[Open Assets] PAIN v2.1.4

"alright,who ordered a kaizo flavoured of srb2"

Thanks. I hate it.
Great mod tho if u want a good challenge, i'll prob beat it one day.
But one suggestion:
Can you calm down on the enemy spam and keep that for later levels like RVZ, ERZ, and/or BCZ?
Honestly that would feel more fair and let players get a lil farther, but you can keep the environmental hazards, they're hard enough.

Of course, I knew that I would suffer, but I didn't know that the game, after losing all the lives, would spawn the player at the "Game over" level and make a save on it. Yes, it hurts to play this addon :(

(Sorry if I wrote something wrong, I had to use Google translate)

I game overed in dsz2 i dislike how i got my save locked to cry baby jail i thought it be like the oringal hard mode from eariler srb2 verisons but no its just hell now i dont want to touch this addon again

Good job,you achieved making srb2 painful,other than that,the only positive thing about this is that the enemy only version is.. decent? and thats it, the fps drops kinda ruin the experience, and I have to say something a majority of reviews have already said, how do I say this... the levels are literally bumblebore spam and thats (mostly) it, Also how is Greenflowers boss 1/10 in the difficulty chart? Its literally 10x harder than the Techno hill boss, WHICH IS 3/10 IN DIFFICULTY, to conclude this, this is reallyyyyyy not enjoyable, needs a bit of improvement but as I said,the enemies only version is decent-ish. (this review was updated since I originally said bumblebores were spammed only from gfz1-dsz1 but I was just confusing the bumblebores with the crushers which actually did stop appearing so often in the rest of the stages.)

(gonna preface this review by saying that i GBJ'd in DSZ2 and honestly i have very little motivation to replay everything i just did to get back to that point)

it causes pain. you did it! it does what it sets out to do, but it achieves very little other than that. it's difficult, sure, but it rides off of enemy spam and creating situations where either you go through the daunting task of trying to take everything out, or the equally daunting task of trying to dodge everything and rush through to the end.

i think overall the issue is that there's no nuance to the difficulty, there was no point in my playthrough where a death was "my fault", aside from poorly timed movement through moving ceilings, but those were fewer and farther between. a lot of my favourite segments were those with copious amounts of spikes (despite the lag spikes) since the solution to clearing the segment was very achievable even though it was easy to fuck up (something that PANIC does really really well), but everything else was "hey do you like BEES"

maybe sometime i'll go and play castle eggman and beyond, but it's telling that i speculate as to whether or not i will, instead of going out of my way to do it before writing the review.

I played this with some friends and the bosses on a random online server. In general it was fine, but in some places, it got just a tad bit annoying with the enemy spam and lag Nintendo would be jealous of and a crash that always exists in AC3 (It might be because I'm on Mac lol). Not a mod I would go back to constantly. As a single player expierience not great but with friends, it's fine.

Now this is true pain and suffering.

Not really fun to play but I'm happy that it exists. I'll prolly beat it one day.

Honestly, I could not be bothered to play this to full completion; between the spam of BumbleBores and levels becoming considerably more and more laggy the deeper you go in, it ends up being difficult for all the wrong reasons. The moment this threw me in GBJ after trying to play through DSZ2, that's when I realized this pack was not worth it. There's difficulty, but this ain't it, chief.

No Go chief, the first two levels were spammy but over quick and the stuff in the video looks hard but manageable, that damn first boss just fucking sucks. sorry to sound like the games journalists I despise so much.

I like this mod. even tho this mod is basically srb2 kaizo edition still a great one tho!

[Русский] Сложность в том, что вам будут мешать различные шипы, бадники и хрень, которая будет превращать вас в лепёшку. Сделано хорошо, хоть и лично я половину прошёл не очень уж и тяжело. Но это тяжело. По этому я советую вам поиграть в это. Попробуйте, пожалеете.
[English] The difficulty is that various spikes, badniks and crap will interfere with you, which will turn you into a.. Done well, although I personally did not go through half of it very hard. But it's hard. That's why I advise you to play it.
[Українська] Складність в тому, що вам будуть заважати різні шипи, роботи (бджоли, пелікани, та інші) і купа лайна, яке вас потріпає добряче. Двері наприклад. А бджоли, це дуже жорстоко. Вони будуть повсюду, що ускладнює пройти гру. Зроблено добре, хоча особисто я не дуже важко пережив половину гри. Але це всеж таки важко. Тому дуже раджу пограти.

I mean, it does what's advertised.

The fact that literally every level can be summarised with "there's bees now, also crushers and enemies which don't belong here" is kind of disappointing, though.

Also continues are removed so good luck playing through this on your initial set of 3 lives!

So, I showed this to a bit of my friends, and we had a really fun time. I didn't tell them what it was about, so they were easily surprised about this being a harder SRB2. Only thing I'm complaining about though, is that after DS1, the game got REALLY laggy for us. (Except the boss fights.) Funny thing, we cheesed DS3 by using Kirby's mic ability. Would be nice if this was just a little bit more friendly to not that powerful PC's, but overall I like the mod.

This is the definition of how to make srb2 20 times as hard than it used to be, and im NOT downloading the bosses one, the regular is enough

The idea has merit, and it's clear that there has been a fair bit of work put into this, especially with how it avoids the biggest pitfall of Kaizo mods of just cheaply killing the player as much as possible and force them to use something like save-states...
... but the fact that I can sum up the entire mod as "bees and crushers", is a bit of a disappointment.
The only way the mod actually increases difficulty is by slowly removing any useful and fun resources, filling your screen with as many of the worst badniks in the game as possible, and eventually putting an insta-death crusher in every doorway. It's outright BORING is what it is. By the time I reached Deep Sea Zone I had felt I had already seen everything the mod had to offer and stopped.
My recommendation is to come up with more interesting ways of increasing the difficulty, rather than relying on bees as a crutch. Use more environmental hazards so that the mod isn't just SR-Bee-2.

This is supposed to be a FAIR challenge? DSZ2's slide has enemies on it with no way to react and the DSZ3 starts you with no rings.

I hated myself for playing this. But atleast it was fun. It reminds me of another kazio map someone made. Good job with the map

my man the new version is AMAZING, for a person addicted to challenges like me this is probably my favorite map pack so far, i literally love how it already starts with a hard difficulty yet it manages to get worse and worse as u progress, ive been stuck in red volcano zone for 2 hours and i literally cant beat it even with my paisanos, if someone reading this love challenges then this is ur mod, truly a raging experience everyone should try