Spoiler: show
The Good
-One of the first things i noticed were the physics and Waddle's cute bouncy animations. I haven't touched smbx in ages, so i was definitely pleasantly surprised when i started jumping around.
-The menu is really snappy and it's oddly fun to just spam up and down to switch options.
-The fact that you can start a stage from any checkpoint you've reached is a really cool feature and makes getting all the magnets MUCH less of a pain.
-There's a lot of subtle effects that are really neat even though you barely notice them, like the particles when you hit the ground, or the slight changes of time in some of the stages.
-I really liked how the different colors of coins stood for the different moves you can use. Does a great job of subtly but surely guiding the player.
-The gimmicks in the stages are great and varied. They never felt out of place, and the fact that some are more simple but some change the controls and gameplay more than others really helped things be consistent with your general gameplay while still being new and fresh.
-The way the enemies subtly interact with the beat in the beat block stages was really neat, for example hammer bros doing small hops to the beat.
-Turtwig really felt more heavy and burly than Waddle and the difference made switching between the two much more fun and interesting.
-The Bosses are all great and never felt unfair.
-I really have to credit just how hard this is modified from normal smbx. Since I've mostly moved on from it and saw this more as it's own game it didn't stand to me much but back in the day this would've absolutely blown my mind. If it weren't for all the stolen assets and the fact that this is the fan game, this is definitely something you could sell.
The Bad + Suggestions
-I immediately noticed how wimpy the cape attack feels. It feels better if you have the range extension for sure, but i think the original range could definitely be increased by a bit. I suppose it's supposed to be like the cape spin from smw so perhaps I've just been playing to much Hollow Knight or something. What i thought would also be nice was a way to cancel the drill after the high jump so you can get right back into the action, but i got used to it very quickly and it's not really that important.
-In the second stage, due to most things being sort of blueish, including foreground and background aspects, and the dark aesthetic of the stage, it can be really hard to tell what's going on, especially when there's loads of intersecting clear pipes (which also don't stand out enough) in which bright red spinies zoom around in (which stand out very well but don't mix well with the fact that the clear pipes don't). Generally, many important aspects don't stand out enough visually for how much is going on.
-Similarly to the last one, the red beam bgos in Prototype District look a bit too similar to their solid counterparts, and are placed in the exact same way which made me almost jump on some of them. Walking through that stage felt like walking around when it's pitch black and you kinda carefully waddle around because you see things coming towards you that aren't there and you don't want to trip and fall on your face.
-The next two kind of fit together; There was a random difficulty spike in the game when these to stages came along and it was really out of place because everything after was much easier and felt much more natural:
-In the stage with the Celeste bubbles the punishment for fucking up was way to strict, it felt like you had to play through Celeste but there's only a checkpoint every few rooms, which isn't that great since Celeste is designed to not be too punishing for mistakes.
-The stage right after was also really difficult in comparison to other stages. The section after the last checkpoint especially, it felt better to just tank through all the challenges as actually trying to get through them properly without getting hit was more risky, which really isn't good.
-The difficulty of the final stage was way out of place, too, especially if you tried going for the magnets. I spent so much time on that stage that it completely destroyed all the previous build up (which is a shame because that build up was really well done otherwise). Because of this difficulty the final bosses were more of a relief even though they should be the true final challenge. The difficulty of this final stage would fit much more for postgame content in my opinion.
-While i can only imagine how hard it must've been and how much time it must've taken to create the final phase of the final boss, it was really just a copy of Planet Robobot's final boss, down to the picking up of debris for a powerful attack. To me, someone who saw this as its own thing and not smbx, it really wasn't that amazing and felt kind of tacked on (But I'm sure the broken build up due to the previous stage helped contribute to that, as well as the fact that i was pretty tired).
-The weird puzzle tower thingy felt more like it should be it's own thing rather than be part of this game.
-One of the first things i noticed were the physics and Waddle's cute bouncy animations. I haven't touched smbx in ages, so i was definitely pleasantly surprised when i started jumping around.
-The menu is really snappy and it's oddly fun to just spam up and down to switch options.
-The fact that you can start a stage from any checkpoint you've reached is a really cool feature and makes getting all the magnets MUCH less of a pain.
-There's a lot of subtle effects that are really neat even though you barely notice them, like the particles when you hit the ground, or the slight changes of time in some of the stages.
-I really liked how the different colors of coins stood for the different moves you can use. Does a great job of subtly but surely guiding the player.
-The gimmicks in the stages are great and varied. They never felt out of place, and the fact that some are more simple but some change the controls and gameplay more than others really helped things be consistent with your general gameplay while still being new and fresh.
-The way the enemies subtly interact with the beat in the beat block stages was really neat, for example hammer bros doing small hops to the beat.
-Turtwig really felt more heavy and burly than Waddle and the difference made switching between the two much more fun and interesting.
-The Bosses are all great and never felt unfair.
-I really have to credit just how hard this is modified from normal smbx. Since I've mostly moved on from it and saw this more as it's own game it didn't stand to me much but back in the day this would've absolutely blown my mind. If it weren't for all the stolen assets and the fact that this is the fan game, this is definitely something you could sell.
The Bad + Suggestions
-I immediately noticed how wimpy the cape attack feels. It feels better if you have the range extension for sure, but i think the original range could definitely be increased by a bit. I suppose it's supposed to be like the cape spin from smw so perhaps I've just been playing to much Hollow Knight or something. What i thought would also be nice was a way to cancel the drill after the high jump so you can get right back into the action, but i got used to it very quickly and it's not really that important.
-In the second stage, due to most things being sort of blueish, including foreground and background aspects, and the dark aesthetic of the stage, it can be really hard to tell what's going on, especially when there's loads of intersecting clear pipes (which also don't stand out enough) in which bright red spinies zoom around in (which stand out very well but don't mix well with the fact that the clear pipes don't). Generally, many important aspects don't stand out enough visually for how much is going on.
-Similarly to the last one, the red beam bgos in Prototype District look a bit too similar to their solid counterparts, and are placed in the exact same way which made me almost jump on some of them. Walking through that stage felt like walking around when it's pitch black and you kinda carefully waddle around because you see things coming towards you that aren't there and you don't want to trip and fall on your face.
-The next two kind of fit together; There was a random difficulty spike in the game when these to stages came along and it was really out of place because everything after was much easier and felt much more natural:
-In the stage with the Celeste bubbles the punishment for fucking up was way to strict, it felt like you had to play through Celeste but there's only a checkpoint every few rooms, which isn't that great since Celeste is designed to not be too punishing for mistakes.
-The stage right after was also really difficult in comparison to other stages. The section after the last checkpoint especially, it felt better to just tank through all the challenges as actually trying to get through them properly without getting hit was more risky, which really isn't good.
-The difficulty of the final stage was way out of place, too, especially if you tried going for the magnets. I spent so much time on that stage that it completely destroyed all the previous build up (which is a shame because that build up was really well done otherwise). Because of this difficulty the final bosses were more of a relief even though they should be the true final challenge. The difficulty of this final stage would fit much more for postgame content in my opinion.
-While i can only imagine how hard it must've been and how much time it must've taken to create the final phase of the final boss, it was really just a copy of Planet Robobot's final boss, down to the picking up of debris for a powerful attack. To me, someone who saw this as its own thing and not smbx, it really wasn't that amazing and felt kind of tacked on (But I'm sure the broken build up due to the previous stage helped contribute to that, as well as the fact that i was pretty tired).
-The weird puzzle tower thingy felt more like it should be it's own thing rather than be part of this game.
