[Open Assets] = Metroid Vanguard = Samus Aran in SRB2 [v1.5c] v1.5c

Two things before we start: I have no prior experience to metroid besides refrences and i completed this game twice once on zero mission and a second time on the second difficulty with 100% armor.

Overall this mod was Incredibly fun and well made. It fully utilizes the open Map design of the levels making exploration very fun (only thing that was a little annoying was getting health batteries). combat felt satisfying and platforming was decent. extra credit to the overall tone of the game with it always having an ``abandoned´´ fell to it thx to the soundtrack and slight weather and time changes. but here are some minor complaints that would make the game perfect in my eyes.

1. Some bosses are WAY too easy same can be said about the regular enemies even on harder difficultys

2. The hyper beam is way too overpowered for how easy it is to get all emeralds. i would recommend either nerfing (boring route) or making the emeralds harder to get by bringing special stages back (epic route).
I would recomend making em small arenas where you fight a horde of regular enemies within a time limit (seriously i loved fighting those small metroids would be a shame to only fight em once)

3. i feel like theres a gap between egg rock act 2 and the level after that because it all happens so sudden, another level inbetween wouldnt hurt.
also the last two bosses feel very anticlimactic in the first playthrough (although the 100% bonus makes up for it)

4. (Huge spoiler warning) The story feels like its taking place shortly after the bad ending (implied trough time differences and someones body still twitching and being down there in the first place) which brings me too two issues.

The story has build up from showing the danger of metroids too actually killing a main game character, giving (me at least) expectations on how it will end. But after the boss fight with my faker the story just stops developing anymore and goes straight to destroying eggmans base.
What about the other characters? what was the point of killing someone if your not gonna expand on that. just either dont kill someone or atleast mention what happend too the rest (like for example you could make the escape pod crashland when you get outside after beating the faker).

In short i dont think you are confident in your story to be able to kill of characters (no offense to you, your mod is still amazing and i know it took you alot of effort)

Second issue is samus questioning how someones transporting metroids so fast followed up with two levels later with the blood writing ``beware of the blue´´ this made me assume sonic is involved in those two things which wasnt the case.
Here you just need to phrase the blood writing differently.

5. Egg rock act 2s music isnt fitting with the tone of all the other levels.(this is very minor)

and that sums it up. theres no need for my complaints to be coverted into an update since my oppinion may not line up with others or yours even and i know you also have your own life (i wasted an hour of mine writing this) and you probably want to work on other projects.
i would gladly like to hear your thoughts and wish you good luck on your future work.

Meh. coming back after playing all the modes, its bland. we only have things from Metroid prime 1 (and no phazon suit? CMON! SERIOUSLY!?) and nothing really new. also, it crashes every two seconds. there is no full reset to just Reset literally all of it, no save files, no nothing. and don't even get me started on multiplayer. also, update hyper beam to what we actually know it is when not on something like a SNES?

amazing work i love the system of returning to green flower zone i used it to grind out chaos emeralds and actually destroy the omega metroid but can you add the grapple beam it would come from invincibility boxes

Wow. Unbelievable work.

This is a friggin' amazing addon pack. It's astonishing how well Samus works in SRB2's levels, and the few original levels feel like proper Metroid Prime material (including the bosses). Though there are a few criticisms I do have:

* While being able to start over with all your upgrades is nice in case your luck is absolutely dreadful, the upgrades system does feel a bit too luck-based, even if I understand why you designed it like that. I was actively scrambling to try and get those last few super bombs and tanks all the way up to the end of ERZ2.
* The original bosses on normal difficulty feel like massive damage sponges if you're not using the Hyper Beam or beam combos. They're a massive jump in difficulty compared to both SRB2 and the Prime games, and doesn't really make them as fun to fight as they could be.
* Third person doesn't have a targeting crosshair. It would be nice so it's a viable alternative for aiming manually, because third person is better for platforming (especially at the speeds Samus can go), but also because the lock-on can be unreliable with some enemy types.
* I love the little bits of narrative added to Samus' story and how professional she's characterized as being, but I feel like it's... Not enough? There's not even any dialogue with Eggman, who Samus encounters multiple times. I know it'd be challenging to add more, but my story-brain can't help but think of the possibilities.
* I think the graphic scene that happens in ACZ3 which caused the need for the disclaimer and all the discussion kerfuffle is unnecessary. The sense of tension and horror in the entire scene leading up to the boss fight works perfectly, but I think it could've worked just as well if, say, poor you-know-who was still alive but hurt and scared out of his goddamn mind in a corner and nearly shoots Samus when she approaches when he briefly mistakes her as being, well, you know who.

Amazing mod but the final flash i have no idea how i activated it twice but it's op as shit i activated it in the final boss

holy shit, this is amazing, its basically its own game, i dont even have anything to nitpick, suprised to see it work in splitscreen

I should start this review off by saying I've never been a huge fan of the Metroid series. For some reason the games just didn't really click with me in the way I had hoped. I guess maybe it felt a bit too slow paced for me in the early game and it somewhat turned me off.

With that said though... holy shit! From start to finish, this mod is an absolute marvel to behold. I've always been a HUGE fan of mods that manage to completely remix the way a game is played while still working with the conventions of the original design, and this does it in spades.

The exploratory ethos of Metroid gameplay merges very well with Sonic Robo Blast 2's level design, and the implementation here also solves my issue with Metroid games being a bit too slow paced for me. Upgrades come fast if you go out of your way to look for each item box and it becomes an incredibly rewarding experience to get super powered early on and be able to blaze through levels with ease in the lategame.

On top of that, my preferred way to play through SRB2 is co-op with friends, and this mod has absolutely wonderful support for it! There are many settings you can choose to tailor fit the experience to what you and your friends want, including changing the spawn behavior for item boxes, limiting it to fresh saves so everyone is on an even playing field, and a wealth of other options. I am extremely happy to see my favorite way of playing this game so fully supported!

One comment I will make is that me and my group of about 8 friends experienced a lot of lag at one point in the Samus exclusive area in DSZ. It got so bad that most people dropped to 1 frame per second! We had to use the exitlevel command to skip to the next level. Trying to avoid spoilers where I can, but three of us moved on to the encounter in that level while 5 of the others were still working on the platforming section, and our running theory is that the game had a lot of trouble handling that many people spread out across the map, as when we went back to it again in a later session it was fixed by simply waiting for everyone to catch up and sticking together before entering the encounter. I feel like this might be more a limitation of SRB2 netgames rather than the mod itself, so I will not be deducting any points, especially since there's a simple fix.

Overall, I was impressed with this mod, and I can say without a doubt that it's one of the absolute best I've seen in my ten year tenure of playing SRB2 and lurking the MB. (just look at my join date!) As someone who really loved SMS back in the day, it makes me extremely happy to see that you're still around and making cool things for the community, and I will continue to keep a close eye on the content you produce. Thank you!

Five stars, most OP Samus out there. Between the command shine-spark that you made the screw attack into, and the ability to get the gravity suit in the second or third level (like I did), this Samus would turn Metroid Dread from a horror game to a kids game! I also like that since Samus has a respirator in her suit, she can't drown. Good on you for thinking of that, that's clever.

this mod is amazing, my only problem with it is the multiplayer stage revive system
if you die and have a stage revive and you accidentally press jump instead of custom 3, it won't use the stage revive and it'll force you to wait until the end of the level; i've done this by accident a lot
i also dislike the stage revive system in general, as being forced to wait for long periods of time (sometimes even 20 minutes!) can be pretty boring; at the very least there should be options to turn it off completely or to allow dead samus players to switch to non samus characters

Beautiful. Only complaint is that the extra bosses feel just a tiny bit too difficult. Loved it otherwise. Kinda wish there was an option for beam stacking, just for fun.

HOLY HELL MY SECOND FAVORITE ARM CANNON WIELDING CHARCTER IS HERE AND MY GOD IS IT GOOD IF MEGAMAN SOMEDAY GETS IN ILL GO NUTS

I've loved this mod ever since its very first version in 2.1. It's genuinely a shining beacon of how much one can love a series. All the details, all the references, how you've managed to implement tricks from Super Metroid into a 3D space and make it work in a Sonic game! I've never played a Metroid Prime game, but I have played Metroid, MII:RoS, and beaten SM. This actually encouraged me to play the latter of the three.

Even after making what felt like a perfect mod, you've managed to make it even better! The new maps are a very welcome addition, and the new bosses are exactly what Samus needed to feel like there was a challenge before the endgame and outside of Hyper and Fusion mode.

If I had to give any criticism, it's that a lot of the enemies in Hyper(+) are extremely touchy and sometimes downright obnoxious in the case of Pyre Flies, Egg Guards (I played an outdated version so ignore this one if it doesn't apply anymore), and Gold Buzz's.

-Pyre Flies take up a huge amount of space, sometimes forcing you to fire at them long before trying to platform, and slowing the pace in what is otherwise a fast-paced endgame.
- Egg Guards on the bridge, and pretty much anywhere else, are just... actual pain, and cause the same problem as Pyre Flies, slowing the pace down to a crawl until you demolish each last one of them at points where you just want to speed and not get sniped by a Robo Hood.
- Gold Buzz's are... well, obvious. They'd be fine if there weren't so many of them in THZ1, and if the Emeralds didn't require no-damage runs. Thanks to the combination of circumstances, it makes Gold Buzz's excruciatingly painful unless you have Wave Beam or are really good with your shots.

Even those enemies aren't enough for me to falter on giving this 5 Stars. This is just *the* best character mod SRB2 has ever seen. Worth every minute of wait.

This is the best SRB2 mod out there

spoilers ahead for bosses, please experience this yourself before reading (seriously it's super good please play it)


Holy fucking shit. It might seem like I'm exaggerating or being ridiculous but this is literally the best game(?) I have played in years. I'm working my way through Metroid Prime 1 via dolphin at the moment, and I wish I had opted for the mouse and keyboard hack because, while still fun, tank controls make things way more cumbersome than they need to be (shocking opinion, I know). But this? Again, holy fucking shit. It's literally a crossover between Sonic, Doom, and Metroid, which are series that have had the most satisfying gameplay loops in my experience. And even that fact is a cherry on top in and of itself.

I would've given this 5 stars from the unique levels after Deep Sea and Arid Canyon alone, ESPECIALLY the bosses. Just wow. You're just stumbling through a dark cave, exploring around, and then you fall into some new area and OH MY GOD THE CAMERA'S ROLLING AROUND LIKE CRAZY AND SOMETHING IS SHOOTING AT YOU GET ON YOUR FEET AND SHOOT AT IT GO GO GO GO GO and then you get your bearings and its a GIANT FUCKING MUTATED METROID MONSTER THAT'S STARING AT YOU AND CHARGING TOWARDS YOU REALLY FUCKING FAST and if it's not that then it's LIKE 50 SHADOW CLONES OF DARK SAMUS OH FUCK

wrap it all up with satisfying gameplay, great music (I mean it's metroid music ofc its great), tons of stuff to collect, and an amazing coat of polish on the whole thing and you've got yourself a god damn masterpiece. Very well done.

I couldn't even possibly explain why i love this mod so much

it's just so good (even if i hate the horror segments, but i just hate horror in general)

Fang didn't have to die for this but he did

Like seriously this mod is so good. I apologize for having somewhat negative opinions after SMS. Amazing work. nothing like it and nothing will be like it.

it's an awesome mod, that's for sure, but there was one issue with the bat file. instead of showing the actual filename (SMCL_Samus-V1.1.pk3) it showed (SMCL_Samus-V1-1.pk3). so that took a little rearranging, not the biggest possible problem but i thought you should know

the scale of this mod, just, WOW
and it will be teh closest thing to metroid prime i'll ever get
10 outta 10

A banger as always, Shine -- the quality of your work here is absolutely aweing. Samus seems to perfectly blend her home game's mechanics with those of SRB2, and it's an added bonus that there's a mode for better compatibility with vanilla characters. Haven't gotten my hands on an official Metroid title yet (Metroid Prime 4 will happen eventually) but I'm convinced this is pretty darn close to what it feels like.

I've always been a fan of Metroid Dreadnought when it came out in the DOOM WAD section of the mods. Man, being able to shoot demons as Samus was truly something. Of course, like most metroid mods or fangames though, it was eventually abandon/little word was being heard on its development.
And then came along Metroid: Vanguard
And I gotta say, Metroid: Vanguard definitely carries the spirit of Dreadnought with it, despite the engine differences with SRB2.
For one, if you're like any metroid speedrunner, the mechanics to execute complex speedrunner techniques are built right into SRB2, but combined with the mechanics thrown into this mod - Ball boosting, Shinesparking, even ball-spiking off of enemies - adds to that experience a whole lot. Now unfortunately with SRB2 does come the caviate of semi-imprecise movement - IE, Samus kinda moves with a bit of a delay, as with any other character in SRB2, and when it comes down to strafing or shooting at a target, ESPECIALLY with the custom ones the mod adds, you're gonna find yourself at the edge of a game over quite a bit. If you can get over Vanguard's movement in comparison to Dreadnought's, however, it's still a very rewarding mod with a good depth on how metroid operates in something like SRB2. Pardon my french, but this fucking guy knows how to nail the feeling of a metroid game in the custom maps he made - the isolated, lonely, and downright haunting ambience combined with those tense build-ups before the custom bosses adds a whole ton to this mod than any other mod, and this is what sets it apart from its Dreadnought inspiration. If anything, I hope Golden Shine goes on to add onto Dreadnought even with the amount of detail he puts into his maps and the enemies as well, he's got talent, and it's very apparent he's a hard-core Metroid fan.
Beyond the movement criticsm, my only other critisms would be the lack of new, custom maps and other custom enemies. Don't get me wrong, what's in there is great, but otherwise it IS just a character mod throughout. Maybe in future versions we'll see more added to it, but otherwise it does leave one wishing for a little more.

Overall, great mod, dare I say it even goes above and beyond Metroid Dreadnought in both its presentation and amount of detail. As someone that's been playing metroid since Prime 1, hell, since even Super, Golden's definitely outdone himself here with everything thrown in, and I highly recommend keeping an eye out on the other stuff he makes with this amount of quality put into this one mod.