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Eris by Digital_Mantra [SM Exploration], rated by hotfist.com on Nov 03, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
78% in 10:00
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,
V I T A L I T Y by Digital_Mantra [SM Exploration], rated by hotfist.com on Nov 04, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
% in 8:00
This hack absolutely knocked it out of the park, and even if you struggled with eris, found it too hard or difficult to approach this is an absolute masterpiece that does not suffer from those flaws.

I was able to work my way through this blind with no issues. Only rising morphball is needed which is a very natural skill to learn while fooling around in game and just in general, everything is extremely readable and well delivered.

The environmental storytelling is at it's peak here, and really feels like a very modern game overall, considering it's just super metroid - this is the kind of game anyone who likes super metroid should absolutely play.