Before I go into any detail I want to say I really enjoyed playing this and I'm looking forward to the finished version.
I got 59% in about 2:30. I like to speedrun (especially rando) so I have a lot of experience with SM. Even so, the pacing of the hack was really well done up until a certain point (more on that later). I liked how large the levels were and how much space there was between major upgrades. I avoided sequence breaking and liked how the hack lets you just poke around and find stuff.
Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of the foreground/background mechanic. This isn't limited to this hack though and it's purely personal taste. If it does appear in a hack I prefer it to be more contained, like only used within a certain area for example. That said, most of its usage in this hack is fine except for one Morph Ball room that used it rather extensively and ended up with a visual bug.
I'm a much bigger fan (heh) of mechanics like the big fan room in Void Engine. I can imagine a mechanic like that being slow or frustrating but it's implemented well here.
Unfortunately, to me the hack does feel unfinished. I was really vibing with the pacing. I beat Draygon, got Power Bombs and was looking forward to what new area would open up, but I was disappointed when shortly after, I found screw attack and the Ridley fight. I was even more confused to see that the game ended right after.
I realize it's partially my fault due to my playstyle, but when I reach the credits on romhacks I often don't feel the desire to go back and 100%. So I'm curious about how much I missed. Did Phantoon or Golden Torizo show up anywhere? I also never found charge beam but it wasn't a problem because of how much ammo I was able to find naturally.
I liked the visuals and the tilework. The only issues I had were certain colors/tiles I found hard to read as passable or impassable. There's a minor audio bug in the large room with the Namihe enemies in the second area. The impact sound for the Meteorite item seemed like an odd choice but that's just personal preference (I would have just used the Screw Attack kill sound, or the Shinespark impact.) I would love to eventually see some custom BGM to complement how distinct each area felt. Certain themes from vanilla SM don't really fit the themes you find in romhacks.
This was fun to play and critique. I highly recommend Cryogenesis to anyone interested in SM hacks.
Exploration],
rated by jacoblivion on Mar 13, 2022 (
