Shalnor Legends: Sacred Lands

I thought I was getting another serviceable Zelda clone, but instead, this whole thing just smells a bit too much of old shareware to me.

I am someone who has played every Shalnor Game. I want to leave this review here because the creator hasn't had a lot of people giving good back on his games and I wanted to contribute something. To start off these games have heart. I am big fan of these style adventure games and love the legend of Zelda and playing these games I can feel the love for them here too. However it isn't very good. A lot is improved on in many ways in later games. Here there is mandatory grinding for required skills to progress, repetitive music and mobs and huge hp bars on boss which create a very mundane experience. For the most part this is removed from the latest game the Silverwing Saga and I can legitimately say every game after this shows improvement however I would like to point out some problems I have as a player and potential improvements. There are too many large mob encounters. Most fights are about managing a large group and this becomes really repetitive with time. Making interesting enemies that have dynamic solutions would be really beneficial to the experience here. The same goes for bosses having something large health bars make battles ones of attrition rather than skill and again, get boring. focusing on something dynamic that maybe uses a mechanic taught in a dungeon is a fun way to reward the player for paying attention. Even if it's short it can still be fun and challenging if done creatively. Moving away from expensive skill trees was good. Having some upgrades can be fun and change how we interact with a game but requiring that upgrade can cause a unnecessary time sync when it's out of the way or requires a lot of money. It's even fine to have really strong items that require some grinding but it's better when these are rewards that are behind fun challenges that essentially reward the player for doing something harder than what is ahead anyway and they can choose if they want to use it. Which brings me to items in general. They aren't used very much except as battle options. Items don't have to like bombs in old Zelda games where there are random secrets everywhere but they should be there to solve a problem. Creating items and obstacles that are better or solved with those items is satisfying especially when clever solutions are used. The puzzles in these games are mostly just getting past traps and it is extremely repetitive. They are better in later games but having something that requires a thoughtful approach that isn't just about walking past a spike or fire trap is more engaging. Puzzles, riddles, and dynamic room setups are staples of this genre for a good reason. Games like Tunic and Idle Dew 2 do a really good job of distinguishing themselves by introducing either unique solutions to puzzles or just by approaching puzzles in really interesting ways in general. That is everything I currently wanted to say. To the developer if he's reading this, I want to say I appreciate your attempts in making these games and I see your improvement in every one you've released. I hope this review is seen as constructive.