Completed both islands in 39 minutes, taking my time.
Similar to Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but is very bare bones. The only items I saw in the two islands were the boomerang, the bombs, and the life potion (a la Link's Awakening). There was a Magic Potion, but I never saw any items that used the Magic Meter. The only way to use coins as far as I could tell were through buying the Life Potion from the old man in the cottage.
Your sword can't be charged like in Legend of Zelda, but rather than tapping the wall with the sword like in Legend of Zelda, you can swing at walls, and if they're bombable, there's a sound that plays.
Very low variety of mobs; most are analogous to other mobs. Most of them have very similar behaviour, and dealing with them gets boring over time.
The amount of content is low enough that the maps could be marketed as "an example map" if the game itself were a modding tool to create islands and bosses.
Solid 6.5/10. Worth $1, but probably not any more than that.
Comments for dev:
-Some treasure chests on the second island can become impossible to reach. (I'm assuming the islands are randomly generated?) https://imgur.com/a/0C9NuUW Heres a pair of them I couldn't get to.
-The sword has an oddly short range. I kept taking preventable damage from the second island's boss because you need to be pixel-perfect to hit the tentacles/scorpion tails, and falling into the water automatically pushed you forward slightly and caused you to get hit. Certain mobs, like the cyclops, also stop just before the range of your sword to hit you, which can get rather frustrating. Even trying to hit regular mobs can cause preventable damage due to how large their hurtboxes are. Because of this, rather than moving into them while trying to hit them, combat becomes "let go of all movement" and just standing there and swinging while the enemies walk into you.
Variety is very low. Here are the mobs I can recall seeing off the top of my head:
-Crab. It walks randomly.
-Not-Octorok squid creature. It walks randomly.
-Bat. It floats randomly.
-Slime. It moves randomly.
-Cyclops. It chases you and tries to club you. Its club has a longer range than your sword.
-Skeleton Warrior. It chases you and tries to shank you.
-Lizardman. It chases you and tries to stab you.
-Ghost. It moves randomly, but then attempts to teleport onto your location.
-Giant Frog Boss (used as a miniboss in the second island)
-Tree Mimic. It's an unmoving face on a tree that shoots a fast-moving projectile at you when you come close.
-Scorpion-tail Tentacle. It does nothing until you come close, then after a few seconds of windup, it swings around in a circle.
-Giant Squid Boss
Other than the bosses who have their own mechanics;
-The crab and squid creature, and slime are analogous.
-The bat just floats around randomly, which is pretty much analogous to the crab, squid, and slime.
-The Cyclops, Skeleton Warrior, and Lizardman are analogous, walking at you and trying to hit you. Lizardmen can swim.
-The tree mimic just exists to annoy you, and is more a trap than a mob.
-The only functionally different creature is the Ghost, which attempts to teleport onto your square.
In essence, despite having all of these mobs, behaviourally, the game functionally only has 3-4.
To compare; in Link's Awakening, before you even enter the very first dungeon, you already saw Sea Urchins, Octoroks, Moblins, a single Moblin Guard, and Zols, and if you optionally explored, you would also see Leevers, Sand Crabs, Like Likes, Goponga Flowers, and that monkey that throws coconuts at you. Most of these have significantly different AI, and act differently:
-Sea Urchins stand completely still, and are fodder.
-Octoroks move and stop randomly, and if they happen to see you, they fire a rock at you. Analogous to the Moblin.
-Green Zols are hidden in specific squares, and jump out when you get close. They first very slowly move, then pause before doing a large leap to the player, then pausing again. Red Zols are similar, but attacking them turns them into two Gels, that follow the same AI, but do no damage, instead slowing you for a few seconds before jumping back out.
-Leevers burrow up from underground, chase you a little, then burrow back down.
-Sand Crabs move very quickly in the horizontal axis and move slowly in the vertical axis. They attempt to chase the player, but often overshoots, or moves in a random direction after their initial chase.
-The Moblin Guard chases you, and your sword bounces off his.
-Like-Likes trap you, and you have to D-Pad around a bunch to get out of their entrapment. They also eat your shield.
-Goponga Flowers are basically invulnerable walls until later.
-The monkey is invulnerable until much later, and throws coconuts at you.
Atop this, there are also the invulnerable Cuccos and Mutts in town, who both have their own behaviour as well.
All of these, *before* the first dungeon. The dungeon itself is no slouch either:
In the first dungeon alone, they introduced:
-invulnerable Hardhat Beetles who chase you. You can only defeat them by knocking them back into bottomless pits.
-Stalfos, the skeletons that normally move very slowly, but jump away from you when you swing at them, before throwing a bone at you.
-Keese, the bats that fly in a small circle when you approach them, and stay still otherwise.
-Mini Moldorms, the worm that moves randomly, quickly, and doesn't stop, mostly in curves.
-invulnerable Spiked Beetles that move slowly and randomly, but when you get within a cardinal direction of them, they accelerate at you really quick. The only way to make them vulnerable for a few seconds is to block their charge with the Shield.
-Three-of-a-Kind, the puzzle mob that shows changing playing-card-suits on their chest, which pauses when you hit them, and they only die when all three are paused on the same suit.
-The Spike Roller Miniboss, that pushes a large spikey cylinder towards you, that you can kill with no damage only if you have the Dungeon Item, the Roc's Feather.
Despite the number of creatures, most of them behave vastly differently to the other mobs, and some of them even need specific items for you to kill them. The Legend of Zelda games feel like an adventure, rather than the short tour this game feels like. Rather than just adding different enemy sprites, this game needs significantly different enemy behaviours for better variety.
This lack of variety is exacerbated by the fact that everything resets once you beat the boss, and you have to start a new game on a new island to see the other content, losing your previous items. The problem with this is that using a bunch of different items for maneuverability to get through dungeons or in their puzzles was key in Legend of Zelda games, despite the Dungeon's specific item being favored in basically all cases. See: Bow-activated eye-buttons, Magic Power-activated lights, Pegasus Boots + Roc's Feather for a 3-tile jump, Power Bracelet-activated push-tiles for buttons...
I don't expect this game to have excessive variety given its price tag, but if later islands don't improve on this, every island will feel very similar other than their boss.
tl;dr
-sword too short
-need more enemy behaviour variety
-need more items
-need enemies that interact differently when said items are used
-reset after every island is bad idea
