Law's Hack Reviews - Metroid Construction

Law's Ratings and Reviews

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Super Metroid But I Hate You by mysty_wysty [

Spoof], rated by Law on May 05, 2025 (

)

55% in 2:22

Hello!

I playtested this, and I'm unashamedly biased towards this romhack.

It's a romhack for SM veterans, so you'd best bring your skills. You'll bee in for a wild ride from the moment you hit start. That's all I can say without spoiling the experience - Go play it!

I can't wait to see you bring more of your ideas to life Mysty. Congratulations again for the release!

Super Metroid: Subversion by TestRunner and AmoebaOfDoom [

Exploration], rated by Law on Sep 05, 2022 (

)

72% in 6:51

Played 1.1. I liked it. Lots to explore and see, with many areas with different biomes within.

Some enemies do a lot of damage.

The logbook gave some direction when I got lost but without rubbing it in your face.

kaleidoscope by neen [

Exploration], rated by Law on Mar 16, 2025 (

)

69% in 3:21

kaleidoscope is very good if you're into exploration hacks, but you may not like it as much if you prefer some direction to figure out where you need to go next.

It's requires some advanced tech to complete, but the main crux is some tech which I used a lot which was very fun to use.

I enjoyed the aesthetic and use of effects and tiles to make the rooms, but there were a few spots where I got confused because it was hard to distinguish between solid and air blocks at points. Some effects were hard to look at, such as when collecting certain items.

Overall I enjoyed my time with this.

SM Redesign: Axeil Edition by Drewseph [

Exploration], rated by Law on Mar 29, 2022 (

)

61% in 9:50

Played v1.6.

This hack is for you if you want more Super Metroid and more of a challenge. It necessitates you use every item and ability at your disposal if you want to get through it.

World is very large and there's plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. Physics are very heavy, and it'll feel jarring at first. As you play on though, you can pull off some pretty neat things, especially with some of the changes to some of the mobility upgrades.

It feels very satisfying to play, and you'll feel accomplished when it's over. Victory is earned, not handed to you on a plate.

V I T A L I T Y by Digital_Mantra [

Exploration], rated by Law on Jan 28, 2021 (

)

71% in 4:17

V I T A L I I T Y is spooky, but good.

I like the tiling and colours in the different areas.

Difficulty was a bit rough in the first half, but it was easier by the time you reach the end, so pretty a pretty chill experience overall.

Exploration is good aside from the aforementioned difficulty curve. All the rooms were unique that I knew where in the world I was, and getting around was pretty easy for the most part.

Super Metroid: X-Fusion by Metaquarius [

Total Conversion], rated by Law on Aug 28, 2025 (

)

No completion stats.

Played 1.0, then played it again on 1.1.

There's some cool stuff to experience in this, but it's much better to play once you've completed it once. During my first time through, I had a lot of moments of feeling lost or not feeling sure how to progress, and there was lots of friction that frustrated me the first time.

In terms of points that originally gave me friction:

- First time in Main Deck: not really knowing how to deal with the insta-death sequence, feeling like I had to go elsewhere
- Ice-X in NOC: I feel like there wasn't enough time between when you're first introduced to them, before you're expected to do the dance between them
- Navigating through the cold bit of ARC the first time (though that's been addressed to have a little more direction)
- The critical path during my 2nd time in NOC was not clear at all and so I found myself having to go back around.

The writing is an interesting twist on Fusion's story, but the way that it's delivered in the dialogue makes it hard to take seriously. It jumps between really serious moments, to Saturday morning cartoon dialogue and really takes me out of the moment. The English script needs some polish - a lot of the lines feel shoehorned in from the original dialogue and it doesn't mesh at all for me.

(Also I get that you wanted to make it easy to localise but level 1, level 2, and level 3 doesn't feel intuitive to understand - I would have gone for high, medium, low instead.)

Room design individually for the most part was cool and there were some neat callbacks to Fusion which was very nice. The graphics are really great, and it felt like the vast majority of custom GFX meshed really well with Fusion's tilesets. However, there were some rooms where the secret path is hidden off the top of the UI, and I'm still not a fan of Fusion's false walls for hiding secrets.

Sounds could use some work. The music tracks are recognisable to anyone who's played Fusion, and there are a couple of custom tracks too which is neat. The levels/mastering is a bit off though, I resorted to using ammo weapons and regular beam shots because the charged beam sound kept drowning out the soundtrack.

Bosses ranged from frustrating to fun, mainly because I think that there were some cool ideas with how Metaquarius approached how to give a unique spin, but at the same time it introduced quite a lot of new variables that make some bosses way harder to strategise around in the moment. Also there was one boss which I got stuck on because it gave just about no feedback on if I was actually having any effect on it.

Fighting the Core-X and Beam-X felt frustrating because it felt like it tracked me so strangely, it entered the uncanny valley of me expecting it to react more in the way that they did in Fusion.

I enjoyed a lot of the SA-X encounters, but during the end game I think it gets too overbearing - repeatedly dying takes the tension out of it and turns it into tedium, which is kinda wild because the atmosphere is like the perfect storm of tension and horror and not knowing what's in the next room, and then you get slapped by the SA-X hiding behind Layer 1 tiles. In places it's like you have to manipulate it to do the one thing you need it to do but then it just doesn't do it.

Overall, it's a mixed bag. I think if you've played Fusion, you will experience the terror of fleeing the SA-X in ways people have hoped for from Fusion's original writing. There were a lot of rough edges though when I played, and there is a lot of aspects that feel less refined.

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