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A lot of really great things in this hack! The commitment to the Banjo Universe is apparent and the game is a completely new experience on the original Zelda formula. However, there are ways to softlock yourself in rooms where, if you do not have the ladder, you cannot escape as the doors close behind you and you are too far away from any enemy to kill you. This has happened to me in Level 7 in specific.

As of this review I've just finished the first quest, and let me tell you, I loved it! The story, overworld, dungeons, graphics, and secrets were all new, even the music! The difficulty was in between that of the Zelda Outlands hack and the original game. Because my play style is, "Explore as much overworld as possible first, then beat dungeons" it made the hack a lot easier. For one reason...

SPOILERS!

In this hack every Heart Container or "HoneyComb" is found in the overworld. I ended up finding all of them except two, and got the Magical Sword or "Hyper Kazooie" by the time I beat the 2nd dungeon! That may be my only nitpick about this hack, they aren't found in dungeons so you can exploit that and make the rest of the game easy by having the Magical Sword or "Hyper Kazooie" very, VERY, early on. I know it was a design choice, and most people don't have knowledge of every possible secret tile you can find in Zelda 1, but that did un-balance the hack for me. Not to say I didn't enjoy the exploration in finding them all that's for sure, but for those reading, if you want the best experience you should beat the next dungeon as soon as you find it. That way you don't overpower yourself.

Other than that, I loved the dungeon designs. I died of laughter when I went to Level-9 and saw those "corrupted abomination" enemies! It wasn't a glitch it was just because Charade wanted the final area to be a boss rush before the final boss, despite the enemy preset limitations of the Levels, haha. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but Level-8 was my favorite! The secret to finding the Red Ring or "Red Trophy" was so cool and satisfying, for a second there when the Mole guy from Banjo-Kazooie said, "That's all folks." and gave me 1 Rupee or "Music Note" I was like, "Dang, was Charade trolling with all these rooms?" But I didn't fall for it! ;) Also, I never found the Magic Rod, I always wondered where it was up until the final boss, luckily it isn't a necessary item though.

If anything for dungeons, the cracked walls in dungeons should've been an optional add-on patch, because you already knew there was a secret there before having enough bombs. Takes the "secretive-ness" out of it. Again, I know it was an intended design choice, and that's just my opinion. Most people will love the added cracked walls, might be iffy for them if they are like me.

All in all, the hack was amazing, I loved the graphics, music & sound effect changes, and the rhymes & lines for the characters that Charade came up with. Everything about this hack revives the rush and memory of that first Zelda 1 experience, with a Banjo-Kazooie spin on things. If you loved the original game, you without a doubt will love this too, and if you love Banjo-Kazooie, you'll double love this game!

I easily and highly recommend it.

this hack is great and has lots of things but sadly none of the emus ive played it in have saved my progress

I got a chance to play Legend of Banjo and it's a very good hack. The overworld and dungeon levels were designed very well.

The only problem I found is that this game cannot remember game save progress after shutting down the game and loading the game again, meaning all my progress is lost. I have to use save states to save & load my game. Hopefully that will be fixed in the next version.

I still recommend playing this game though.

Like the previous reviewer of the game, I didn't have any "Banjo" experience going into this hack. I've been watching a lot of LoZ and Zelda II randomizer races and wanted to start trying out some of the hacks we've got here and maybe see if I've got what it takes to compete (sadly, I think my patience may be lacking).

I actually had a lot of fun playing this hack, using my newly acquired Zelda skills learned by watching some of the best speedrunners around, I made pretty short work of dungeons 1 through 8 considering everything is different and it's not just a skin hack here. I started thinking that randomizer speedruns might possibly be in my future...

Then I got to dungeon 9 and it destroyed me (and my patience).

Holy crap that got hard... quick! Unlike the other reviewer who didn't seem to think 9 was hard, I ended up doing something I rarely ever do which is try out game genie codes just so I could see the ending. I actually did this because I thought I had done a bad patch job because of the aesthetics of level 9. I won't ruin them here, but just say that I spoke with Charade in PM and this was how the level was designed to be. I suggested he should put out an update patch where one of the characters were in the dungeon to tell you something like "Don't blow on your cartridge. Everything is as planned". I think it would fit the lighthearted comedy of the rest of this hack rather well and clear up any confusion for those who see that and freak out.

Also, unlike the other reviewer, now that I know that 9 played exactly as intended, I have to disagree about level 9 not being well thought out. I thought it was a great "Boss Rush" mode style final level that is somewhat reminiscent of the Mega Man franchise. It's utilized by an entirely unique way for LoZ games to use keys that Charade has going on with this hack.

Though I think the difficulty of the hack gets ramped up far too high in the 1st quest's 9th dungeon, I feel that Charade did a great job here and has a talent for level design that could be an inspiration to other hackers out there.

Thanks for sharing.

I completed the 1st Legend of Banjo quest last night, and have very much enjoyed this LoZ hack. The dungeons and overworld were all new, with some well thought out creativity in their design. I'd compare the difficulty level of the 1st quest to be similar to the original LoZ.

I haven't played any Banjo games prior and am not familiar with the series, so the theme is almost entirely lost on me. There didn't seem to be any outside knowledge that I needed in order to play this.

There were very few graphical bugs I noticed, and absolutely nothing that impacted the play-ability.

(no spoilers) In Q1, level 8 was extremely well laid out and challenging. It seemed like some very serious thought was given to that level. Level 9, on the other hand, seemed less thought out. L9 had some extremely odd looking enemies, which was fun, but the flow of room sequences was too easy, and I accidentally beat the final guy before seeing half of the level, or finding the red ring.

The only thing that I disliked was having to find ALL of the honey (heart) containers out in the overworld. None are awarded for defeating bosses in the dungeons. Obviously that was a design choice, and I respect that, but it made solving the dungeons less desirable for me, and added to the need to for more grinding for stuff in the overworld. That's just my own preference.

I've only just started the 2nd quest, which apparently has no sword. It is incredibly challenging to grind for rupees, but I am enjoying the challenge. I did once "complete" the original LoZ once with no sword, at least as far as you can go since the sword is required to fight Gannon.

Overall - This hack is extremely well done, and I highly recommend it to anyone that loves LoZ. Thanks for Charade for making this.