It's fun until DSZ in my opinion; I stopped playing after CEZ Act 3.
The enemies become increasingly more and more annoying to deal with from then onwards. But not in a way that actually challenges the player. Most regular enemies receive the most mundane abilities conceivable, such as the Blue Crawlas having flamethrowers and the Red Crawlas very lethargically flying in your general direction and rarely dodging your attacks. The Crushstaceans have children for whatever reason. And the Jet Jaws are just themselves being mildly irritating as usual, although slightly more so as it's difficult to see in the water. This visibility issue is more noticeable on a level with less water, GFZ Act 1, where the relatively shallow depths are darker than the abyss. The Egg Guards in CEZ can teleport? This feature often works to their detriment as you can trick them into teleporting off of a ledge. They also like to interrupt your jumps, as they can teleport high into the air. The prompts telling you how to use an item sometimes don't go away, even if you disable them. This fortunately doesn't persist between Acts. The text boxes are also comically large, and are so intrusive that I have to wait for them to go away in order to proceed. Quite often when I pick up a missile tank, the text reaffirming the fact that I have indeed picked up said missile tank outstays its welcome and interrupts gameplay. Meanwhile a Buzz sneaks up on me and drains my health at an alarming rate.
On the topic of items and pickups, you can get almost everything within the GFZ (if you are lucky) or midway through Act 1 in THZ. This causes the player to become too powerful, too quickly even on the hardest difficulty. Every regular enemy becomes trivial to deal with; almost no obstacle cannot be passed. Any and all fun that I could've had with a challenging experience is drained. Not to mention, the Chaos Emeralds are made even easier to acquire, as you don't have to do the special stages. Instead, you just have to not take damage for the rest of the level. This is impossible to fail, as there's nothing stopping the player from just obliterating every Badnik before picking them all up. And even if you don't, the Badniks are still woefully incompetent at thwarting anyone's plans if you're at least mildly cautions and become super sniper Samus. I also wish that in the place of Emblems, were literally anything of value. I hate it when I bust down a breakable wall or explore who knows where only to find nothing. There's also a problem with missiles. Because I played on the hardest difficulty, the increased cost of using missiles instilled the notion that I should save them for when I actually need to truly obliterate enemies. Even though I had over one hundred missiles to spare by the end of THZ Act 2, I was just afraid that I would happen upon God or something and that I would need every single one. It's like with the grenade launcher in Left 4 Dead 2, where you have a very limited supply of ammunition that many players save for only when the Tank appears; rarely use it for anything else out of the fear that they'll waste valuable shots or harm teammates. And then they run around with either melee or the Magnum and contribute very little and feel disappointed. There's also the problem with the fact that Samus' arm-cannon just feels way stronger than regular missiles. Especially when no base game enemy actually poses a threat. The charged shot excels at everything. Then there's super missiles, which I surprisingly used more than the regular missiles, but only for wall busting and to make Eggman disappear in a blink of an eye.
There's also a problem with the arm-cannon's projectile hitting things that it clearly didn't. Such as the walls in a tight space. Or around corners. Or anywhere with complex geometry for that matter. And to elaborate further, what i mean is that the projectile visually does not hit the wall. It would clearly be moving around it, before suddenly stopping and the projectile impact effect would play a significant distance away from where it actually was.
Moving onto the morph ball, it feels iffy to move with. Especially with how there are many instances where using its various abilities can cause the player to lose all aerial control. I also got stuck inside of the terrain once, which made me quite sad. The situation was quite inescapable.
The Screw Attack I used only to get past spikes; a few enemies. It can also sometimes be used in situations where the player is stunned. This caused a bug in the Metroid boss fight where after being knocked back I immediately used the Screw Attack and upon touching the ground my ears were destroyed by Samus doing the damage sound at an incomprehensible rate before keeling over and dying.
Speaking of Metroids, I have never met a more irritating enemy ever. These enemies put the Cloakers from Payday 2 to shame. But unlike the Cloakers, they lack a brain and can't navigate around the very level they are introduced in. When I turn a corner and I see a Metroid failing to move around a pillar, I just burst out laughing. Truly the most intimidating lifeform. But when they stop being stuck, they become an Expert Mission Boss in DBXV2 and get autododge. And even though I am clearly hitting them as my projectiles cease to exist and do the impact effect, they just somersault in a random direction while trying to deliver the grand suck. And even if I hit them immediately afterwards as they're incredibly predictable, they just seem to have nanomachines and refuse to get frozen or die. And then they just pop out of the blue because the level they are in has terrible visibility. Or they accidentally abuse decades old glitches to glide across walls or the ceiling at super speeds. And when they do deliver the grand suck, they just don't want to let go. Whether I blast myself with a missile, the Hyper beam, Morph Ball Bombs or the Power Bomb they just don't leave me. Fortunately I eventually free myself, but as I would like to reaffirm, they're really irritating. More so on moving platforms, and slopes.
Moving onto the bosses, they're pretty bad. GFZ is just Eggman but now he's Frieza and sometimes throws energy balls at you, somehow. THZ I couldn't see as I had the Hyper beam and instantly killed him. The totally not completely broken, boring and often times plain unfair Metroid boss fight is cool in theory. But first of all, I should not enter a boss fight being hit by a ranged attack that stuns me, of which I couldn't see as I'm facing the wrong direction after falling through a seemingly incorporeal floor. And then being hit by an attack that I still can't see as I'm still stunned and can't turn. Before being knocked into a wall and receiving damage, while being inside the Metroid. Who then proceeded to knock me away to the other side of the room all the while dealing completely ludicrous amounts of damage in comparison to literally anything else that I've faced thus far. And then dying sends you ALL the way back to the start of the level so you have to slog through a whole lot of nothing and the same cacophony of Metroids. This boss has a ranged attack that spews... Something in all directions and (assuming your not blindsided by bad level design) is incredibly easy to dodge. But also it is incredibly annoying as this devious fellow likes to sprint up to you before using the attack immediately, with very little warning. Furthermore, the attack has some questionable collision. His next attack is some kind of fire breath, which he used at all the wrong occasions. Then there is his charge, which is fair I guess. I wish there was more warning though and that he couldn't just spam the same attack over and over and over again. I don't even know if he actually has a regular melee attack. 80% of the fight was him charging at me, 5% him using the fire attack while out of range; 15% him checking if I'm awake with his actual ranged attack. But I see why he would use the charge so often, after all he likes to magically accelerate to his top speed practically instantly. Fortunately, luck was on my side and he got stuck in the wall. I blasted him with my Hyper beam and Ice Beam. I do wish there was more of an indicator as to how much health he had left. Perhaps like in Metroid Fusion where the Omega Metroid's "skin" changed colour as it became closer to death. If this is already a feature then I guess I'm blind or it wasn't noticeable. Then, there's CEZ Eggman, who is just himself but also Frieza.
The level after DSZ Act 2 is a cool addition. But I don't have much positive to say. It often looks ugly and claustrophobic in the later half. The completely random change in camera when you go down the tube with the Chaos Emerald before it left me temporarily bewildered. Why did this exist? What purpose does it serve? All it did was strip any hope of immersion I might have and leave me waiting for the camera to return to normal so I can continue playing the game. Additionally, the first half is super boring. Aside from exploring, there isn't much that I found interesting to do. And any attempts to build atmosphere just went over me. I cannot be scared by a Badnik that received the grand suck from a Metroid if I'm playing as Samus in her prime with every upgrade. Some areas being dark also doesn't build tension or make it scary. It's just annoying. The later half being claustrophobic interrupts gameplay, and is annoying. Not only for me, but the poor Metroids who get stuck literally everywhere. The lack of visibility means that I wander into damaging floors that I, as you can assume, cannot see. The terrain also interrupts most of my projectiles. Even when they do not hit. At all.
There's also a problem where the special abilities for the beams you get just don't work most of the time. And then they disable the beam despite doing nothing. And then you have to wait until the next century before you can roll the dice to see if it works like I'm playing HL2RP and the Civil Protection are metagaming as usual. Probably just a me issue.
I'm not sure if I'm just blind and missed it, but I do wish there was an option to disable the splash effect on the visor. And Samus' face. It's distracting; the splashes cause my eyes to water.
Also, there's a rare bug where you can wall jump off of very small inclines and floors even. I noticed it while strafing circles around enemies; other players.
There is no doubt that a lot of effort was put into this mod.
I look forward to seeing it improve.
I rate the:
- Sprites: 10/10
- Skin (Samus): 10/10
- Exploration: 9/10
- Customizability: 7/10
- The Choice of Music: 7/10
- The Level Design: 6/10
- Combat: 6/10
- Enemies: Mediocre
- Bosses: Mediocre
- Arsenal: Good
- Compatibility with Netgames: 8/10
- Difficulty: Easy, but boring and tedious with seemingly random difficulty spikes.
Overall, I rate it a 7.35/10.
I am aware of the content I did not experience personally, but my friends told me about it. I obviously cannot comment much on it, other than it looks cool.
![= Metroid Vanguard = Samus Aran in SRB2 [v1.5d]](https://srb2mb-externaldata.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/resource_icons/2/2666.jpg?1617393704){kind=icon}
(...but not so much you get Power Bombs and Gravity Suits before your first missile tank!)