This hack is great and is obviously one of the best Super Metroid hacks out there. The level design is very good and visually it almost surpasses the original in some areas. There is also a part that was very clearly inspired by AM2R, which I enjoyed a lot! However, while on one hand this is a fantastic hack, on the other one there are a handful of glaring problems that made this hack somewhat painful at times to play.
I agree with Wizard's criticism that the first half (in playtime, not in item progression) is a slog and only after you get access to some of the power-ups you would normally get at the beginning of vanilla it feels like it starts opening up. The first half wouldn't be nearly as painful if it wasn't so hard to tell where you're supposed to go and if the map wasn't so maze-like, but as you keep playing what becomes a bigger problem is that weapons and save points are extremely scarce. I also agree that sometimes it's hard to discern what's supposed to be a platform, foreground decoration or part of the background, specially because everything belonging to the same area has the same color which causes nothing to stand out. Particularly in the area where you find Phantoom it felt like a joke because enemies, platforms and background all have the same color and there's thick fog and it's darkly lit. Speaking of which, this hack is VERY, VERY dark. I cannot emphasize enough how dark this hack is. It's so dark that it's the first time ever playing something where I got lost and had to look up where to go purely because I couldn't for the life of me see there were hidden tunnels or passages in some areas because I could almost barely even tell where the platforms were to begin with. The only area that didn't have this problem was Akhlys (which is my favorite area as well).
After you have gotten all items, you don't really get a challenge and you aren't put to the test unlike vanilla, which is strange because up until that point it has been very difficult (a lot more so than vanilla, even though it doesn't require special techniques and tries to accommodate all players), and I think this also contributes to the feeling that it is very weirdly paced.
Overall, this has the foundation to be a spectacular hack, but it has so many glaring problems that would have been very easy to fix which caused me to want to give up finishing it.
Exploration],
rated by QuiKe on Nov 02, 2021 (
