“Where dreams are born, crushed, and converted to base16”
DekuKnight's Ratings and Reviews
Exploration],
rated by DekuKnight on Apr 23, 2015 (
For the record, this is a review of v1.00
The good:
- Looks great, the new graphics in Lower Norfair etc. are fucking fantastic, the palettes are generally great too, new enemies graphics look good on average
- Mechanically sound beside the few things I already dislike in Project Base
- Item progression is pretty fast
- If you're good at vanilla you can get stuff early/sequence break (lol) which is nice
- The escape sequence was kinda fun. I don't mind either 'escape the zone in the quickest, most direct way' nor 'escape the fucking planet' e.g. Prime 2-style, so this isn't a huge plus or a greatly welcome change but it's implemented pretty well.
The bad:
- The difficulty I would not consider vanilla. Enemies are beefier in general and deal more too which can definitely be a chokepoint when exploring for stuff.
- Fucking super missiles took me forever to find
- Fucking power bombs took me forever to find
- Fucking Draygon, seriously. Too little space, the room is weirdly shaped which fucks a lot with the player, especially if they're straight up coming off vanilla, cannons can't be disabled afaik (not being able to cheaply grapple him to death is fine), approaches from solid tiles, if you screw attack (which you're doing constantly because of the cannons) the jizz he fucks off and starts swooping again. His hitbox is small and you can't plasma through his back. Overall the fight feels really fucking cheap as you can either try to tank it (he'll tank you better), try to avoid it (he'll avoid you better) or carefully try to juggle these techniques (which turns playing an otherwise good hack into a game of stress management). People have similar criticisms for Phantoon but once you get him down, you actually get him down. Ridley ended up being the easiest fight (Mother Brain doesn't count lol)
- The map is compact (which lessens readability from the map screen) but has a lot of artifical barriers which you need items for (supers, power bombs, speed booster) which leads to a lot of complex backtracking around areas you feel you should be able to open up, especially when on the hunt for said items. This gives a bit of a Fusion-y feel, but less compartimentalized. It gives you a lot of red herrings in the sense of item tiles and gate tiles which you'll probably have to backtrack for. I think this could be addressed by something like Drewseph's map tiles and perhaps even SMRA's hint system (which would do you a huge favor in both backtracking and oversight), though I'm not sure if either are public. This segues into...
- The level design. Overall pretty good, you integrated the graphics with the actual rooms really well. The one thorn in my side this has given me it the few one-way doors, some of which there are two in a single room. One way doors lead to frustration and often needless backtracking. Here and there you took a hint from SMRA and had permanently removable obstacles, which I'm a big fan of as, again, this improves the flow of the areas and the world. Removing the same barriers again and again in any of the vanilla Metroid games always felt like an unnecessary chore, but I think it has to be said that you did apply that kind more. This sort of segues into...
- The ammo system... I feel like vanilla did a good job with seperate ammo counts. It made sure that you were always equipped for whatever lies ahead. Unifying that and doubling the cost each 'tier' has you be real careful with your ammo count, which I think hinders exploration, and that's what this hack is all about. Even with near 300 ammo, I felt like I had way too little to deal with Draygon properly. Once you get all beams you feel like you should be really powerful, and you are, to most enemies and Ridley, but juggling that psychological value with switching off to ammo weapons and seeing that counter lowering real quick is frustrating.
- The gate system... I don't know what I'd do personally. Final guardians are reached either by disabling generators or collecting the 8 McGuffins or beating all the other bosses, or just plain progressing through the levels and the game. Final bosses and how to reach them is a concept designers have to innovate in more and more, or do exceedingly good executions of what groundwork there already is. This isn't a big minus, but I do have to say that exploring and backtracking for gates could have felt better overall as they quickly become one of the main goals.
Overall, I'd give this hack 3.5 Chozo orbs out of 5 if I could. It's generally well excuted and a good experience to play, and I think it could be even better if it improved on some of the key criticisms. I'd definitely recommend playing it and finishing it, but 100%ing it might be a bit of a stretch for most. Go take your well-deserved rest and praise, and I think we're all looking forward to whatever you come up with next.
The good:
- Looks great, the new graphics in Lower Norfair etc. are fucking fantastic, the palettes are generally great too, new enemies graphics look good on average
- Mechanically sound beside the few things I already dislike in Project Base
- Item progression is pretty fast
- If you're good at vanilla you can get stuff early/sequence break (lol) which is nice
- The escape sequence was kinda fun. I don't mind either 'escape the zone in the quickest, most direct way' nor 'escape the fucking planet' e.g. Prime 2-style, so this isn't a huge plus or a greatly welcome change but it's implemented pretty well.
The bad:
- The difficulty I would not consider vanilla. Enemies are beefier in general and deal more too which can definitely be a chokepoint when exploring for stuff.
- Fucking super missiles took me forever to find
- Fucking power bombs took me forever to find
- Fucking Draygon, seriously. Too little space, the room is weirdly shaped which fucks a lot with the player, especially if they're straight up coming off vanilla, cannons can't be disabled afaik (not being able to cheaply grapple him to death is fine), approaches from solid tiles, if you screw attack (which you're doing constantly because of the cannons) the jizz he fucks off and starts swooping again. His hitbox is small and you can't plasma through his back. Overall the fight feels really fucking cheap as you can either try to tank it (he'll tank you better), try to avoid it (he'll avoid you better) or carefully try to juggle these techniques (which turns playing an otherwise good hack into a game of stress management). People have similar criticisms for Phantoon but once you get him down, you actually get him down. Ridley ended up being the easiest fight (Mother Brain doesn't count lol)
- The map is compact (which lessens readability from the map screen) but has a lot of artifical barriers which you need items for (supers, power bombs, speed booster) which leads to a lot of complex backtracking around areas you feel you should be able to open up, especially when on the hunt for said items. This gives a bit of a Fusion-y feel, but less compartimentalized. It gives you a lot of red herrings in the sense of item tiles and gate tiles which you'll probably have to backtrack for. I think this could be addressed by something like Drewseph's map tiles and perhaps even SMRA's hint system (which would do you a huge favor in both backtracking and oversight), though I'm not sure if either are public. This segues into...
- The level design. Overall pretty good, you integrated the graphics with the actual rooms really well. The one thorn in my side this has given me it the few one-way doors, some of which there are two in a single room. One way doors lead to frustration and often needless backtracking. Here and there you took a hint from SMRA and had permanently removable obstacles, which I'm a big fan of as, again, this improves the flow of the areas and the world. Removing the same barriers again and again in any of the vanilla Metroid games always felt like an unnecessary chore, but I think it has to be said that you did apply that kind more. This sort of segues into...
- The ammo system... I feel like vanilla did a good job with seperate ammo counts. It made sure that you were always equipped for whatever lies ahead. Unifying that and doubling the cost each 'tier' has you be real careful with your ammo count, which I think hinders exploration, and that's what this hack is all about. Even with near 300 ammo, I felt like I had way too little to deal with Draygon properly. Once you get all beams you feel like you should be really powerful, and you are, to most enemies and Ridley, but juggling that psychological value with switching off to ammo weapons and seeing that counter lowering real quick is frustrating.
- The gate system... I don't know what I'd do personally. Final guardians are reached either by disabling generators or collecting the 8 McGuffins or beating all the other bosses, or just plain progressing through the levels and the game. Final bosses and how to reach them is a concept designers have to innovate in more and more, or do exceedingly good executions of what groundwork there already is. This isn't a big minus, but I do have to say that exploring and backtracking for gates could have felt better overall as they quickly become one of the main goals.
Overall, I'd give this hack 3.5 Chozo orbs out of 5 if I could. It's generally well excuted and a good experience to play, and I think it could be even better if it improved on some of the key criticisms. I'd definitely recommend playing it and finishing it, but 100%ing it might be a bit of a stretch for most. Go take your well-deserved rest and praise, and I think we're all looking forward to whatever you come up with next.
