost any dungeon you want, even though you will face obstacles because of it. It was a fun challenge. It was an interesting concept to add the magic maze to get to the next dungeon, as long as the answer for it was easily assessable somewhere on the map. In this case, it was.

It was a great idea to have the Minish Cap Link, but why did he have to look like he had a bad sun tan? It's very off-putting when you have to play like that throughout the whole game. The world map itself was an intriguing concept at first, but as I began exploring, it didn't feel as open and immersive as I would have liked. It felt empty and unmemorable, which is unfortunate because there was potential with this map to be had. The open exploration in this world map can be difficult to navigate when you are constantly looking out for a way to not be soft lock because of a glitch or improper tile placement. The amount of skeleton knights is insane because you only have so many bombs unless you make money to wish the fairy more bombs. There are a wide variety of enemies that don't only have to be skeletons that you could utilize more. After reaching the dark world, you are only given a small portion of the world to explore, which is disappointing considering the potential it could have. Along the way, you will discover that most of the equipment will be found in one location, which I found disappointing. The main reason is that it was given to me too easily, and I prefer to work for it. This is why it is important from my perspective to utilize both maps.

Writing Review

The narrative being told here has been decent. I've noticed that sometimes the writing sounds closer to being the original game rather than being its own story. I have also noticed that Ganon mentions the wizard as if we fought him twice, but he never appears in the game.

Suggestions

– Adding a Read-Me Log of where items are and a Change Log of what was changed in the original game to make things clearer.

– You could extend the islands to the dark world by using lava and the Cane of Somaria as a form of travel.

– The dark world's seas could also be transformed into a huge swamp.

– Optimize the use of both maps to expand exploration and improve item placement.

– The water ripples should be polished to look more consistent with each other, instead of looking like you are swimming in two different waters.

Conclusion

After reviewing this story, I actually enjoyed it to a degree. I believe this hack as a lot of room for improvement. This hack is intended for anyone who is interested in trying the game, regardless of their experience. I'll recommend this hack to anyone who wishes to try out, even though there are a considerable number of issues that's need to be addressed. This is considered to be the final version; I hope that this hack will be revised one day to reach the potential I believe it to have.

I remember when Darklink7884 decided to pick this game up in 2015 when it was "Lyra Islands" with a Wind Waker like touch by SePH. I also remember seeing little snippet's of work he did of this on his channel from time to time. So to see he finally got this done and out of the way and waiting for him to tidy up a few bugs he missed I thought it was time for me to try this out for myself

First I'd like to mention is the music mix up is great touch up. not the same as your original ALTTP music but fits well also with the custom Minish Cap Link sprite he added to this. Most of the game overworld is pretty much the same as Vanilla, but with a couple extra island like aspects you can go and explore. It was nice though how he added extra texts to the NPC's so I wasn't lost on where to go like other ALTTP ROMs had where I had to run around until I just stumbled across a new area, also helped with finding extra items I needed to help me with in later dungeons

Adding a text box to the dungeons was another nice touch. Some of the dungeons are quite challenging and nicely custom made and with added puzzles, makes you second guess things, some also had a bit to much back-tracking involved into them though (I can see Parallel Worlds & Goddess of Wisdom inspired most of these dungeons) Ice Palace & Turtle Rock were horrid, at least it made note for you to come prepared with Blue medicine or else you were indeed to suffer

Seeing though not much of the overworld map changed until later sections of the game can throw some people off, but the dungeons and extra mini cave/dungeons really redeemed itself with this mode This took me just over 5 hours to beat with just Crystals to collect and no Dark World added, This did have some of the Wind Waker aspect I was looking for, and it was great to see this in a ALTTP rom, We will never know what SePH had in store for us with this ROM when he decided not to proceed with it, but Darklink did a great job in my eyes of bringing back something from the dead and giving it life for some of us to enjoy

PS: Royal Crypt had a nice call back to Parallel Worlds Saria's Garden but more sadistic in this. and Forest Maze were my favorite dungeons

7.5/10

I dont know what Seph may have originally intended this to be. But whatever it was, I wish we had that rather than what we got. I did complete the game. Its beatable. But its ugly and full of bugs, barriers missing hit boxes, its basically a watered down LTTP with much of the designs and overworld still matching vanilla. The dungeons redesigns are ok, but all of them have some of the same enemy usage and puzzles over and over and over again. Hey! you realize I only have so many bombs to use on respawning stalfos knights right?

and why can't I have a stronger sword sooner? maybe temper the fighter sword. Smithy is featured here, why can he be put to use? and maybe a double magic while we are at it (if its in the game i never found it).

The map is atrocious. it doesn't even match the overworld design making link appear like he's right in the middle of water when he is on an island.

the only thing good here is the dungeons. some have a few bugs and enemy placements are just not fun (not to mention the oversaturation of kill all rooms and enemies holding keys). But the dungeons designs themselves were decent.

And considering this was suppose to be a wind waker inspired hack that sounded cool. Kinda takes the wind out of the sails (no pun intended) when you realize that there is nothing in this hack that makes me even think Wind Waker.

This hack should have stayed dead.

I played up to and including the first Crystal dungeon in this, as well as a bit of overworld exploration afterwards, so I never really made it super far, maybe the hack gets a massive increase in quality and design ethos further in, but I have my doubts. As it stands I can not really recommend this hack to anyone.

The best parts of this hack are the things which are simple unchanged from vanilla A Link to the Past, of which there are a lot of. There are a lot of quirks to how this was made that simply don't make for a great experience, even as early as hyrule castle. One of the worst examples was finding the first key in hyrule castle, eventually after going over all of the dungeon twice I realize that I must have missed a chest spawn in one of the rooms because it's "kill all enemies", except it's not just all six enemies in that room, you also need to kill all the enemies in the adjacent room. This is the sort of thing you might *never* realize unless you are privy to how AlttP stores/manages rooms in the code.

The hack is also excessively bad at providing good directions for where to go next, this wouldn't be a huge concern if it weren't for the world being excessively dull and large to traverse. Going from the left side of the world to the right requires going through a cave that is completely devoid of anything to do in it, but it's still really long for some reason, so it just adds boring walking. And when you're not quite sure where exactly you need to go next, that can add quite a bit of tedium trekking back and forth.

The visuals are also pretty bad, Link kinda looks like a mess and there might be a need to look over the palette. The way the world looks is simply way more plain than what you'd expect, with a big lack of detail everywhere, even in level chunks that are otherwise straight up unchanged from the original game. Furthermore, the game seems to constantly bug out about what it should call you, in the first crystal cutscene the maiden simply calls you "AAAAAA", as if the file name bugged out completely or something.

Anyway, I got the Boots in the "cave" after level 1 and realized I needed to go and get the book on the other side of the overworld, since I did not fancy walking all the way back there again (I would already have to make a return trip for where the book was needed), so I hit select and Save & Quit (with the intent to continue from Link's House). This was a bad idea because apparently this hack is bugged to the point where saving don't work everywhere, or it corrupts the file in some way so it can't? I don't know, the only thing I do know is that it didn't save my progress (in fact, the file I had used was now blank). This was kinda the final nail in the coffin for me since I did not fancy replaying everything up till that point again.

Needless to say, I recommend everyone to stay away from this one; And if you decide you want to play it yourself, be sure to use emulator save states to record your progress.

I had a lot of fun playing this hack. It's always exciting to see a new take on this game, and this was no exception. The dungeons are all unique and offer their own challenges, and progression feels natural. It's very good about pointing you in the right direction. You won't spend hours looking for the next dungeon. There are no extreme challenges, but there a few slightly more difficult than the rest puzzles in dungeons that lead to Heart Pieces, which was a neat idea that worked well.

My only complaints as far as the dungeons are concerned was a puzzle in a dungeon where you shoot an arrow into a statue to blow up the wall. There's no indication that I could see where it was possible to do that (It wasn't a blue eyed cyclops like in the original, it looked just like any other). I ended up having to look up a video walkthrough for that one. Looking back, I can see where the spike trap in front is supposed to resemble the shooting gallery, so maybe that's the hint.

The final dungeon was fantastic. It's still a gauntlet like the original, but it also puts a lot more of your puzzle solving skills you've developed to the test, but without overstaying it's welcome. I did have to fight Kholdstare twice there because I took a wrong turn. Another small issue I had throughout the game is if I took a wrong turn, I didn't realize it until I was several rooms away. It didn't take away from my enjoyment, but I felt it worth mentioning.

There's a few bugs here and there, mostly with positioning of Link versus obstacles, but nothing that causes a soft lock. They all fix themselves pretty well. One thing the creators should be aware of is that in level 4, there's a big room that has a bridge with exits to the left and right over your head. There are unintentional openings on the lower level under those doors which leads to being under the map of the next two rooms and lets you go into an "exploration zone".

The end, after the 6th Crystal, feels pretty rushed. All the missing items, save one, are all thrown at you and you go right to the last main dungeon.

Oh, and the magic regen was VERY welcome a couple times.

It was a great hack, and I'm really glad I played it. I'm always on the lookout for hacks of A Link to the Past and I look forward to anything the creators of this will put out, if they keep making them.

First off, The MSU-1 cutscene at the start looked great. I don't know where it's from but the art and voice acting look and sound like professional quality. It certainly beats the CD-i games. The music sounds nice as well, with good instruments and sound that flows together nicely.

I have played through a few initial dungeons and explored the world a decent bit. In spite of the new world map, I can more or less treat it as LttP when searching for locations.

Some good ideas included the access to one of the dungeons, a reference to the NES game. In fact, a lot of the dungeons can be accessed ahead of time, just like the original game (clearing them, however, is a different matter).

However, just like the original title, you no longer see their locations on the overview map so you need to take your own notes on the dungeon locations. This thankfully isn't that bad since the new world is er...simplified.

A lot of the NPCs who provide rumors in exchange for 20 rupees have been repurposed for giving you hints on how to use the hack's new features, which actually IS useful for a first-time player who's patient enough to explore.

Speaking of exploration...some of the boundaries don't block you properly, which caused me to exit the world map and the whole game irrecoverably glitched out as I tried returning to the previous area. Thankfully, I had saved not long before. There was also an issue where a normally land-bound red guard pulled a Jesus and attacked me in the water. Since I was swimming, I was utterly defenseless...and died.

Also, a lot of the world map's new design is simply...boring. There are so many vast areas with empty space and the south-eastern zone has so many unnatural transitions. The only detailed areas are leftovers from the vanilla game, such as Kakariko village or even the Zora home. On top of that, navigation over the main landmass is basically a straight line from point A to B.

As for the dungeons...some are better designed than others. The new internal Hyrule castle design felt much larger than the original castle, which is nice. However, the enemy bomb-throwing knights are clearly not compatible with the area. I have literally watched each and every single one die by suicide. The cannoneers are equally useless as they are used in wide open rooms with no ability to actually aim at you.

The next two dungeons worked well, although they were ultimately solved as their vanilla counterparts were. I liked the new way to acquire the Pegasus boots.

The Sky Tower...I had to backtrack through an animated tile room several times, while trying to solve the dungeon, which was straight-up annoying. It's not even a difficult room, just a forced time-out.

Also, one of the enemy encounters involves Eyegores in a cramped room with conveyor belts all over the place. I assume a LttP expert would clear them easily enough but even for an intermediate player like me, that was a brutal fight. You have to factor in several variables at once. Not only the Eyegores but YOU are moved around while Link goes through his shooting motion. I think such an encounter should have first been presented in a larger area with more room for error as that new encounter makes for a very sharp curve to deal with.

The Royal Crypt is as far as I've played...because I've run out of keys in a closed area and I am completely unable to backtrack. The mirror seemingly no longer exists as I haven't found it anywhere so, as far as I can tell, my only option left is suicide. There were also mandatory tile rooms, spiced up with fireballs.

Overall, I unfortunately can't recommend this hack. It's a good technical showcase of MSU-1 and ASM improvements but the game itself doesn't hold up. The overworld is severely simplified and the dungeons either lack substantial changes to truly call them new dungeons or are frustrating to play through. You might as well play vanilla LttP with, if they exist, standalone patches for MSU-1 and the ASM improvements.

From what I understand, this hack is a finalized version of an old hack by someone else. I would definitely try it again if the maps were polished and the dungeons revised.