“Where dreams are born, crushed, and converted to base16”
MATHGODpi's Ratings and Reviews
Phazon Hack by A_red_monk_called_Key [
Exploration],
rated by MATHGODpi on Jan 09, 2023 (
)
Exploration],
rated by MATHGODpi on Jan 09, 2023 ( )
87% in 10:10
I played the original release of Phazon Hack back in 2012, but stopped playing SM hacks for many years; just getting back into it now. I hadn't remembered any of the playthrough done all those years ago, so today's playthrough was for all intents and purposes a blind one. Played Phazon v0.3 today and here are my thoughts:
CONS
- Enemies often take an unreasonable amount of hits to kill. Yes this hack is meant to be challenging, but there isn't much fun in sitting there for 10 minutes pounding the fire button just to get past one pirate. The problem is partially rectified by using a turbo button with spazer/wave combo, but even then it can take a crazy long time to kill some foes. Add to that some enemies are also immune to speed booster AND screw attack. I'm not talking about bosses here, I'm talking about pirates and some other basic enemies in some areas.
- Lack of navigational resources available to the player for the size of the world that the player is required to navigate. A number of times I spent a disturbing amount of time retracing my steps trying to figure out what to do next. Worst case of this, the search for power bombs had me very frustrated, basically spending almost 2 hours scouring the entire world before finally tapping out and looking at a video guide. Turns out I needed the space jump which was hidden in a spot I'd never think of going to.
- Lack of resource-replenish stations. The original game at least had Samus' ship where you could go for a full restoration of all your energy and weapons. No such station in this hack. Best you get is a couple of missile refill stations, and a few energy chargers which take half an hour to get you back to full energy. The creativity is a nice touch and everything, but why take all day to refill the energy?
- Dark Metroid warp area is counterintuitive and requires player to remember which paths go where.
- Map feature is glitched in some areas.
- No counters provided to help the player keep track of number of keys & particles already collected and how many are still out there. While the map in Valkryie provides some data, it would be nice to have access to this data in a clearer, more intuitive way, and throughout the game instead of only at the end.
- Game freezes permanently if you use X ray scope in the map room in Valkryie. Also, the game doesn't let you use X ray in the Phazon Mine Temple.
- Ridley exit door is positioned wrong - you can just skip the fight.
PROS
- The hack is very visually pleasing. The graphics look great. The tiles, backgrouds, sprites, pallettes all looked great to me. Not sure why some are complaining about the tiles... everything looked great to me!
- Inventive boss fights, including resprites of all bosses! The only fight I didn't enjoy was crocomire/train thingy... no difference from the 'fight' in the original game. Cool resprite though!
- Relatively early access to X ray scope combined with player-friendly tiles indicating where a hidden path is likely to be, for example blocks typically look crumbled (compared to normal blocks) when they can be shot to clear them. This is a welcome change from some other hacks that require you to bomb every tile in the game in search for hidden paths!
- BIG world with LOTS of paths going in various directions makes for many hours of fun navigation and gameplay! This hack had me glued all day long!
It's clear that a ton of work went into this project and I thank Red Monkey for making this hack. I'm giving it 5 orbs despite its drawbacks; this hack is easily one of the most fun and addictive I've ever played!
CONS
- Enemies often take an unreasonable amount of hits to kill. Yes this hack is meant to be challenging, but there isn't much fun in sitting there for 10 minutes pounding the fire button just to get past one pirate. The problem is partially rectified by using a turbo button with spazer/wave combo, but even then it can take a crazy long time to kill some foes. Add to that some enemies are also immune to speed booster AND screw attack. I'm not talking about bosses here, I'm talking about pirates and some other basic enemies in some areas.
- Lack of navigational resources available to the player for the size of the world that the player is required to navigate. A number of times I spent a disturbing amount of time retracing my steps trying to figure out what to do next. Worst case of this, the search for power bombs had me very frustrated, basically spending almost 2 hours scouring the entire world before finally tapping out and looking at a video guide. Turns out I needed the space jump which was hidden in a spot I'd never think of going to.
- Lack of resource-replenish stations. The original game at least had Samus' ship where you could go for a full restoration of all your energy and weapons. No such station in this hack. Best you get is a couple of missile refill stations, and a few energy chargers which take half an hour to get you back to full energy. The creativity is a nice touch and everything, but why take all day to refill the energy?
- Dark Metroid warp area is counterintuitive and requires player to remember which paths go where.
- Map feature is glitched in some areas.
- No counters provided to help the player keep track of number of keys & particles already collected and how many are still out there. While the map in Valkryie provides some data, it would be nice to have access to this data in a clearer, more intuitive way, and throughout the game instead of only at the end.
- Game freezes permanently if you use X ray scope in the map room in Valkryie. Also, the game doesn't let you use X ray in the Phazon Mine Temple.
- Ridley exit door is positioned wrong - you can just skip the fight.
PROS
- The hack is very visually pleasing. The graphics look great. The tiles, backgrouds, sprites, pallettes all looked great to me. Not sure why some are complaining about the tiles... everything looked great to me!
- Inventive boss fights, including resprites of all bosses! The only fight I didn't enjoy was crocomire/train thingy... no difference from the 'fight' in the original game. Cool resprite though!
- Relatively early access to X ray scope combined with player-friendly tiles indicating where a hidden path is likely to be, for example blocks typically look crumbled (compared to normal blocks) when they can be shot to clear them. This is a welcome change from some other hacks that require you to bomb every tile in the game in search for hidden paths!
- BIG world with LOTS of paths going in various directions makes for many hours of fun navigation and gameplay! This hack had me glued all day long!
It's clear that a ton of work went into this project and I thank Red Monkey for making this hack. I'm giving it 5 orbs despite its drawbacks; this hack is easily one of the most fun and addictive I've ever played!
