Reviews featuring Enjl, 2nd human servant of the Ultimate Rinka
Well this level was good. And by level, I mean everything leading up to the midpoint. Really. You could've ended the level there and all my problems with this level would be gone. Most. There's a few stuff which I have to complain about which happens in the first half.
Before we get to the harsh beating of your original gimmicks, though, I'm gonna talk about some of the stuff this level does right:
The level has a well-crafted atmosphere to it. While most of the narrative end of the story is redundant, it helped craft an uneasy feeling of fighting nature and trying to overcome great obstacles (
which I'll get to later...). The switches between inside and outside sections kept the level fresh, as the inside portions were a short moment for me to relax from the arguably more stressful outside portions.
I'm not addressing stuff like geometry or bgo placement as they were completely fine, but also didn't do anything noteworthy.
So good level, right? 7.5/10!
Now, the issues I see with this level.
First off, let it be said that you may also place coins in places which aren't described as "above pipes". In fact, coin placement is a good indicator you could've used to guide the player through the snowstorm sections. Instead, you decided to place them directly above piranha plants, tricking naive players like me to jump towards them to get a reward. I got my reward, which was damage:
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http://i.imgur.com/wNw8Lck.png[/rimg]
The blizzard was a nice concept, don't get me wrong, but it was executed poorly. In combination with the flawed coin placement and, to be honest, slightly spammy NPC placement overall, it came out of nowhere and forces the player to count how much time has to pass til they have to essentially wait for 3 seconds. A small indication would've been nice. I think the best way to go about this would even be making enemy silhouettes visible during the blizzard portions, but this requires lunalua and I don't know whether you're up to learning how to write 10 lines of code. Lua would also not have you spend billions of background objects on the blizzard.
Apart from its "fuck you"-ness, it was also WAY too much during the rope section. Speaking of the rope section, cut that. Just get rid of it. It's glitchy and therefore has no business existing. I don't know what made you think including a glitchy, precision-based section where you can't see anything half the time was a decent idea.
Also the level kinda dragged near the end and dying becomes a ragequit moment as it means replaying the section I talk about above. I'd say there should've been a 2nd midpoint right after the glitch section, if you do intend of not getting rid of it.
Finally, some random moments from my playthrough which I wanted to share:
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http://i.imgur.com/MocmEqx.png[/rimg]
This one is self-explanatory.
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http://i.imgur.com/yuRBuNY.png[/rimg]
Nice 4th wall break. Oh, this reminds me: You could've really replaced a toad with the thwomp. Just to get rid of the AI. By the way, this dialogue is 100% redundant, even viewing this from the standpoint of the episode this belongs to.
Final score:
Just get rid of the second half/10
To be fair though, there are some really bad decisions you made that really really hurt this level which started out genuinely good. 5.2/10
you.
