Frydi's Hack Reviews - Metroid Construction

Frydi's Ratings and Reviews

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Super Metroid But I Hate You by mysty_wysty [

Spoof], rated by Frydi on May 10, 2025 (

)

81% in 6:57

This hack made me laugh A LOT and the creator really put a ton of work into this (first) hack.
I don't really want to spoil any content, but a good way to describe this hack is that it isn't bound by the usual SM romhack creation tropes(tm) (gray door galore, rolling into random walls etc.) and has a lot of creative new ideas, tons of custom stuff and great music (which all current SM hacks desperately need more of).

Would rate 4.5 orbs cause I REALLY hate that dumb knock-back feature, but it shouldn't diminish the work put into this hack.

Super Metroid: Axiom by Metaquarius [

Quick Play], rated by Frydi on Aug 10, 2024 (

)

100% in 1:37

I haven't played Axiom Verge before beating this hack so I can't say anything about any Axiom Verge references... Playing Axiom Verge before the hack will probably let you enjoy it a lot more, but the hack is perfectly beatable without playing it.

Very polished Quick Play hack. Features such as speedkeep/audio/whatever can be turned off in the ingame options menu (a lot of options!), so anyone can play the way they want. There were like 2 sections that slowed down a lot, but they didn't impact the fun too much. Despite seeing the passwords (kinda) I didn't realize what I had until I found the item so backtracking was required to 100%.
Veteran difficulty is probably too much for the hack, I never had any issues after finding a beam (but had a lot of issues due to being dumb with only missiles).

Finding the last item took me forever, but I just forgot to actually check a wall that always looked sus to me... Time in IGT.

Super Metroid: Eleven by Metaquarius [

Quick Play], rated by Frydi on Jul 06, 2024 (

)

90% in 1:41

Eleven is much more than the puzzle hack it appears to be, but saying more would spoil the experience.
Could get all fuel tanks without knowledge about advanced PBase tech, so the difficulty isn't THAT high.

It took me way too long to realize that the fuel (water) heals you and how Flazer beam worked (After the tutorial...). All plot twists were hilarious and I had a great time playing the hack.

6/5 orbs cause anime girl.

Metroid Z by Metroid_Crafter [ MZM

Exploration], rated by Frydi on Nov 01, 2025 (

)

93% in 3:27

Played this on release. It's a very decent Zero Mission hack, but not the holy grails people make it out to be. Z doesn't really do anything groundbreaking, most tilesets are slightly modified standard or public assets (like the dark temple), but it doesn't need to and doesn't do anything too offensive either. It is probably the most 4 star ZM hack ever.

A few things that absolutely bothered me during my playthrough are tedious ways to walk back and around when getting some items which could have been solved by more shortcuts and the absolute lack of missile drops in the beginning especially if a pack gives you THREE missiles only!

It seems to have been improved by now, but it seriously impacted my playing experience. Normally this wouldn't be a reason to be annoyed, but if the hack is in development for 4 years+, had multiple playtesters and "11 betas", the basically complete absence of missile drops must have been apparent at some point... or your playtesting process needs serious work. It doesn't hurt to put zebbo spawners into some rooms.

Time IGT, RTA: 4:26

Super Metroid: X-Fusion by Metaquarius [

Total Conversion], rated by Frydi on Aug 02, 2025 (

)

59% in 4:10

Didn't get filtered, but very mixed bag. I read the readme before playing... INSANE???
It's the most anticipated (Metroid) hack (ever?) and will probably suffer from too high expectations. Hard to recommended for people without a lot of experience playing hard hacks/speedrunning Metroid games. Save states exist though so nothing really stops anyone from playing this. Some spoilers ahead, but trying to keep them to an absolute minimum.

Played on the SNES scheme, GBA felt weird and the functions of R and L are swapped compared to GBA Fusion for whatever reason?

X-Fusion is a really creative hack with tons of unique ideas to enhance the concept of Metroid Fusion. It recreates the feeling of a first Fusion playthrough with its difficulty and starts out as more linear, but opens up completely mid game to let you pick your own path (some people get off of that) to get items in various orders. All bosses are REALLY fun and unique in a lot of ways, either to fight or just the concept of them. Familiarity with how Fusion bosses behave is a big help, but nothing is as you expect it. You will recognize a lot of rooms/traps from Fusion/SM but mostly with changed purpose.

Some progression is more vague, but if you played a lot of Metroid hacks before or have a keen eye for secrets, you won't have a problem finding your way. There might be two or three instances of more obscure hints, but every hidden block/path needed to progress IS indicated in some way (tiling, random effects, enemies walking into walls etc.). Where you have to go to progress is sometimes an issue though, but your general 6 objectives are all marked on the map. The lack of a minimap (If you know why, you know) isn't really a big issue, but would really help not having to open the map all the time.

Yes, the hack is difficult and a lot of times a bit unfair. Difficulty is definitely fluctuating A LOT in some sections. I can't personally really see the HUGE difficulty in the early game aside from Scisors dealing like 2 Etanks worth of damage... Idk, maybe cause I actually used missiles??? General unfamiliarity with the rooms and trial and error to get out of some sections can definitely create frustration for the casual player. There are two really frustrating sections, the ice-X part and the final area (which honestly can't be forgiven really...).

Time IGT, RTA: 11:01 hours

Samus Wants Robot by Croakomire [

Speedrun/Race], rated by Frydi on Sep 09, 2024 (

)

57% in 0:31

I didn't know the hack was what it was... Thank god I only played 2.5 hours on v1.0 without the quick respawn added in 2.0. (+1 orb)

Personally I don't think the hack is too hard or unfair. The whole point is to trial and error your way through the station and figure out paths to progress. It took me waaay too long to understand how the map actually worked and I didn't trust a symbol I saw on the map.

I'd say there is only one really hard trick required to beat the hack, but I did it so probably everyone can beat this with enough time. An easy version with maybe more health or less damage would probably make it more accessible.

Liked the custom bosses a lot.

Glad all robots died. RTA: 5:30:10

Metroid Fusion T.S by Meilove [

Exploration], rated by Frydi on Dec 11, 2021 (

)

58% in 4:55

Decent Fusion romhack with a redesigned BSL station and some gameplay changes. As bad as the preview pictures look, the design is actually decent. Difficulty wise, this hack is manageable for a casual player. The map was redesigned A LOT, but it still retains the feeling of vanilla Fusion so you can kind of predict if you're going the right way or not. The the beam was nerfed, making it a lot slower and deal less damage (buffing plasma a lot in the process). It has the obligatory "Sector 4 escape shinespark chain(tm)" every Chinese hack has, but it's not overly complicated/tedious like in other hacks. Unlike other hacks, the following sectors still have normal gameplay elements and are not nonstop shinespark chains. From Sector 6 on, the game expects you to diagonally shoot missiles through blocks (constantly...). A big flaw of the game is that the in-game map is absolutely broken as a a result from all the room shuffling. This led to me looking for the SA-X in the absolutely wrong place for over an hour. The changes to the boss weaknesses were kinda fun if you just try doing the vanilla approach and get thrown off. The boss changes are similar to other hacks with Zazabi's room full of obstacles, Serris in a maze, huge Nightmare room, and so on. BOX2 and Ridleys room are filled with "fun", so some knowledge on how to fight these is required. While the hack is definitely play-tested, I managed to get stuck in a situation requiring power bombs to progress without any and no way to refill. The first time I could reset, but the other time (before Netori), I didn't know I needed PBs and saved in a softlock (or at the mercy of a super random red X drop)...
so I ended up clipping through a wall in order not to have to redo 6h of gameplay.

Some noticeable things:
- The hack has a lot of crumble blocks in some places which actually were hilarious to fall through
- Some instances of "find the 1 block in an absolutely obscure place to progress", but nothing too major
- Only like 5 required shinespark chains and 1 or 2 tighter longer spaceboosts
- Not being able to get required power bombs actually made me clip through a wall

This is a very decent hack and definitely worth a playthrough, even for casual players.

Metroid - Galactic Marine by Stat!k / Srarokz [

Exploration], rated by Frydi on Nov 25, 2024 (

)

81% in 1:41

A mixed bag in my opinion. Playing as a space marine is nicely realized by making you feel heavy and giving you non-traditional upgrades to use. Maybe walljumping could have been removed entirely as it seems to give you more jumping height/momentum than a normal jump. Plus you can walljump out of a neutral jump too now. The game is using grapple as an alternative wherever possible anyway. No health drops make the game very tedious to play especially as the low health alarm was also removed.

The areas look pretty nice even though the Sector 6 tileset in the first icy area is among the ugliest assets to use. This inital area which is often tiled very awkwardly and has some tiling errors here and there. The underwater area looks a lot better, but it's often hard to make out platforms (maybe better on emulator).

My biggest complaint by far about the game is the lack of any proper music aside from the lower caves area. Yes, it's supposed to be atmospheric, but the first area is as bit confusing to figure out where to go at first and the lack of music makes it incredibly boring to play at first.

No idea why the additional refill stations with the awkward ship behavior were used instead of just using save stations to refill. I'm also not sure if I could have finished the game without the DNA sample as I could unlock the path to the final boss without collecting it. Time in IGT.

Metroid Fusion Boss Rush by SpineShark [

Boss Rush], rated by Frydi on May 13, 2024 (

)

35% in 0:16

Played both versions (v1, v2) of the hack. Either version is fine to play, the rooms/door transitions in v2 are slightly changed and a new transition room was added. v1 is based on sequence breaking fusion and suffers from its poor beam changes while v2 is entirely vanilla behavior. Don't play the buggy v1.0.

In the end it's a boss rush hack with vanilla boss rooms, so "only" 3 orbs.

Metroid: Chaos Mission by biospark [ MZM

Spoof], rated by Frydi on May 03, 2023 (

)

53% in 1:11

Incredible hack with tons of replay value as no playthrough is the same.

It's a chaos hack, so you get exactly what you expect from similar hacks in other games, like enemies and blocks randomly spawning and getting replaced with other stuff (such as Mecha Ridley).
The game disabled my speedbooster and high-jump until after Charlie, so knowledge about running into potential softlocks is required.
Ridley and Kraid aren't a big problem, but longer fights (Imago, MB, Charlie, Mecha) cause issues as the bosses get replaced.
Charlie is a huge issue and even if you manage to hit it 4 times, the trigger for the suit is most likely gone already.
The Game actually crashed twice in 4h (not prone to crashing or every 10 seconds like others said) and came to a standstill at many expansions, but fixed itself after what feels like a missing fanfare played.

Used savestates right before Imago and Charlie door to reduce reloading times.
Time in IGT, 4:06 RTA.

Metroid Fusion - Phoenix Dance by Meilove [

Exploration], rated by Frydi on Mar 20, 2022 (

)

8% in 9:58

Played the whole hack. It's not better or worse than most other Chinese Fusion hacks. Yes, there are elevators in A LOT of locations, but the description also tells exactly that.
The elevators do have visual cues that (sometimes more, sometimes less obvious), but they are there and you get used to them over time. Some are even in some very creative locations.
Obviously the hack also contains the usual jank you can expect from one such hack like the map shredded into pieces cause of the way rooms were reordered and tons of broken loading zones as a result.
The hack has a decent difficulty with 8% seeming to be the maximum (3 etanks, 35 missiles), but accessible 1 etank and missile pack in broken Sector 5 might be an oversight on the developers part given how much effort they put into blocking off access to items.
The single worst passages in this hack are the S2 SAX chase with no indication of what to do and finding the way to XBOX in S6 where Mage and the Hitbox viewer were used.

The hack is more 2.5 stars, but I rated it 3 cause it is definitely not the worst thing out there as others make it out to be. The puzzles and room gimmicks are the usual things you find in Chinese Fusion hacks. So if you're used to that, this one is not too bad asides from the mentioned sections.

I really liked underwater XBOX.

Metroid - Fusion X by ShuiJing [

Exploration], rated by Frydi on Jul 10, 2023 (

)

29% in 4:07

I played every Fusion hack, but this is the first one that I found incredibly boring to play.
As already said, it's a retile, like most ShuiJing hacks, but very basic (tbf it's an old hack). So vanilla room progression with items hidden in different spots, which is nice I guess until you get power bombs.

The hack might be suitable for someone who never played a Fusion hack as the difficulty isn't high. Otherwise it's only good for "We have X-Fusion at home" jokes. Time in RTA, 3:06 IGT

Metroid Other ZM by Luce Seyfarth [ MZM

Exploration], rated by Frydi on Dec 21, 2024 (

)

39% in 8:32

I finished this so I can say it... This is the worst GBAtroid hack on Metconst and it's not close at all!

Hard for me to really dislike any hack as I've played every GBAtroid hack around, but any Chinese Fusion hack has more redeeming qualities than this thing... Even jiffy's broken mess of a ZM hack.

It's fine to make enemies stronger, have more HP or reduce drops but all 3 is a brain-dead decision just to give any player the most tedious experience possible, not a "harder" experience. If you know how to play ZM, you probably won't die from damage but sheer boredom performing repetitive tasks or running in circles across the map.

Knowledge of vanilla ZM only gets you so far, you WILL NOT be able to finish this without checking a video or the ROM in MAGE. The hack has A LOT of hidden blocks, most are reasonably well indicated but you will have to look for a bit. This is fine, BUT for some insane reason the hack later decides to hide hidden blocks with an opaque BG0 layer so you have no more way to know if/what block might be hidden... WHY? Combine that with fun combinations of reforming/non-reforming blocks and blocks that you bonk into speedboosting while hiding everything in random ceiling spots and you have the perfect example of how to not design a game.

I've deleted a block in MAGE to get to ice beam cause the zipline event didn't want to activate at all but was active in its room(?). Might be a result of killing Kraid first, but I couldn't be bothered trying to make sense of this pile of garbage. Everything stops making sense after Brinstar anyway...

Obligatory "Would give 0 orbs if possible" statement. Time is RTA.

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