Late review time. “Mystic Isle” by Moonblaze is an average tileset which attempts to look classic game style, but doesn’t really make it happen. Let’s take a look.
GRAPHIC QUALITY: Moonblaze uses an 8-bit drawing style, which I approve of, but which only works so well in cases like this. Some things look good – the vines and gems especially – but the main part of the tileset, the ground itself, suffers a little. Simply put, the ground is ugly. The grass isn’t too bad, though kind of dull, but the soil is a single shade of unknown-color, and that doesn’t work. It kind of looks like a resized version of Swamps, but not as good. I really wanted to see some sort of soil texture here, as a single color rarely works. Ironically, the next level setting lead to Colonius, which uses the technique much better.
Meanwhile, as I said, a lot of things look good. All the brown vine stuff is very nice to look at, and if the rest of the tileset looked like that, it would be great. The green wood, though, poles and sucker tubes, ends up looking like a simple gradient with no variety, and it’s all flat surfaces. Not too appealing to look at. Rocks are a mixed bag, and the wooden platforms look pretty good, though again a little too small.
Pros: Very nice vine stuff, wooden platforms not too bad, gems are cool.
Cons: Soil is pretty ugly, too many straight lined gradients.
Rating: 6.6
MASKING: High marks here. Everything is masked perfectly, and the author even was nice enough to create some cool rock-leaning-against-wall structures which the player can walk up and down upon. There are really only two masking parts I’m not thrilled with. The giant glowing white gem tiles are automasked, which could cause stucking troubles in some levels, and the big mask message messes up a lot of the background eyecandy tiles which could otherwise be used for fun stuff. I’m also concerned that the wooden platform tiles may be masked a little thin, but that’s not a big issue.
Pros: Mostly good, the leaning rock stuff is fun.
Cons: A few automask issues, and the wooden platforms may be too thin.
Rating: 7.8
ORIGINALITY/VARIETY: There is very little to set this tileset apart from any other nature tileset, and especially from others that Moonblaze has made. The gem stuff is kind of cool, but there’s little reason other than that to use this, as almost everything in Mystic Isle is available in Swamps, only bigger and better. Isle is designed for a certain level (or set of levels… whatever) in TDI2, but other than that, it’s not too interesting.
As for variety… well, the tileset does offer a number of things. Basic ground, tiny wooden platforms, cave eyecandy (with no tile support at ALL – you have to use layer 5), event tiles, and fun gem stuff. I am, however, missing slopes. The basic ground has no slopes, unless you count the tilted rocks, which would become really old after seeing even two of them in a row. Levels made with this tileset will feel squared off, which is really pretty annoying.
Pros: Decent environment, lots of cool eyecandy things, well-made background eyecandy, etc.
Cons: Bad slope situation, and little that is new or different.
Rating: 7.5
TILE PLACEMENT: Pretty much everything in the tileset is placed logically, though there are a few random eyecandy tiles which should probably be placed closer to their base. Having the hook inserted horizontally is also kind of weird.
Rating: 8.0
OVERALL: This is not a bad tileset, but it’s hideously overrated, and kind of boring. If you want to have fun with single player and weird triggers and in-depth storylines, this tileset might be good, but for most levels there are better options out there. Still, it’s well put together and has a lot of features. A mixed bag.
Pros: Cool stuff, not badly drawn for the most part, especially as it was done in Paint.
Cons: No normal slopes, some tiles look kind of ugly, particularly the soil itself.
Rating: 7.2
(Edit: Hi, Moonblaze. If you check my review you’ll see that I noticed your tilted rocks, and said that they would look really boring if you had several in a row. I’ll admit that I didn’t mention the bridge things, but you’ll also notice that I said “the BASIC GROUND”, not “NO SLOPES AT ALL”.)
Tileset, by 
