“Something resembling a strawberry daiquiri”
| Eris | ||
Release date: Jul 05, 2012 |
Author: Digital_Mantra
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Genre: Exploration [?] Game: 
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Difficulty: Veteran [?]
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Average runtime:
6:59 Average collection: 85% |
Read Me: [None] |
Forum Thread: Forum Thread |
Rating:
 
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Awards:
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Description
Galactic bounty hunter Samus Aran is sent to investigate planet Eris. The Federation research team's outpost has ceased transmissions. Upon receiving mission details, Samus is reminded of the recurring dreams she'd been having the past weeks.
Dreams of a cold planet and, in the distance, the faint cries of a child.
Could these dreams have something to do with the mysterious disappearance of Eris Stations' research team? The answer lays buried deep within the lethal depths of Eris. Let the mission begin!
Die-hard fans of sci-fi will be pleasantly surprised with how the Metroid canon merges with other beloved sci-fi franchises.
Dreams of a cold planet and, in the distance, the faint cries of a child.
Could these dreams have something to do with the mysterious disappearance of Eris Stations' research team? The answer lays buried deep within the lethal depths of Eris. Let the mission begin!
Die-hard fans of sci-fi will be pleasantly surprised with how the Metroid canon merges with other beloved sci-fi franchises.
Screenshots
Ratings and Reviews
A great all-around hack. It all fits on one submap, but it really maximizes the use of that area. It's full of really cool environments with lots of classic DMan visual touches. The 2012 update makes it somewhat more difficult by reducing early super ammo and delaying access to the evasion item.
Still one of my favorite hacks. Every tile is placed so methodically that you can actually believe they have a purpose ingame. This hack truly captures the alien atmosphere, which can be hard to accomplish from a design stand-point (we're humans, we always want to create things that look and feel familiar). I'd definitely recommend playing it. As a hacker, I find it inspiring.
Eris is the culmination of DMantra's hacking works, featuring awe-inspiring levels that treat super metroid's tilesets like paint for a canvas. It's beautiful.
... But, of course, ball-grinding difficulty (thanks to overpowered enemies) that makes the hack not nearly as accessible as it could/should be.
Eris offers worlds that no other hack could. If you're cool with rewinding/savestating, then this hack isn't worth missing. Play it.
... But, of course, ball-grinding difficulty (thanks to overpowered enemies) that makes the hack not nearly as accessible as it could/should be.
Eris offers worlds that no other hack could. If you're cool with rewinding/savestating, then this hack isn't worth missing. Play it.
Eris is DMan's very of sydneysauce. It is full of secrets sure to keep players looking for the last few items for a while. It offers a great world to explore, full of interesting visuals and weird structures. And DMan knows how to make a hack hard the right way. And yes, there is difficulty. But if you aren't stupid and try to tank enemies, and you will not have much of an issue with that. In fact, the greater difficulty will probably come just from exploration.
This is one of the hacks you should play. If you're an aspiring hacker, this is a great hack to look at and study to see how you can make something relatively small, but still offers a great experience. Also, Dachora hamburgers.
This is one of the hacks you should play. If you're an aspiring hacker, this is a great hack to look at and study to see how you can make something relatively small, but still offers a great experience. Also, Dachora hamburgers.
2009 Edition:
This is my favorite hack ever made, it does everything right in my opinion. Here is my original review (edited by Zhs2) from Top Hacks 2009:
Ahh, Eris. The very definition of epic. With Eris, Digital Mantra created a diverse alien world, filled with unique color schemes, bountiful wild life, and riddled with ruins of a civilization long past. It's easy to get lost in the aesthetics of this world, but that is not all that this game brought to the table. Nay, this hack brought us back to the roots of what Metroid is really all about: exploration. From the very beginning, you are giving a large canvas to paint your progress on, with multiple paths to explore, but only one that takes you forward. This allowed you to get a grip of the landscape before you jumped headfirst into the adventures that awaited you. From that point on, you were sent on a roller coaster of possibilities. "Where do I go next?" "I haven't looked over there yet!" "I'm lost!" "This path wasn't opened to me before!" Exploration became a very large chunk of challenge for many that explored the depths of this world, but it certainly wasn't the only challenge that awaited them. The obstacles that faced you were much more formidable! Samus did little to resist these beings with her mere power beam, and she would need to rely on collecting more devastating gear to even hold a chance of survival. Getting injured was no laughing matter this time around, and players are forced to rely on more evasive maneuvers to explore further within the depths of the mighty Planet Eris. As you fought your way through this alien world, you learned the secrets of its lost generations, and became one with the powers of the Chozo warriors. Between the grand tapestries that were woven, the caverns to explore, and the challenges that awaited you in them, this hack had everything that a true Metroid fan could ever want or desire.
2012 edition:
DMan made several changes that I didn't like, and as such I will abstain from writing a review for that version at this time.
This is my favorite hack ever made, it does everything right in my opinion. Here is my original review (edited by Zhs2) from Top Hacks 2009:
Ahh, Eris. The very definition of epic. With Eris, Digital Mantra created a diverse alien world, filled with unique color schemes, bountiful wild life, and riddled with ruins of a civilization long past. It's easy to get lost in the aesthetics of this world, but that is not all that this game brought to the table. Nay, this hack brought us back to the roots of what Metroid is really all about: exploration. From the very beginning, you are giving a large canvas to paint your progress on, with multiple paths to explore, but only one that takes you forward. This allowed you to get a grip of the landscape before you jumped headfirst into the adventures that awaited you. From that point on, you were sent on a roller coaster of possibilities. "Where do I go next?" "I haven't looked over there yet!" "I'm lost!" "This path wasn't opened to me before!" Exploration became a very large chunk of challenge for many that explored the depths of this world, but it certainly wasn't the only challenge that awaited them. The obstacles that faced you were much more formidable! Samus did little to resist these beings with her mere power beam, and she would need to rely on collecting more devastating gear to even hold a chance of survival. Getting injured was no laughing matter this time around, and players are forced to rely on more evasive maneuvers to explore further within the depths of the mighty Planet Eris. As you fought your way through this alien world, you learned the secrets of its lost generations, and became one with the powers of the Chozo warriors. Between the grand tapestries that were woven, the caverns to explore, and the challenges that awaited you in them, this hack had everything that a true Metroid fan could ever want or desire.
2012 edition:
DMan made several changes that I didn't like, and as such I will abstain from writing a review for that version at this time.
This hack has an amazing atmosphere, with a backstory and remnants of the Chozo civilization that leave you wondering just what happened, enticing you to reach the depths of the planet and find out. I loved how sacred and dangerous the final area felt. Definitely worth a play. The enemies are no joke, so beware.
Possibly the greatest atmosphere and exploration in any hack. The hack provides a challenge but it never feels unfair. That said, probably best for newbies to avoid it and for veterans to use save states. I will always regard Eris as one of the greatest hacks ever released.
This review is for the 2009 version of the game.
Like many Super Metroid hacks from this era, Eris is full of ambition and clever ideas... but like most other hacks from its day, these ideas often come at the cost of great player frustration. But let's start with the good.
Despite Digital Mantra not being an ASM hacker at the time, Eris contains a handful of modified assembly which brings some interesting changes to the game. The most clever is the Evasion power-up, which allows you to somersault through enemies without taking damage. Jumping and falling have also been modified to allow you to maintain running speed, which comes into play in a few cases where you can use Speed Booster in a way you couldn't in the original game. There's also the addition of four Artifacts, which are used to unlock the final area in the game. They're comparable to the Chozo Statue unlocks in Super Metroid: Redesign, but Eris' Artifacts aren't nearly as bad as Redesign.
The further I got into the game, the more I found pickups that are obtainable early on in the game. Super Missiles are hidden behind Super Missile blockades, and Power Bombs are hidden behind Power Bomb blockades, but once you get these items initially, they open up numerous collection possibilities of each throughout the world. There are also numerous Missile and Energy Tank pickups that are obtainable from early on in the game, though it often requires pressing on into areas that you know you're meant to tackle, later. In-general, pickups are usually hidden in ways that lend themselves to being found by keen-eyed players. That is, they're not completely obvious, but they're also not ridiculously unnoticeable.
The addition of the Evasion item would make you expect it to come in handy during boss fights, right? Well this would be the case, if it weren't for the fact that nearly every boss room has been modified to make it incredibly annoying to fight in. Spore Spawn has literally 4 safe floor blocks in the whole room, with the entire rest of the floor being lava. Botwoon immediately follows Spore Spawn with no Save Station in-between. Tons of blocks have been added to his room, making him hard to evade, and his damage has NOT been modified, so most everything about him takes a full Energy Tank away from you. At this point in the game, it's easy to have only one Energy Tank, if you haven't started pushing your exploratory bounds to try and collect more. Golden Torizo has the same problem as Spore Spawn: again, the floor is covered in lava and there's not much for you to stand on. Note that these are the first three bosses of the game.
Like many hacks of its day, the color palettes and tile layouts of the majority of the rooms in the game are mostly hideous. It's pretty common to be lost as to whether or not you can traverse certain tiles, and the only thing that prompts you to start checking for non-solid or breakable blocks is the feeling that all of these dead-ends should be leading to item pickups. There's a few instances of blue doors out in the middle of a screen, which I always consider kind of an amateurish design choice. A minor annoyance is that Ceres is used in the normal layout, but pausing is still disabled in Ceres rooms. I'm not sure why he didn't change this in SMILE.
Eris really hits its stride shortly after you acquire Power Bombs. Up until this point, most enemy and boss encounters feel frustrating, stemming from a pure lack of disposable equipment (namely, Energy). Power Bombs really open up a lot of possibilities all over the map, which could be considered "bad" if you don't like backtracking, but there's a lot of ways to get around, so it wasn't detrimental, to me.
...And then you encounter Draygon.
This is the turning point for Eris, because from here on out, most of the rest of the hack is annoying. Draygon is going to be impossible if you aren't skilled at wall jumping immediately out of water (without Gravity), because if you aren't, he's going to hit you for over an Energy Tank worth of damage. The acid-filling hallway from Lower Norfair has been modified to include Speed Booster blocks, so it's easy to have to trudge through damaging acid multiple times before you get through this room. And the ultimate kick-in-the-pants: right near the final boss is a sand room which requires multiple, very specific Bomb jumps chained together one-after-another. I wouldn't blame a player for choosing to quit Eris right at this point, because I was tempted to, myself.
Without spoiling anything, there's also a change to the rescue during the escape sequence... though it can easily become a negative change if you aren't careful.
Since this review has become up a lot longer than I planned, I'll give a TL:DR summary.
This is NOT a hack for moderate Super Metroid players.
Wall Jumping is 100% required.
Short Charge is absolutely necessary.
Bomb Jumps are highly beneficial.
Save Stations are functional, but save states might help with your sanity.
The beginning and end sections of the game are both trudges, and room tiling and color palette choices make the game rough on the eyes.
I played Eris through to completion because of the middle section, but I would not play through it for a second time.
Like many Super Metroid hacks from this era, Eris is full of ambition and clever ideas... but like most other hacks from its day, these ideas often come at the cost of great player frustration. But let's start with the good.
Despite Digital Mantra not being an ASM hacker at the time, Eris contains a handful of modified assembly which brings some interesting changes to the game. The most clever is the Evasion power-up, which allows you to somersault through enemies without taking damage. Jumping and falling have also been modified to allow you to maintain running speed, which comes into play in a few cases where you can use Speed Booster in a way you couldn't in the original game. There's also the addition of four Artifacts, which are used to unlock the final area in the game. They're comparable to the Chozo Statue unlocks in Super Metroid: Redesign, but Eris' Artifacts aren't nearly as bad as Redesign.
The further I got into the game, the more I found pickups that are obtainable early on in the game. Super Missiles are hidden behind Super Missile blockades, and Power Bombs are hidden behind Power Bomb blockades, but once you get these items initially, they open up numerous collection possibilities of each throughout the world. There are also numerous Missile and Energy Tank pickups that are obtainable from early on in the game, though it often requires pressing on into areas that you know you're meant to tackle, later. In-general, pickups are usually hidden in ways that lend themselves to being found by keen-eyed players. That is, they're not completely obvious, but they're also not ridiculously unnoticeable.
The addition of the Evasion item would make you expect it to come in handy during boss fights, right? Well this would be the case, if it weren't for the fact that nearly every boss room has been modified to make it incredibly annoying to fight in. Spore Spawn has literally 4 safe floor blocks in the whole room, with the entire rest of the floor being lava. Botwoon immediately follows Spore Spawn with no Save Station in-between. Tons of blocks have been added to his room, making him hard to evade, and his damage has NOT been modified, so most everything about him takes a full Energy Tank away from you. At this point in the game, it's easy to have only one Energy Tank, if you haven't started pushing your exploratory bounds to try and collect more. Golden Torizo has the same problem as Spore Spawn: again, the floor is covered in lava and there's not much for you to stand on. Note that these are the first three bosses of the game.
Like many hacks of its day, the color palettes and tile layouts of the majority of the rooms in the game are mostly hideous. It's pretty common to be lost as to whether or not you can traverse certain tiles, and the only thing that prompts you to start checking for non-solid or breakable blocks is the feeling that all of these dead-ends should be leading to item pickups. There's a few instances of blue doors out in the middle of a screen, which I always consider kind of an amateurish design choice. A minor annoyance is that Ceres is used in the normal layout, but pausing is still disabled in Ceres rooms. I'm not sure why he didn't change this in SMILE.
Eris really hits its stride shortly after you acquire Power Bombs. Up until this point, most enemy and boss encounters feel frustrating, stemming from a pure lack of disposable equipment (namely, Energy). Power Bombs really open up a lot of possibilities all over the map, which could be considered "bad" if you don't like backtracking, but there's a lot of ways to get around, so it wasn't detrimental, to me.
...And then you encounter Draygon.
This is the turning point for Eris, because from here on out, most of the rest of the hack is annoying. Draygon is going to be impossible if you aren't skilled at wall jumping immediately out of water (without Gravity), because if you aren't, he's going to hit you for over an Energy Tank worth of damage. The acid-filling hallway from Lower Norfair has been modified to include Speed Booster blocks, so it's easy to have to trudge through damaging acid multiple times before you get through this room. And the ultimate kick-in-the-pants: right near the final boss is a sand room which requires multiple, very specific Bomb jumps chained together one-after-another. I wouldn't blame a player for choosing to quit Eris right at this point, because I was tempted to, myself.
Without spoiling anything, there's also a change to the rescue during the escape sequence... though it can easily become a negative change if you aren't careful.
Since this review has become up a lot longer than I planned, I'll give a TL:DR summary.
This is NOT a hack for moderate Super Metroid players.
Wall Jumping is 100% required.
Short Charge is absolutely necessary.
Bomb Jumps are highly beneficial.
Save Stations are functional, but save states might help with your sanity.
The beginning and end sections of the game are both trudges, and room tiling and color palette choices make the game rough on the eyes.
I played Eris through to completion because of the middle section, but I would not play through it for a second time.
2012 edition.
Excellent Hack. It's hard but i highly recommend playing this.
Excellent Hack. It's hard but i highly recommend playing this.
![[Watch Video]](images/video.png)
No animals to be saved.
Child saved.
Quick Summary of the meaning of my SM hack ratings:
5 orbs: SM hacks within the 80% to 100% (90% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; SM hacks for outstanding wholesome playing experiences and at most minor inconveniences.
4 orbs: SM hacks within the 60% to 80% (70% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Well done SM hacks with noticeable design problems.
3 orbs: SM hacks within the 40% to 60% (50% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Normal decent average SM hacks.
2 orbs: SM hacks within the 20% to 40% (30% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Overall messy, confusing, or punishing SM hacks with some upsides.
1 orb : SM hacks within the 00% to 20% (10% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Ruthlessly unplayable, broken, or barely from the original game changed SM hacks.
Judgement parameters summary:
° Creative ideas and features, polished design, how enjoyable and fun the hack can be, lack of hard to find or cryptic required game elements, the difficulty, and if the hack can be finished without major guides or tools.
° Note that the length of a SM hack will not necessarily contribute to my rating of the SM hack, since instead the averaged out experience over the whole hack will be taken into account to get a relative comparison between SM hacks.
° Besides this, lack of impactful changes from the original SM game also went into the evaluation of SM hacks (otherwise one may consider them among the 3 stars hacks) as follows: Ultimately, for my ratings I consider a situation in which an SM enthusiast that already has, knows about and is familiar with the original game and its prominent mechanics could only choose 1 new SM hack to play and thus would really want to make sure he/she will get a fresh and fantastic experience or journey out of his/her 1 choice.
The goal of all these SM hack ratings is so that rather new players have an overview of the whole spectrum of SM hacks and how to sort them in, in relation to each other, where SM hacks that are rated lower might still be enjoyable for more experienced players.
Finally, sometimes for SM hacks it can be relevant that they may be significantly more enjoyable from a player standpoint at which the player is well practiced and familiarized with Super Metroid's game mechanics in general, and that in particular some of the best SM hacks may not be the outright best first SM hack choices to play otherwise because of this, and for beginner SM hack players this typically steers the best first SM hack choices towards some of the SM hacks that I rated with 4 orbs instead of 5.
Rating for some hacks may be off by 1 Star, but arguably not more, and ratings are not attempted to be provided within the precision of ''half orbs''.
Child saved.
Quick Summary of the meaning of my SM hack ratings:
5 orbs: SM hacks within the 80% to 100% (90% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; SM hacks for outstanding wholesome playing experiences and at most minor inconveniences.
4 orbs: SM hacks within the 60% to 80% (70% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Well done SM hacks with noticeable design problems.
3 orbs: SM hacks within the 40% to 60% (50% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Normal decent average SM hacks.
2 orbs: SM hacks within the 20% to 40% (30% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Overall messy, confusing, or punishing SM hacks with some upsides.
1 orb : SM hacks within the 00% to 20% (10% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Ruthlessly unplayable, broken, or barely from the original game changed SM hacks.
Judgement parameters summary:
° Creative ideas and features, polished design, how enjoyable and fun the hack can be, lack of hard to find or cryptic required game elements, the difficulty, and if the hack can be finished without major guides or tools.
° Note that the length of a SM hack will not necessarily contribute to my rating of the SM hack, since instead the averaged out experience over the whole hack will be taken into account to get a relative comparison between SM hacks.
° Besides this, lack of impactful changes from the original SM game also went into the evaluation of SM hacks (otherwise one may consider them among the 3 stars hacks) as follows: Ultimately, for my ratings I consider a situation in which an SM enthusiast that already has, knows about and is familiar with the original game and its prominent mechanics could only choose 1 new SM hack to play and thus would really want to make sure he/she will get a fresh and fantastic experience or journey out of his/her 1 choice.
The goal of all these SM hack ratings is so that rather new players have an overview of the whole spectrum of SM hacks and how to sort them in, in relation to each other, where SM hacks that are rated lower might still be enjoyable for more experienced players.
Finally, sometimes for SM hacks it can be relevant that they may be significantly more enjoyable from a player standpoint at which the player is well practiced and familiarized with Super Metroid's game mechanics in general, and that in particular some of the best SM hacks may not be the outright best first SM hack choices to play otherwise because of this, and for beginner SM hack players this typically steers the best first SM hack choices towards some of the SM hacks that I rated with 4 orbs instead of 5.
Rating for some hacks may be off by 1 Star, but arguably not more, and ratings are not attempted to be provided within the precision of ''half orbs''.
My personal favorite hack of all time, and, my first. The world feels entirely new, which is a tricky thing for most hacks to accomplish. Feels like it could have been a Super Metroid 2. The level of detail is astonishing. Wait until you see the final areas! Amazing experience.
9/10
It's a bit difficult for me, but it's a masterpiece that must be played.
It's a bit difficult for me, but it's a masterpiece that must be played.
I couldn't get into it. The graphics are ambitious, but it's not doing it for me. The tiles are confusing and hunting for a single bloc to destroy on entire map isn't the kind of exploration i'm looking for. Maybe it's fine if you're in the 1% of veteran SM players and are looking for something to bang your head on for hours, but definitely not suited for casual.
This hack amplifies the sense of loneliness, and eeriness of dealing with other worlds. This is one mission, Samus has to overcome an even darker realm entering Ceres's sister station. This is one station she will not forget. It will forever haunt her. My favorite thoroughly made hack.
Edit 06/2019: This hack is not for beginners as you can tell from the mediocre skilled players in this section whining about the difficulty. Super Metroid originally had Nintendo Power Game pro etc. If you need strats, be clever and check out some gameplay on youtube of this hack. But to whine about the difficulty over a hack that is not intended to be a walk in the park is pretty lame considering the effort it takes to design a large hack. Just because developer for this hack did not have your skill level or lack of dedication to learn about a game in mind, doesnt mean it deserves a poor rating. (wow now I am whining)
Edit 06/2019: This hack is not for beginners as you can tell from the mediocre skilled players in this section whining about the difficulty. Super Metroid originally had Nintendo Power Game pro etc. If you need strats, be clever and check out some gameplay on youtube of this hack. But to whine about the difficulty over a hack that is not intended to be a walk in the park is pretty lame considering the effort it takes to design a large hack. Just because developer for this hack did not have your skill level or lack of dedication to learn about a game in mind, doesnt mean it deserves a poor rating. (wow now I am whining)
Played the 2012 edition, did not complete it. If I had to pick one word to describe it, it would be tedious. It's challenging, but offers all the types of challenge that I don't like (to a degree that seems ABSURD to me) and doesn't offer the type that I do. The game is very front-heavy on the difficulty and the difficulty does not seem to ramp up gradually; if anything it seems to get easier as it goes along, which makes the crazy difficulty level early on all the more ridiculous.
Clearly it is the product of a tremendous amount of effort and skill, but in my opinion all that effort and skill has been wasted producing something that isn't fun to play. Maybe I'm just not a good enough player, and this hack is only really appropriate to players at a high skill level, but it seems wasteful to put so much effort into a hack that would be inaccessible to most players.
So while I recognize (and generally agree with) the qualities that other players like in this hack, like the aesthetic, with the incredible detail and artistry placed into the tiles, and the fact that it is an EPIC, extensive, complete hack that effectively creates a whole new (and radically different) game and world...I found that this hack was not very fun to play. I'm by no means an expert player, but I'm also not averse to a ramp-up in difficulty: the base game felt too easy overall, and hyper metroid (which I completed recently) also felt easier than I'd ideally like. I took on this hack specifically when I felt ready for something a little more advanced.
But this hack was WAAAAY too hard for me...and perhaps the biggest issue was not just that it was too hard, but that it was hard in ways I didn't like, thing that seemed "hard for the sake of being hard" rather than having a deeper purpose behind them, and that the difficulty was not well-compartmentalized.
- Stupid, time-consuming steps necessary to navigate through basic areas. The original game (and most hacks I like) makes you do some fun tricks to get through an area the first time, but then doesn't waste your time making you repeat those techniques while backtracking (usually b/c of items that allow you to bypass the obstacles.) This hack makes you repeat the time-consuming things...traversing the world felt like a chore. Maybe if you want to drill yourself to improve your skills, this hack would be good, but I wanted to play a game for fun and exploration, not to drill myself to become an expert. Contrast with hyper metroid that has a HUGE world, sometimes requiring significant acrobatics to get through particular puzzle rooms, but compartmentalizes the challenge, making the world mostly manageable to explore.
- Countless things that require fine-tuned technique. Jumps with next-to-no margin of error? Platforms that plunge almost instantly and are slow to return? A block placed JUST in the right place to make a particular jump possible, but extremely difficult to execute? Tricky wall-jump? Wall-jump to mid-air morph? Excessive mid-air-morph in tight spaces, often where Samus is hidden behind tiles at BOTH top and bottom of the jump so you can't clearly see what is going on (right from the start of the game, I might add)? All of the above, and these types of things are used heavily; they're routine in the game, required for the main path. Maybe fun if your technique is so fine-tuned that this stuff is second nature, not fun if you're like me and you just want to play an open-ended exploration game casually. I like these little challenges but only when they're used sparingly, such as in a one-time challenge to fetch an item, or in later-game areas. I do not like their excessive use in basic game areas most players will traverse multiple times.
- Other annoyances...blocks you can shoot that don't respawn, that you need to stand on to jump up to something up above, making you waste time leaving the room and coming back if you shot too many of them. Crumble blocks that aren't actually hard to avoid, but just make you waste time. Long, time-consuming (and sometimes dangerous, b/c of overpowered enemies) recoveries if you miss a jump (including in some areas VERY early on). These things don't provide genuine challenge, they're just annoying. It felt like the author of this hack was just trying to screw with me and waste my time.
- Extremely sparse ammo (2 missles per pack!), combined with very early contact with enemies that require ammo to kill in areas not populated by other enemies. I actually like the idea of sparse ammo (many hacks give too much ammo in my opinion.) but it was the combination of this with the overall design that was frustrating. This hack's setup gives you no margin of error: if your energy is full, you can (usually) kill each one and pick up a missile to restock, but if you take a single hit, the enemies start giving you energy some of the time, and you quickly run out of ammo. There are large areas full of enemies you can't kill without missiles, so this forces you to (a) farm energy and ammo to get full before entering these areas and (b) backtrack and repeat if you take a single hit. Again, wasting my time. In some cases taking a single hit can be an un-recoverable setback and spell death. Again, surprisigly early on in the game.
- Enemies do STUPID amounts of damage right from the start. I do not expect to die in 2-3 hits in the first few areas.
- Unnecessarily confusing tileset. You can't tell what a lot of tiles are from looking at them. Water? Solid ground this time, fall into it this other time. Is that a wall or platform? No, it's foreground that you walk behind. Is that a hole I can pass through? This one is, that one isn't. This area at the edge of the screen looks open...oh, I can't walk through it. Oh, these are spikes!?! Oops. Is that an item? No, it's a background tile. Sometimes a room has a totally dark border, part of it is wall, part of it opens into the next room and the only way to figure out is to push up against it. Some rooms are so dark you can't really make out much without turning up the screen brightness. Some areas are a complete shit show of chozo statues, some you can walk through or in front of, others that are solid, others that are disjoint with body parts missing that almost look more like a corrupted ROM than genuine level design. The issue isn't that this hack DOES these things, it's that it makes them routine. The original game (and the hacks I like) play around with occasional things that aren't what they look like...but it starts out by establishing clear ideas of what things look like and how they behave. To me, it's the establishment of patterns that makes it exciting when you find something that breaks the pattern, and this hack just felt chaotic to me, like the graphics were disjoint from the reality. Given how polished the aesthetic of this hack was, this aspect of it seemed like it was either amateurish (if unintentional) or just plain mean (if intentional.) I see this as a missed opportunity -- the authors of this hack created a whole new look-and-feel for a world; they could have built up expectations and then selectively broken them for dramatic effect, but instead they just created a chaotic jumble that looked like what I'd imagine a bad acid trip being like. (The planty / organic-looking area with spore spawn and botswoon is the worst; it's just chaotic to the point of requiring blanketing it with trial-and-error "go everywhere and shoot every block".) Either that or I'm just not at the level to pick up what subtle hints existed.
- Like the original and just about every major metroid hack, there are dead-ends. What I didn't like about this one was that the dead-ends felt very time-consuming, and as I progressed not-very-far into the game, sometimes dangerous. I felt like I needed to use savestates at every branching path, which is not a good sign. Getting stuck and not knowing where to go next meant I needed to painstakingly traverse the world using advanced techniques and savestates, often searching for a small detail somewhere or another that I missed.
- In spite of all of this I felt like the hack was not challenging in the ways I most like. The item order was surprisingly uncreative. There were enemies that I had to experiment with to develop a new strategy on how to handle, but they fit into the "too little too late" category (grapple beam opens up this when you discover it's actually a powerful weapon.) There were no enemies where their AI or placement in the room threw me for a loop. (Contrast with SMConflict, which I recently played and reviewed...it did an EXCELLENT job of this.) The enemies would kill me just because they were overpowered and I was underpowered, not because they were placed in clever places or configured to act in new ways. Lots of hidden items, but they're all hidden in straightforward, if tedious ways (LOTS of mazes of crawling around in small, poorly-marked passages, shoot a wall, shoot an object in the room, and often the item is hidden behind something that requires an item like power bombs or super missiles). Maybe I would have encountered something satisfying if I went farther in the hack, but there were no genuinely clever things, like a puzzle room that had me do something genuinely new and creative, or a hidden passage with a subtle hint that I didn't see the first time but made me say "Whoa!" and find the clue as obvious in hindsight. To point to a hack that does this excellently, I think Hyper Metroid nails this again and again. This game just felt like a chaotic jumble and finding items was a tedious process of trial-and-error.
- Bosses are made harder mainly by placing obstacles (spikes, lava, blocks) in the room, not by changing the boss dynamic. Contrast with SMConflict and So Little Garden...those are two hacks where the boss fights were FUN, like they made me smile and made me happy to lose a few times to figure out how to get through the fight. Heck, even the "Decision" hack changes the bosses more. Again, like everything in this hack, the bosses were tedious, frustrating, and prompted excessive savestating.
I didn't play very far into this game. I found myself relying on savestates both for exploring and to prevent time-consuming recoveries from a misstep like getting hit by an enemy or missing a jump. I'm not averse to using savestates but I usually just use them to save the game and come back -- I don't like using them to replay my every move, and don't like using them in boss fights, because that stops being fun. And that's exactly what happened with this hack.
I don't recommend this hack unless you're an expert player and a lot of the advanced techniques are second nature to you, or you're someone who is able to enjoy a hack even when using savestates every few seconds.
Basically, it came down to the hack being technique-focused and me feeling like it was continually wasting my time. And I'm a little pissed because...there is a lot about this hack that is really good, I think my rating is so low mainly because I feel like the creator of this hack made it like this elite thing that isn't accessible to me (or most players.) And that's a kinda crappy thing to do.
I don't think it would be that hard to fix this hack. I've watched a playthrough of it. It gets easier, not harder, as you go on. And this is the problem...the beginning is just WAAAAY too hard. A few simple things (maybe not all of them, but some combination of them), I think would fix it: (a) an extra energy tank early on (b) more early ammo (c) a way to bypass some of the maze-of-small-passages-with-jumping-in-ball-form and truly compartmentalizing this stuff to areas you only need to traverse one or two times (I'm thinking the tree room, that room is crap because you go through it SO many times when playing the game, either eliminate it or make some shortcut opened up by an early-attainable item, seriously I absolutely hate that room and I think it is crazily inappropriate in difficulty level for how early in the game it appears) (d) enemies in the early areas do less damage. (e) more easily farmed enemies early-on (What I REALLY don't get is like, how crazy abundant this hack makes farming areas late-game...when they're so rare in the first few areas. This is a garbage design choice and it makes me get the feeling that the creator of this hack is just so good as to be totally out of touch with what playing this hack would be like for players with a more modest skill levels.) (f) move some of the crazy tile madness later in the game. unintuitive-looking spikes is a great idea...move them later into an area where they catch the user by surprise after setting up the expectation of more normal-looking spikes. You could do the same thing with tile-weirdness.
That's it. I think that would fix this hack and probably bring it up to 5 stars for me.
Clearly it is the product of a tremendous amount of effort and skill, but in my opinion all that effort and skill has been wasted producing something that isn't fun to play. Maybe I'm just not a good enough player, and this hack is only really appropriate to players at a high skill level, but it seems wasteful to put so much effort into a hack that would be inaccessible to most players.
So while I recognize (and generally agree with) the qualities that other players like in this hack, like the aesthetic, with the incredible detail and artistry placed into the tiles, and the fact that it is an EPIC, extensive, complete hack that effectively creates a whole new (and radically different) game and world...I found that this hack was not very fun to play. I'm by no means an expert player, but I'm also not averse to a ramp-up in difficulty: the base game felt too easy overall, and hyper metroid (which I completed recently) also felt easier than I'd ideally like. I took on this hack specifically when I felt ready for something a little more advanced.
But this hack was WAAAAY too hard for me...and perhaps the biggest issue was not just that it was too hard, but that it was hard in ways I didn't like, thing that seemed "hard for the sake of being hard" rather than having a deeper purpose behind them, and that the difficulty was not well-compartmentalized.
- Stupid, time-consuming steps necessary to navigate through basic areas. The original game (and most hacks I like) makes you do some fun tricks to get through an area the first time, but then doesn't waste your time making you repeat those techniques while backtracking (usually b/c of items that allow you to bypass the obstacles.) This hack makes you repeat the time-consuming things...traversing the world felt like a chore. Maybe if you want to drill yourself to improve your skills, this hack would be good, but I wanted to play a game for fun and exploration, not to drill myself to become an expert. Contrast with hyper metroid that has a HUGE world, sometimes requiring significant acrobatics to get through particular puzzle rooms, but compartmentalizes the challenge, making the world mostly manageable to explore.
- Countless things that require fine-tuned technique. Jumps with next-to-no margin of error? Platforms that plunge almost instantly and are slow to return? A block placed JUST in the right place to make a particular jump possible, but extremely difficult to execute? Tricky wall-jump? Wall-jump to mid-air morph? Excessive mid-air-morph in tight spaces, often where Samus is hidden behind tiles at BOTH top and bottom of the jump so you can't clearly see what is going on (right from the start of the game, I might add)? All of the above, and these types of things are used heavily; they're routine in the game, required for the main path. Maybe fun if your technique is so fine-tuned that this stuff is second nature, not fun if you're like me and you just want to play an open-ended exploration game casually. I like these little challenges but only when they're used sparingly, such as in a one-time challenge to fetch an item, or in later-game areas. I do not like their excessive use in basic game areas most players will traverse multiple times.
- Other annoyances...blocks you can shoot that don't respawn, that you need to stand on to jump up to something up above, making you waste time leaving the room and coming back if you shot too many of them. Crumble blocks that aren't actually hard to avoid, but just make you waste time. Long, time-consuming (and sometimes dangerous, b/c of overpowered enemies) recoveries if you miss a jump (including in some areas VERY early on). These things don't provide genuine challenge, they're just annoying. It felt like the author of this hack was just trying to screw with me and waste my time.
- Extremely sparse ammo (2 missles per pack!), combined with very early contact with enemies that require ammo to kill in areas not populated by other enemies. I actually like the idea of sparse ammo (many hacks give too much ammo in my opinion.) but it was the combination of this with the overall design that was frustrating. This hack's setup gives you no margin of error: if your energy is full, you can (usually) kill each one and pick up a missile to restock, but if you take a single hit, the enemies start giving you energy some of the time, and you quickly run out of ammo. There are large areas full of enemies you can't kill without missiles, so this forces you to (a) farm energy and ammo to get full before entering these areas and (b) backtrack and repeat if you take a single hit. Again, wasting my time. In some cases taking a single hit can be an un-recoverable setback and spell death. Again, surprisigly early on in the game.
- Enemies do STUPID amounts of damage right from the start. I do not expect to die in 2-3 hits in the first few areas.
- Unnecessarily confusing tileset. You can't tell what a lot of tiles are from looking at them. Water? Solid ground this time, fall into it this other time. Is that a wall or platform? No, it's foreground that you walk behind. Is that a hole I can pass through? This one is, that one isn't. This area at the edge of the screen looks open...oh, I can't walk through it. Oh, these are spikes!?! Oops. Is that an item? No, it's a background tile. Sometimes a room has a totally dark border, part of it is wall, part of it opens into the next room and the only way to figure out is to push up against it. Some rooms are so dark you can't really make out much without turning up the screen brightness. Some areas are a complete shit show of chozo statues, some you can walk through or in front of, others that are solid, others that are disjoint with body parts missing that almost look more like a corrupted ROM than genuine level design. The issue isn't that this hack DOES these things, it's that it makes them routine. The original game (and the hacks I like) play around with occasional things that aren't what they look like...but it starts out by establishing clear ideas of what things look like and how they behave. To me, it's the establishment of patterns that makes it exciting when you find something that breaks the pattern, and this hack just felt chaotic to me, like the graphics were disjoint from the reality. Given how polished the aesthetic of this hack was, this aspect of it seemed like it was either amateurish (if unintentional) or just plain mean (if intentional.) I see this as a missed opportunity -- the authors of this hack created a whole new look-and-feel for a world; they could have built up expectations and then selectively broken them for dramatic effect, but instead they just created a chaotic jumble that looked like what I'd imagine a bad acid trip being like. (The planty / organic-looking area with spore spawn and botswoon is the worst; it's just chaotic to the point of requiring blanketing it with trial-and-error "go everywhere and shoot every block".) Either that or I'm just not at the level to pick up what subtle hints existed.
- Like the original and just about every major metroid hack, there are dead-ends. What I didn't like about this one was that the dead-ends felt very time-consuming, and as I progressed not-very-far into the game, sometimes dangerous. I felt like I needed to use savestates at every branching path, which is not a good sign. Getting stuck and not knowing where to go next meant I needed to painstakingly traverse the world using advanced techniques and savestates, often searching for a small detail somewhere or another that I missed.
- In spite of all of this I felt like the hack was not challenging in the ways I most like. The item order was surprisingly uncreative. There were enemies that I had to experiment with to develop a new strategy on how to handle, but they fit into the "too little too late" category (grapple beam opens up this when you discover it's actually a powerful weapon.) There were no enemies where their AI or placement in the room threw me for a loop. (Contrast with SMConflict, which I recently played and reviewed...it did an EXCELLENT job of this.) The enemies would kill me just because they were overpowered and I was underpowered, not because they were placed in clever places or configured to act in new ways. Lots of hidden items, but they're all hidden in straightforward, if tedious ways (LOTS of mazes of crawling around in small, poorly-marked passages, shoot a wall, shoot an object in the room, and often the item is hidden behind something that requires an item like power bombs or super missiles). Maybe I would have encountered something satisfying if I went farther in the hack, but there were no genuinely clever things, like a puzzle room that had me do something genuinely new and creative, or a hidden passage with a subtle hint that I didn't see the first time but made me say "Whoa!" and find the clue as obvious in hindsight. To point to a hack that does this excellently, I think Hyper Metroid nails this again and again. This game just felt like a chaotic jumble and finding items was a tedious process of trial-and-error.
- Bosses are made harder mainly by placing obstacles (spikes, lava, blocks) in the room, not by changing the boss dynamic. Contrast with SMConflict and So Little Garden...those are two hacks where the boss fights were FUN, like they made me smile and made me happy to lose a few times to figure out how to get through the fight. Heck, even the "Decision" hack changes the bosses more. Again, like everything in this hack, the bosses were tedious, frustrating, and prompted excessive savestating.
I didn't play very far into this game. I found myself relying on savestates both for exploring and to prevent time-consuming recoveries from a misstep like getting hit by an enemy or missing a jump. I'm not averse to using savestates but I usually just use them to save the game and come back -- I don't like using them to replay my every move, and don't like using them in boss fights, because that stops being fun. And that's exactly what happened with this hack.
I don't recommend this hack unless you're an expert player and a lot of the advanced techniques are second nature to you, or you're someone who is able to enjoy a hack even when using savestates every few seconds.
Basically, it came down to the hack being technique-focused and me feeling like it was continually wasting my time. And I'm a little pissed because...there is a lot about this hack that is really good, I think my rating is so low mainly because I feel like the creator of this hack made it like this elite thing that isn't accessible to me (or most players.) And that's a kinda crappy thing to do.
I don't think it would be that hard to fix this hack. I've watched a playthrough of it. It gets easier, not harder, as you go on. And this is the problem...the beginning is just WAAAAY too hard. A few simple things (maybe not all of them, but some combination of them), I think would fix it: (a) an extra energy tank early on (b) more early ammo (c) a way to bypass some of the maze-of-small-passages-with-jumping-in-ball-form and truly compartmentalizing this stuff to areas you only need to traverse one or two times (I'm thinking the tree room, that room is crap because you go through it SO many times when playing the game, either eliminate it or make some shortcut opened up by an early-attainable item, seriously I absolutely hate that room and I think it is crazily inappropriate in difficulty level for how early in the game it appears) (d) enemies in the early areas do less damage. (e) more easily farmed enemies early-on (What I REALLY don't get is like, how crazy abundant this hack makes farming areas late-game...when they're so rare in the first few areas. This is a garbage design choice and it makes me get the feeling that the creator of this hack is just so good as to be totally out of touch with what playing this hack would be like for players with a more modest skill levels.) (f) move some of the crazy tile madness later in the game. unintuitive-looking spikes is a great idea...move them later into an area where they catch the user by surprise after setting up the expectation of more normal-looking spikes. You could do the same thing with tile-weirdness.
That's it. I think that would fix this hack and probably bring it up to 5 stars for me.
i have to say it the time firs time i played this hack, i had the nice and weird felling of discovering new areas and weird places and when i saw those chozo in the table i was like wow thats creepy, lol but i really enjoy it honestly it was kinda a hard but all i have to say is i liked a lot! and the only complain there was some bad palettes, that's all.
Wow... just... wow!
This is one of the most amazing hacks I have ever played. Despite being hard, it was still a fun hack to play and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
This is one of the most amazing hacks I have ever played. Despite being hard, it was still a fun hack to play and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thee were so many times in Eris that I had to simply stop and marvel at what I was seeing. DMan has created a thing of beauty here. I could scarcely believe I was still playing Super Metroid considering how stunning many of the visuals were, from incredible alien setpieces to moving backgrounds to foreground overlays and atmospheric haze effects that all helped to create a powerfully vibrant new world. And the creativity was overwhelming in places too, from the Chozo dining halls to the 'Annihilation'-esque sci-fi horror lairs to the icy, snow-covered areas with reflective pools reminiscent of the Shadow Link fight area from OoT.
The game is challenging, for sure, but there was always so much amazing new stuff to explore that I never came close to wanting to give up, and being limited in terms of your health and armoury when pitted against tough opponents early on I felt only added to the horror vibe that DMan very successfully managed to build throughout the game right from the very start. Hell, I was genuinely scared for a split second when I entered into the bomb torizo fight, surrounded by chozo statues in a large hall with low health and not knowing where the torizo was going to be coming from.
There were many points in the game that felt very reminiscent of Metroid Prime too, with morph ball rail tracks, different coloured metroids, phazon-like floral growths, sky temples, even that one 'logbook' moment... I can't stress how great the game was to look at and explore, and I thought a great achievement to capture some of the essence of a GC title in a SNES game.
My only minor gripe is that apart from the amazingly innovative visuals there wasn't much else that was new. While many enemies and bosses had recolours and revamped health/ damage, they were still the same ones from SM, and though a few items have been tweaked they were all essentially the same as SM too. There was one cool new miniboss that caught me by surprise though, and all the other bosses fit into their environments so well that I didn't even mind that I was seeing them all again. But the tweak to screw attack (turned into a new item called 'evasion') worked really well in the context of the game, and the eventual armour upgrade you get looks so good too (with fancy visor FX to boot) that I'd almost recommend the hack for that alone.
For me, this is about as good if not better than I could ever have hoped an official Super Metroid 2 on the SNES to be. If you can wall jump alright and have at least a middling to mediocre ability to short charge you have every advanced technique you need to finish Eris (the latter may not even be necessary but I found it helped at one point in the final area). There were a few times I got stuck and didn't know how to proceed but there were always clues in the environment that eventually gave the answer.
I cannot recommend this enough.
The game is challenging, for sure, but there was always so much amazing new stuff to explore that I never came close to wanting to give up, and being limited in terms of your health and armoury when pitted against tough opponents early on I felt only added to the horror vibe that DMan very successfully managed to build throughout the game right from the very start. Hell, I was genuinely scared for a split second when I entered into the bomb torizo fight, surrounded by chozo statues in a large hall with low health and not knowing where the torizo was going to be coming from.
There were many points in the game that felt very reminiscent of Metroid Prime too, with morph ball rail tracks, different coloured metroids, phazon-like floral growths, sky temples, even that one 'logbook' moment... I can't stress how great the game was to look at and explore, and I thought a great achievement to capture some of the essence of a GC title in a SNES game.
My only minor gripe is that apart from the amazingly innovative visuals there wasn't much else that was new. While many enemies and bosses had recolours and revamped health/ damage, they were still the same ones from SM, and though a few items have been tweaked they were all essentially the same as SM too. There was one cool new miniboss that caught me by surprise though, and all the other bosses fit into their environments so well that I didn't even mind that I was seeing them all again. But the tweak to screw attack (turned into a new item called 'evasion') worked really well in the context of the game, and the eventual armour upgrade you get looks so good too (with fancy visor FX to boot) that I'd almost recommend the hack for that alone.
For me, this is about as good if not better than I could ever have hoped an official Super Metroid 2 on the SNES to be. If you can wall jump alright and have at least a middling to mediocre ability to short charge you have every advanced technique you need to finish Eris (the latter may not even be necessary but I found it helped at one point in the final area). There were a few times I got stuck and didn't know how to proceed but there were always clues in the environment that eventually gave the answer.
I cannot recommend this enough.
I actually didn't finish this hack, in fact, I stopped playing it due to how difficult the first boss battle is. The creator made designed this game to be difficult from the beginning, with minimal energy, having to go through enemies that take half the energy with one hit.
I don't understand what the obsession with making these hacks incredibly difficult, why can't anything be fun?
Searching a walkthrough up on YouTube, I saw that there were no spikes up top in the environment of this boss, providing a hide-out for Samus, which was obviously a different version.
I'll just look for another hack to play.
I don't understand what the obsession with making these hacks incredibly difficult, why can't anything be fun?
Searching a walkthrough up on YouTube, I saw that there were no spikes up top in the environment of this boss, providing a hide-out for Samus, which was obviously a different version.
I'll just look for another hack to play.
Everything Cazort said i agree with except the difficulty. I'm fine with the difficulty. The problem is the "exploration". 73 halls. all requiring 1 item. = my wasted time. until i find the right one. As well as the graphics feels like a teenagers idea of an alien planet rather than an actual alien planet. and why the hell is everything so blue? Theres more blue in this hack than all of megaman 1-6 on NES.
Other than that. What Cazort said. as well as it doesnt *feel* like a metroid game. which is pretty bad. it doesnt reward you for playing it. It punishes you for playing it. even the stream didnt enjoy watching it. and thats pretty bad :/ i expected more out of an 88% approval rating.
Other than that. What Cazort said. as well as it doesnt *feel* like a metroid game. which is pretty bad. it doesnt reward you for playing it. It punishes you for playing it. even the stream didnt enjoy watching it. and thats pretty bad :/ i expected more out of an 88% approval rating.
Eris is a fantastic and very immersive hack. DMantra absolutely nailed the atmosphere and visuals which makes this hack still very unique despite being from 2009/2012.
Difficulty-wise it's a bit on the harder side but an experienced player familiar with Super Metroid hacks should be able to beat it.
I absolutely recommend it.
Difficulty-wise it's a bit on the harder side but an experienced player familiar with Super Metroid hacks should be able to beat it.
I absolutely recommend it.
Eris was the second hack I played after SZM and it really struck me, so much that even to this day it stayed in my top favorite.
I also critique it as the time when it came out and when I played it because this is a really old hack.
Firstly, the thing I love the most with Eris is the level art and how Dman used vanilla tiles in all sort of way as a medium
to paint artistic rooms. Its amazing that its all vanilla and also how he used the tiles to tell a story in the backgrounds of rooms.
Talking of backgrounds, most hacks do backgrounds as a second though, but Eris really push custom backgrounds tiling to a new level.
Eris really does painting with the tiles and not just ground and structures, exploring this alien world and taking the time to
look around was really satisfying. This hack is also really impressive technically even if it dont use custom code that much. However it uses
all of the engine existing features and FXs in new ways to create art. Which thus lead to great atmosphere, exploration and rooms.
Secondly, for the bads we have the fact that the complex level art makes it so its really hard to differentiate the background from the foreground.
Sometimes elements from the FG and BG has even the same color palette which is bad design. Its also not for casual but its less hard than cliffhanger.
Sometimes the path forward can be a bit too hard to find.
Not sure how this hack will stand years later, but that first experience definitly resonated with joy. The goods overwhelm the bads for me.
I love the weird and this gave me the weird I wanted and even some that I didnt know I wanted.
I also critique it as the time when it came out and when I played it because this is a really old hack.
Firstly, the thing I love the most with Eris is the level art and how Dman used vanilla tiles in all sort of way as a medium
to paint artistic rooms. Its amazing that its all vanilla and also how he used the tiles to tell a story in the backgrounds of rooms.
Talking of backgrounds, most hacks do backgrounds as a second though, but Eris really push custom backgrounds tiling to a new level.
Eris really does painting with the tiles and not just ground and structures, exploring this alien world and taking the time to
look around was really satisfying. This hack is also really impressive technically even if it dont use custom code that much. However it uses
all of the engine existing features and FXs in new ways to create art. Which thus lead to great atmosphere, exploration and rooms.
Secondly, for the bads we have the fact that the complex level art makes it so its really hard to differentiate the background from the foreground.
Sometimes elements from the FG and BG has even the same color palette which is bad design. Its also not for casual but its less hard than cliffhanger.
Sometimes the path forward can be a bit too hard to find.
Not sure how this hack will stand years later, but that first experience definitly resonated with joy. The goods overwhelm the bads for me.
I love the weird and this gave me the weird I wanted and even some that I didnt know I wanted.
Hard and beautiful. Excellent challenge/exploration hack.
Play it.
Play it.
Decided to replay this on whim. Only died once or twice.
Years later and this is still brilliant and beautiful, and still in my top 3 SM hacks.
Don't let the frontloaded difficulty get you down. Be cautious, but take risks, and just allow yourself to be immersed in the world.
Eris 2012 has some very smart changes over the original that I didn't appreciate at first. I recommend it over the original, especially for first-time players.
Years later and this is still brilliant and beautiful, and still in my top 3 SM hacks.
Don't let the frontloaded difficulty get you down. Be cautious, but take risks, and just allow yourself to be immersed in the world.
Eris 2012 has some very smart changes over the original that I didn't appreciate at first. I recommend it over the original, especially for first-time players.
I'm not going to lie, this game is hard, but as you advance and get more items, the difficulty becomes more tolerable. This game has excellent graphics, very alien-style and as you progress through the game you want to know what the next room will be like. The entrance to the final area of the game gives you a taste of what lies ahead, some outstanding graphics and great music create an atmosphere that causes you apprehension and fear. And the ending seemed epic to me, please play this game and don't let the initial difficulty stop you.
Thankz for the hack!!
It's really not THAT hard. If you figure you've gotten pretty good at Super Metroid then give this a go. It's an outstanding hack with terrific graphics and challenging gameplay. Digital Mantra hacks always have a tremendous flair in terms of overall presentation and this hack like his other 2 masterpieces is no different. It's certainly made for good players but I would also argue it makes good players. By playing through and beating this I became a better player and I had fun doing it, that's outstanding game design IMO.
For those new to Super Metroid hacking I would suggest playing through the Digital Mantra trilogy in this order Vitality-Eris-Cliffhanger Redux. Vitality is comparable to Super Metroid in difficulty and provides a whole new experience like very few hacks have. Cliffhanger is for experts only and is VERY hard and likely won't appeal to some but I think it's incredible. Eris is kinda right in between and arguably the sweet spot but for some will be too difficult.
For those new to Super Metroid hacking I would suggest playing through the Digital Mantra trilogy in this order Vitality-Eris-Cliffhanger Redux. Vitality is comparable to Super Metroid in difficulty and provides a whole new experience like very few hacks have. Cliffhanger is for experts only and is VERY hard and likely won't appeal to some but I think it's incredible. Eris is kinda right in between and arguably the sweet spot but for some will be too difficult.
Placing this review because i never did and that way i can also review vitality without that voice in my head saying "and eris?"
I finished this hack like a year ago, so i don't remember everything.
I know that it's near perfection, every room is unique, and even with a one-area hack, it's great.
I just enjoyed travelling and searching for the rest of the items a lot.
Sad part to me is that you only get the main lore at the very end of the game, but nevertheless an
unforgettable experience.
there's just one hard boss part at the beginning you're not gonna like
But it stays a must-play!
I finished this hack like a year ago, so i don't remember everything.
I know that it's near perfection, every room is unique, and even with a one-area hack, it's great.
I just enjoyed travelling and searching for the rest of the items a lot.
Sad part to me is that you only get the main lore at the very end of the game, but nevertheless an
unforgettable experience.
there's just one hard boss part at the beginning you're not gonna like
But it stays a must-play!
BIG piece of shit!!!, I just wasted my time, this TRASH isn't Metroid!!!, don't play it, better look for another hack
I should have rated this a long time ago. Now I'm rating it because some jackass above me shit on one of my favorite hacks of all time along with many other great hacks recently. Nothing pisses me off more than when people drop a 1 star rating just because they don't have the skill level to play the game or are so narcissistic that they think the game should have been designed for them. How about you show some respect to people that spend literally years making a game for others to enjoy for FREE. Either don't rate it or get gud! Long live Dman
Really wanted to like this hack more. The graphics are pretty cool, even though you can't always tell where the floor is.
Lot of running around in a big loop & some very easy to miss progression points. I got really lost at one point and leafed through a playthrough video.
Turns out the artifact chozo in the limestone ruins was glitched out (there was some black invisible box preventing me from getting into its hand), so I couldn't complete.
Played the version where powerbombs lock you out of evasion... Would've been nice to have that on spore spawn. Most frustrating spospo fight ever (only had one e-tank)
Lot of running around in a big loop & some very easy to miss progression points. I got really lost at one point and leafed through a playthrough video.
Turns out the artifact chozo in the limestone ruins was glitched out (there was some black invisible box preventing me from getting into its hand), so I couldn't complete.
Played the version where powerbombs lock you out of evasion... Would've been nice to have that on spore spawn. Most frustrating spospo fight ever (only had one e-tank)
Played 2012 version.
Another great hack after Vitality.
Completely amazed by how well it's done.
Can see how it influenced Vitality and is sure not an easy hack. Had to come back after playing other hacks and honing my skills.
Wasn't skill-difficult mostly, the hard part was the enemies that hit like a truck :D
Managed to complete it 100% and was a great experience.
Can't wait to play another hack by DM!
Highly reccomended!
Another great hack after Vitality.
Completely amazed by how well it's done.
Can see how it influenced Vitality and is sure not an easy hack. Had to come back after playing other hacks and honing my skills.
Wasn't skill-difficult mostly, the hard part was the enemies that hit like a truck :D
Managed to complete it 100% and was a great experience.
Can't wait to play another hack by DM!
Highly reccomended!
Eris is a work of art. It's probably #1 in the atmosphere department and difficulty wise it's not too bad, so long as you're expecting a challenge at least.
Sadly, it's 4 stars because you pretty much NEED a guide to complete it. Grey doors are the devil's fruit of Metroid design, and every grey door in Eris (which there are quite a few of) cost me half an hour minimum, and one I don't think I ever would've opened had I not been told about it beforehand. Also, I felt like backtracking often involved running from literally one side of the map to the other side and that got tiring after a while.
Sadly, it's 4 stars because you pretty much NEED a guide to complete it. Grey doors are the devil's fruit of Metroid design, and every grey door in Eris (which there are quite a few of) cost me half an hour minimum, and one I don't think I ever would've opened had I not been told about it beforehand. Also, I felt like backtracking often involved running from literally one side of the map to the other side and that got tiring after a while.
Rating is for the 2012 version. I see I gave it a sparkling description when I played the 2009 version (as per what I wrote for Top Hacks) but I didn't have quite as much fun with Eris 2012. You have a very limited arsenal. Enemies hit for tons of damage. But these are not the real problems, oh no. Between all of the visual tricks that have to be seen in a classic hack like this and good/bad palettes is a plague of items you can't find passage to and passages you won't find the first time you look, smushed together into a giant cube of a world that must be traversed every time you want to switch areas. Not a whole lot of thought was put into how to help the player backtrack to where he should go or need to be - you will be looping this as hard as Lost World if you don't bust out a map. For me in particular it was the path to speedbooster, guarded by a door you're not sure of when it opens in a room full of spawning crabs that freezes in higan to this day if you linger for too long. (Thankfully that's the only freeze I found.) After earning all of the necessary items and pathing past the artifact gate you are treated to a finale that lasts far too long, a final area of sorts where you should have everything you need to win and yet you're still getting lost and wondering what door opens where and when. It's a giant mess, but still manages to be decent for a good 4-5 hours of your time. Savestates highly recommended. The hack creator offering tips and tricks for veteran moves you never thought of even more recommended.
Edit: The review has been redone.
For many years this was the most beautiful metroidvania ever made by modding a metroid game and it still is a mod with an excellently designed world that tells its story through its visuals. However, this has two serious issues that make it impossible to recommend to metroidvania fans. The first problem is that right off the bat you have to use really advanced in order to traverse the map, really difficult and advanced techniques too. The second problem is that this has one of the worst maps (not world) I have ever seen in a metroidvania that does include a map. It doesn't show doors, it is extremely cramped and therefore doesn't show path or direction, it doesn't show items you haven't managed to get, or have gotten except for a red icon showing for key items once you've gotten them. It doesn't show save rooms, it doesn't show area names.... I could go on. As you get deeper into the game it gets more and more beautiful and unique but the mod does not want you to enjoy any of it because it becomes impossibly difficult to navigate while at the same time amping up the insanity of the techniques required.
This is ultimately a mod that metroidvania players will love to look at but absolutely hate with a passion when they try to play it. It's just not something I can imagine anyone except a super metroid professional speedhacker enjoying. This really needs a remaster that makes it something metroidvania players can enjoy.... an axeil edition.
For many years this was the most beautiful metroidvania ever made by modding a metroid game and it still is a mod with an excellently designed world that tells its story through its visuals. However, this has two serious issues that make it impossible to recommend to metroidvania fans. The first problem is that right off the bat you have to use really advanced in order to traverse the map, really difficult and advanced techniques too. The second problem is that this has one of the worst maps (not world) I have ever seen in a metroidvania that does include a map. It doesn't show doors, it is extremely cramped and therefore doesn't show path or direction, it doesn't show items you haven't managed to get, or have gotten except for a red icon showing for key items once you've gotten them. It doesn't show save rooms, it doesn't show area names.... I could go on. As you get deeper into the game it gets more and more beautiful and unique but the mod does not want you to enjoy any of it because it becomes impossibly difficult to navigate while at the same time amping up the insanity of the techniques required.
This is ultimately a mod that metroidvania players will love to look at but absolutely hate with a passion when they try to play it. It's just not something I can imagine anyone except a super metroid professional speedhacker enjoying. This really needs a remaster that makes it something metroidvania players can enjoy.... an axeil edition.
very solid hack overall.
some frustration factors to it, particularly with how sometimes its difficult to tell what's solid ground, and what isn't. its pretty challenging, almost annoyingly so early in the game. the hack was obviously intended to present more of a challenge, so thats not a bad thing, just a heads up for anyone who looks to play this.
it definitely requires some advanced skills if you want 100%, otherwise you should be fine as long as you know how to wall jump, bomb jump, and morph in mid air.
a great hack for someone who wants a very different experience and story. would give it 5 orbs if the graphics were cleaned up a bit. some areas are a beating on the eyes. a remaster could get this into top 5 status.
some frustration factors to it, particularly with how sometimes its difficult to tell what's solid ground, and what isn't. its pretty challenging, almost annoyingly so early in the game. the hack was obviously intended to present more of a challenge, so thats not a bad thing, just a heads up for anyone who looks to play this.
it definitely requires some advanced skills if you want 100%, otherwise you should be fine as long as you know how to wall jump, bomb jump, and morph in mid air.
a great hack for someone who wants a very different experience and story. would give it 5 orbs if the graphics were cleaned up a bit. some areas are a beating on the eyes. a remaster could get this into top 5 status.
I have casually speedrun SM for a long time, but not an an expert level - can mockball pretty reliably and had no issues working through Vitality blind. I wanted to play more from the same creator, so I thought this would be similar, but it started out MUCH harder. This isn't a significant issue, but the game gets much, much easier as you find energy tanks and generally does not seem to scale the difficulty well at all. Being unable to use the map in the main hub area because of the ceres station tileset is also very frustrating, as is a TON of grey doors with absolutely no explanation, no readme, no anything to point the player in the right direction - I eventually got very stuck when I needed high jump to proceed through a water area by doing a huge high jump through a door transition into a wet area, which I may have figured out if it was clear how I got into that area to get high jump after Kraid. In general, I was often left extremely confused. I don't wish SM hacks held my hand more, but in general grey doors are potentially super frustrating.
There was a lot to love. DM does really amazing things with the stock tiles and graphics, although some of the palettes here are questionable, a lot of effort went into making this feel great. The ending was pretty neat and the environmental storytelling, similar to Vitality was all pretty great, and in a lot of ways you can see how it's a precursor, but it's also really front heavy on the difficulty and feels pointlessly difficult to explore out the gate as you wander around looking for charge beam, and then extremely well hidden super missles.
Nearly everything I struggled with, as well as issues in many other reviews could have been covered in a simple readme file with some really basic directions. a map can help you get a handle on it as well, but in general I'd love to be able to play it blind, and wish this hack better catered to that like vitality did. I also with the difficulty scaled up, rather than down,
There was a lot to love. DM does really amazing things with the stock tiles and graphics, although some of the palettes here are questionable, a lot of effort went into making this feel great. The ending was pretty neat and the environmental storytelling, similar to Vitality was all pretty great, and in a lot of ways you can see how it's a precursor, but it's also really front heavy on the difficulty and feels pointlessly difficult to explore out the gate as you wander around looking for charge beam, and then extremely well hidden super missles.
Nearly everything I struggled with, as well as issues in many other reviews could have been covered in a simple readme file with some really basic directions. a map can help you get a handle on it as well, but in general I'd love to be able to play it blind, and wish this hack better catered to that like vitality did. I also with the difficulty scaled up, rather than down,
I came to this after vitality because im a sucker for these kinds of aesthetics and atmosphere, and a little increased difficulty compared to vanilla which i have become a little too good for. Still not an advanced skillset player by any means.
Well i got what i wished for... somewhat.
The area design approached psychedelic at times. Some people will say that in a negative way but not me. It reminded me of some levels of Doom (the original one) and i appreciated that throwback. Especially that area where the (dreadful) Spore Spawn + Worm gauntlet resides to sap the soul out of you. Just like a lot of the game in general.
And this brings me to my second point. For as great time i had taking in the quirky area looks, I had much less fun actually traversing them. The issue doesn't lie in any individual element, but the fact that all of them were combined at the same time: time-consuming ways to move around the rooms, with water areas escalating that five-fold, especially when you need to backtrack through them multiple times, the graphics that i liked so much being my worst enemy because of how unclear they make it be to figure out which way is a pathway and which is not, if a gap you see is actually one you can squeeze in, or just.. nothing. Items placement is sometimes ingenious but other times just mean. Requiring me to threten awaken my tendonitis just to get to them when i sniff their existence.
I said before i've become somewhat good at the game but Eris came to me up front saying "that's your limit pal, now you'll either quadruple your playtime or use savestates. pride vs time. take your pick". I chose time. The precision and lack of error in movements required in this hack was insane. I felt so lucky the one advanced skill i was able to learn well was wall jumping, including single wall jumps and instant ledge grabs. It felt these were actually needed to play this game so i feel sorry for whoever had to learn the hard way. Some items, and sometimes even progression items (looking at you space jump) i have no clue how can someone figure out how to get them without looking up the web for a guide or video. In space jump's case its funny because its an easy thing to DO but ...maybe im not jaded enough but how do you THINK to do that? Oh I also got all artifacts and went down and got plasma beam, did ridley and all of the platforming section and reached just outside of the final boss door and realized i was still in the original suit. So i did some looking up and it turns out i had skipped Dreygon and the blasted super armor he kept locked behind him. So yeah i had to go back up to get that and then back down. That armor would have helped with area traversing so much i hated myself for not getting to it as soon as i got Space Jump.
The boss changes were funny though. Arena edits go a long way to make stuff more interesting.
I usually am good enough to beat most metroid bosses first try so having to struggle with these for a few dozen tries was welcome.
I also liked how Ridley is seemingly calculated to have just about enough health to need exactly ALL of the 30 Super Missiles the game can provide you to go down. They also seem to be the only thing that can deal noticable damage to him. I had 23 super missiles and i had to make each one count, because then my 40 missiles and charged (fully upgraded) beams were doing too little DPS in comparison as he whittles down my health because im not good enough to evade him consistently.
I could go on detailing other things but i think you get the gist:
-Game was nice to look at, but not fun to play for a big portion of it. Lack of backtracking shortcuts and water maps made this worse.
-Every super missile is important in this game, which means exploring to find them is enormously rewarding. Especially for Ridley. Item placement was mostly tricky in a good way but some of them were downgright unhealthy. Some progression related items should have been less obscure.
I'm sorry this hack probably deserves more than 3 orbs but the fact that I had to consult videos and rely on savestates and how the game's design impacted my fun prevent me from giving it more. Like, not needing to consult videos would have been enough to give it 4 orbs.
This is basically Dark Souls 2 but Metroid.
Well i got what i wished for... somewhat.
The area design approached psychedelic at times. Some people will say that in a negative way but not me. It reminded me of some levels of Doom (the original one) and i appreciated that throwback. Especially that area where the (dreadful) Spore Spawn + Worm gauntlet resides to sap the soul out of you. Just like a lot of the game in general.
And this brings me to my second point. For as great time i had taking in the quirky area looks, I had much less fun actually traversing them. The issue doesn't lie in any individual element, but the fact that all of them were combined at the same time: time-consuming ways to move around the rooms, with water areas escalating that five-fold, especially when you need to backtrack through them multiple times, the graphics that i liked so much being my worst enemy because of how unclear they make it be to figure out which way is a pathway and which is not, if a gap you see is actually one you can squeeze in, or just.. nothing. Items placement is sometimes ingenious but other times just mean. Requiring me to threten awaken my tendonitis just to get to them when i sniff their existence.
I said before i've become somewhat good at the game but Eris came to me up front saying "that's your limit pal, now you'll either quadruple your playtime or use savestates. pride vs time. take your pick". I chose time. The precision and lack of error in movements required in this hack was insane. I felt so lucky the one advanced skill i was able to learn well was wall jumping, including single wall jumps and instant ledge grabs. It felt these were actually needed to play this game so i feel sorry for whoever had to learn the hard way. Some items, and sometimes even progression items (looking at you space jump) i have no clue how can someone figure out how to get them without looking up the web for a guide or video. In space jump's case its funny because its an easy thing to DO but ...maybe im not jaded enough but how do you THINK to do that? Oh I also got all artifacts and went down and got plasma beam, did ridley and all of the platforming section and reached just outside of the final boss door and realized i was still in the original suit. So i did some looking up and it turns out i had skipped Dreygon and the blasted super armor he kept locked behind him. So yeah i had to go back up to get that and then back down. That armor would have helped with area traversing so much i hated myself for not getting to it as soon as i got Space Jump.
The boss changes were funny though. Arena edits go a long way to make stuff more interesting.
I usually am good enough to beat most metroid bosses first try so having to struggle with these for a few dozen tries was welcome.
I also liked how Ridley is seemingly calculated to have just about enough health to need exactly ALL of the 30 Super Missiles the game can provide you to go down. They also seem to be the only thing that can deal noticable damage to him. I had 23 super missiles and i had to make each one count, because then my 40 missiles and charged (fully upgraded) beams were doing too little DPS in comparison as he whittles down my health because im not good enough to evade him consistently.
I could go on detailing other things but i think you get the gist:
-Game was nice to look at, but not fun to play for a big portion of it. Lack of backtracking shortcuts and water maps made this worse.
-Every super missile is important in this game, which means exploring to find them is enormously rewarding. Especially for Ridley. Item placement was mostly tricky in a good way but some of them were downgright unhealthy. Some progression related items should have been less obscure.
I'm sorry this hack probably deserves more than 3 orbs but the fact that I had to consult videos and rely on savestates and how the game's design impacted my fun prevent me from giving it more. Like, not needing to consult videos would have been enough to give it 4 orbs.
This is basically Dark Souls 2 but Metroid.
Highly recommended, might write a full review when I feel like it.
Very nice hack, solid and well maded.
I enjoyed every aspect of the game. The level and map design, the item progretion and difficulty.
I love the "gothic" aspect of the hack, the ambience.
Something a didnt like at all is that the map is to compacted and big.
The feelling that you are always lost is beautiful, that is something good about the map being so big and compacted.
The final scape was to easy to be honest, i expected something harder knowing that the hack is a little bit hard because you dont have any suit upgrades, exept for the Chozo Armor. The Chozo Armor design is quite neat in my opinion.
I give this hack a 9.4/10. Its pretty good.
I enjoyed every aspect of the game. The level and map design, the item progretion and difficulty.
I love the "gothic" aspect of the hack, the ambience.
Something a didnt like at all is that the map is to compacted and big.
The feelling that you are always lost is beautiful, that is something good about the map being so big and compacted.
The final scape was to easy to be honest, i expected something harder knowing that the hack is a little bit hard because you dont have any suit upgrades, exept for the Chozo Armor. The Chozo Armor design is quite neat in my opinion.
I give this hack a 9.4/10. Its pretty good.
I don't enjoy hacks with on mini map included.
amazing visuals and style as you would expect from digital mantra. the ending got me to cry a bit. my only real issue was not knowing the existence of one particular grey door which confounded me for some time. that is not worth deducting an orb, though.
there's really something special about the amount of attention to storytelling and visual design that goes into dman hacks. they are all worth playing
there's really something special about the amount of attention to storytelling and visual design that goes into dman hacks. they are all worth playing
A mix of good and great visuals, a fun map to traverse and re-traverse. Did I get stuck? Sure, a few times. I feel like the ending sequence is a highlight.
An easy 3 Points for the tile-work, design layout and background distortion filters/FX. As well as the out-and-out Ridley Scott's Aliens references here. Just the best tile-work you'll ever see in a romhack for quite some time, I imagine. And the background FX are absolutely amazing too.
But Eris loses 2 points for me, due to...
-Enemies having 20,000 HP and being very frequent/fast - especially those damn crabs LOL.
-Energy tanks are spaced out too far and the Varia Suit is hard to find.
-Another sticking point is a major early section that is suitless underwater and requires PERFECT platforming, or you'll be stuck for good. In fact, I think that the hit-boxes on the moving platforms are slightly coded incorrectly too.
-I wound up beating this game out of spite towards the end, but having plasma and gravity suit made it a lot easier (kinda nice that gravity suit is an optional choice too lol)
The Bosses were fine though. I don't mind difficult bosses, especially since you can simple make a save-state at the beginning of the fight.
I will rate this hack higher if D-Mantra ever returns to this hack and scales back the hitpoints of all basic enemies (the bosses were fair difficulty imo) and at least gives you 1 easy-to-find E-tank in the earlier portion of the game. Otherwise, I imagine a lot more gamers are gonna overlook this game in favor of newer hacks, which is a bit depressing, given how beautiful and visceral the art work is.
I know it sounds like I'm ripping this game to shreds, but I do appreciate a lot of aspects of ERIS, and I think that veteran SM players would be fools to ignore this game. But let's be real...this isn't a romhack for everyone by a LONG, LONG shot.
But Eris loses 2 points for me, due to...
-Enemies having 20,000 HP and being very frequent/fast - especially those damn crabs LOL.
-Energy tanks are spaced out too far and the Varia Suit is hard to find.
-Another sticking point is a major early section that is suitless underwater and requires PERFECT platforming, or you'll be stuck for good. In fact, I think that the hit-boxes on the moving platforms are slightly coded incorrectly too.
-I wound up beating this game out of spite towards the end, but having plasma and gravity suit made it a lot easier (kinda nice that gravity suit is an optional choice too lol)
The Bosses were fine though. I don't mind difficult bosses, especially since you can simple make a save-state at the beginning of the fight.
I will rate this hack higher if D-Mantra ever returns to this hack and scales back the hitpoints of all basic enemies (the bosses were fair difficulty imo) and at least gives you 1 easy-to-find E-tank in the earlier portion of the game. Otherwise, I imagine a lot more gamers are gonna overlook this game in favor of newer hacks, which is a bit depressing, given how beautiful and visceral the art work is.
I know it sounds like I'm ripping this game to shreds, but I do appreciate a lot of aspects of ERIS, and I think that veteran SM players would be fools to ignore this game. But let's be real...this isn't a romhack for everyone by a LONG, LONG shot.
I'm not sure which playthrough I had these stats for, but I know I've beaten Eris 2012 several times and Eris 2009 at least once.
There is probably no other hack I've legitimately enjoyed that has put me through so much misery but simultaneously kept me coming back for more as Eris. (Z Factor came close.)
I probably circled the map a dozen times or so my first playthrough. That first campaign took me a year on and off again to complete.
It's a huge game on a relatively small map. That tightness in room layout contrasts against the vastness in exploration. That is topped off by Eris's rich and diverse area biomes.
The game has a very cinematic feel (which would be fleshed out more in Vitality.) I love the Vanilla GFX rearranged to be unrecognizable in many rooms.
I very much recommend that people play 2012 first. However, 2009 is a very enjoyable experience and should be played if you love the Eris experience. (I wish Dman had it linked on the hack page.)
There is probably no other hack I've legitimately enjoyed that has put me through so much misery but simultaneously kept me coming back for more as Eris. (Z Factor came close.)
I probably circled the map a dozen times or so my first playthrough. That first campaign took me a year on and off again to complete.
It's a huge game on a relatively small map. That tightness in room layout contrasts against the vastness in exploration. That is topped off by Eris's rich and diverse area biomes.
The game has a very cinematic feel (which would be fleshed out more in Vitality.) I love the Vanilla GFX rearranged to be unrecognizable in many rooms.
I very much recommend that people play 2012 first. However, 2009 is a very enjoyable experience and should be played if you love the Eris experience. (I wish Dman had it linked on the hack page.)
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