The use of Link's character abilities are a nice change from the standard Mario moveset. And with the way the levels and currency are set up, this episode has a really good power-up economy. Although I do have to say, some of the items at the shop I never bought and used just simply because if you ever used them, and then died, it was just a waste of money (although that could've just been me). In fact, I never really used the shop for much of anything except lives.
The split-path choice at the beginning was quite the interesting addition to the episode, and one I was geniunely not expecting. It created a very cool dynamic I've not seen from any other episode before. In fact, this episode really distinguished itself from most other episodes (In a good way!), and just slammed the player with cool, quirky additions. Doing this episode in a Megaman/Shovel Knight style of level layout (a few long levels, all ending in a boss fight) instead of the worlds layout (long string of levels followed by a boss level in a repeating pattern) really serviced this episode well.
The enemy layout was good as well, and there were few times I felt ticked off by it. It was fair for the most part. The only real levels I just raged at specific enemies and kept dying over and over again because of a cheesy set-up to were the Forgotten Mansion and the final level of the evil path. In Forgotten Mansion it was the cement boos, and in the other level it was the spiky enemies and moving blocks, which just felt slippery at times... for some reason.
The atmosphere was absolutely on-point. The music was great, and never felt out of place, nor did it suffer from 'generic level/boss theme'-itis. Every track either got you pumped and ready to go, or just played subtly in the background and gave a feeling of mystery to the level. And the visuals were, oh, EASILY one of the best parts of the episode. This episode did some whacky stuff to the graphics, thanks to LunaLua, that just seemed to make the levels pop out.
And tying with the visuals for, possibly, the best part of this episode, are the bosses. Oh....my....god. This episode just goes all in on the bossfights. Some were intense, some humourous, and some actually kind of soothing in a way. With LunaLua, the amount of stuff this episode does is just... it's absolutely out of the ball-park of all that was able to have been done previously in the boss-fight department. Every single boss's attacks felt fair, and, though I died VERY many times to some bosses, whenever I died, I geniunely felt like it was my fault, and not because of some cheap attack. I do have to say, though, the good path's final boss is irritating to fight against repeatedly due to the fact that you can easily get stuck in a loop where you die, lose all your money, and are unable to buy health from the vending machine.
And the final thing to talk about is the post-game. All of the secrets were hidden well, but in a way that rewarded the player for finding them. The absolute final level was just so bizarre, and what happened was just so completely unexpected, and completely betrayed my expectations, but, strangely enough, I didn't have a strong feeling of disappointment. The post-game could have been longer but I feel like the short length was an actual service to the episode. The changes to Grand Chemo were nice, but I feel like I actually preferred the original in all of the ways except for the boss. The freezing section was okay up until the doughnut blocks, and then it felt unfair. What is the player supposed to do? It just didn't feel like the player was given enough information about what to do in that scenario. And then the saw-blade star. How is the player supposed to get the star? The skull platform doesn't reverse direction. I had to cheat to obtain it. But the rest of the level was great for the most part.
