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Full Let’s Play
Epic Fights is a boss rush episode where you must defeat 14 enemies using the original 5 characters of SMBX. The bosses vary severely in difficulty, and while it’s not impossible, at times it feels like it’s challenging for the wrong reasons.
Let’s Talk About Assets!
I don’t know where they all come from since I only recognized some of the bosses, but there’s a mix of graphics from Mario and other sources, like Rayquaza from Pokémon or Sonic.exe. Battle themes get reused for a couple fights with most of it coming from Lufia 2, but still having a decent variety. Alongside the original cast, there’s a block you can hit that switches your character between their available costumes, such as Demo and co. of raocow fame.
The game consists of a hub and separate battle arenas, so each fight is its own microcosm; disconnected from everything else. Each piece is internally consistent, but kind of a hodgepodge when taken all together. Personally, I didn’t find much to gripe about outside of the Giant Piranha Plant, which is just an upscaled Venus Firetrap. Those megapixels will put an eye out.
Let’s Talk About Writing!
There’s barely any. Since this episode is only about fighting, there’s no narrative to tie it together. You’re dropped into the hub with no context, ready to bruise your knuckles. Signposts tell you the name of each boss at their door. Credits are on a sign near the character select. Once the bosses are defeated, you can meet the developer’s avatar as they congratulate you. Nothing special, but nothing needed.
Let’s Talk About Design!
This is the bulk of it, as boss battles are nearly all the episode is made of. However, I do have a couple things to say about the hub. Mainly, it’s inconvenient to navigate. The boss doors are arrayed around a clear pipe that connects the whole hub together, but getting out at your desired destination can be a nuisance. You’re practically forced to interact with it because the only source of power-ups is a lone mushroom spawner in the middle of the area. That means every time you fail a boss, it’s back through the clear pipe for you or restart with a huge disadvantage. Some pipe entrances are placed poorly, like high enough in the ceiling to require a momentum jump to reach, or above a boss door where pressing up too early sends you through the door instead. For a feature that should make retrying as uncomplicated as possible, it really fails at that. It’s one thing for the 1-up spawner to be in the middle, but they could’ve put in more mushroom spawners, or used Lua to dispel with lives and power-ups entirely.
The boss fights are so different from each other that you can’t weigh much general criticism at them. The one thing I can say is that SMBX has never been well-suited to elaborate fights while using default player health mechanics, and this episode demonstrates why. When the most hits you can take is 3 and the bosses have fast/unpredictable attacks, you’re bound to fail a lot and it can get frustrating quickly.
Most of the trouble I had was against bosses with random elements to their attacks. One example is an attack that bursts fireballs out from the center of the screen in all directions. They’re small, but depending on where RNG sends them, it’s easy to get trapped and forced to take a hit, or be unable to move out of the way in time. Consistency is of vital importance in platformers, especially with bosses for pattern recognition, so the lack of it really shows how it can impact these fights. Character speed is more of an issue for fast bosses where your inability to get up and go will get you killed.
Sometimes you can alleviate the problems of a boss by choosing a different character. Luigi’s higher jumps are suited to some that are hard to reach. Toad has higher acceleration, making him better for fast bosses. Peach’s hover has some practical use in dodging and attacking. I only used Link for the Koopalings since they can be stabbed while otherwise invulnerable. I can’t speak to his usefulness otherwise, but my guess is it’s very selective. It can also be helpful to play as a character with a health bar so you don’t need to grab your dropdown item in the fray.
Although you have these options, it doesn’t really excuse the bosses for having these problems to begin with. Ideally, you should be able to beat any boss as any available character, and that doesn’t seem doable from what I experienced. I talk about the specifics in my LP and it’s a bit much to get into, as I could write at least a paragraph about each of them. Suffice it to say, the balance could be better and there’s only so much you can do to git gud.
Let’s Wrap This Up…
I hesitate to recommend this episode in the condition I played it, but the developer was watching and might make some adjustments. It’s certainly challenging, but as before, not always for the right reasons. It’s kind of a raw experience and I wouldn’t want to meet most of these guys at the end of a long dungeon. It sorta works since the fight is the entire stage, but in a way, that only emphasizes the balance issues.
3/5
Bowser’s not the one you should be scared of.
