I'll be honest, this review on my end is very long overdue. I have 200 hours on this mod alone and the least I can say is I'm addicted.
The map design is spotless. There are the occasional weird skips that exist - I will post those I know of on the Discuss tab later - due to the existance of Rising Edge + large PP gains like Proto/Regenerator seemingly being forgotten while making the maps, sometimes the mod feeling a little less tested and a little blurted (take the patches up to v2.0.2, where Gungnir was unholy overpowered but apparently intended to be in the same league as Chainsawd).
I could say this for version 1 HM Brak, but frankly that was a fun challenge to attempt over and over. Sad how it's completely gone and no longer fightable in V2 (v2 HM Brak is really nerfed, like the crawla corpse swing which now doesnt take 1/2 of the sound to slap - Although honestly it's not like I dislike this change, I just wish there were ways to fight it besides getting V1 again and replaying the game).
Sometimes, drop rates are a mess. The abnormal shards being 1/300 makes them a pain to ever get and I frankly see more people just edit their saves for it rather than actually grinding for it. Some sort of system you can have at least 2-3 guaranteed abnormal shards (maybe from the Challenge Quests?) from would be nice, since it'd tone the save-editing player count down.
I'll be frank, I never played anything from Phatansy Star, but this is one ride I absolutely adore. Level Synch sadly almost always being disabled (LV80 players wanting to get levels over with to skim onto the stages where they don't one-tap or more everything can't say I'm not guilty on that notion either) due to level synch just feeling like a sluggish old replay of a stage they've done a lot before or less atleast) doesn't really help newer players remain on a playable range, and to be honest it'd be neat if they could still receive that boost on levels where they wouldn't have a chance survive (say, an LV1 who just joined a netgame (as that seems to be the main way of SRB2i being discovered from what I can tell), playing for the first time, landing on 4-X hard).
That aside, there's the occasional unexplained mechanics (what does Elementless do? What's the point in using "Element: Elementless" when I can have an element and take less damage from enemies that deal elemental damage opposing their primary weakness? Or, why not just keep it on Dark at all times when I know there's a corrupted enemy, as their bullets always deal Dark damage?) or rather weak, yet really hard to gain items. Of course the Wiki is constantly being edited by a bunch of people with a large amount of datamining at play (say, the around 20K bytes NPC page comprised of just Re and I editing in the dialogue, him doing basically all the heavy-lifting for it) and viewing the code, but it just feels wrong in a sense.
To give an example on hard to get yet honestly weak items, I'd like to hop on the Lumiel stuff. They're really underwhelming despite being one pain to grind for, and being the only other stack of *11 that's obtainable. The only way I've found to make even one of them viable is by pairing it with Pandora Extreme and Proto/Verschmelz or just not having Verschmelz on vs an Abberation. It isn't useless for sure, but for the large grind it feels rather underwhelming to receive such a tiny regen on PP and HP, especially having to combo that with 175210 EXP necessary to be gained for it to have a good large heal use. I've barely ever gotten all of them (I've grinded enough to have about a hundred abnormals, and still only have a singular batch of Lumiels, now 2 off as I gave them to friends).
That, and, frankly, there's little to no point in using anything besides Hunter. Yes, the description says "self-sufficient", but in terms of everything... The other types are far behind from it.
Ranger depends on coordination at times so teammates let the Chain rack up and know when to break, and can hardly be useful at anything (atleast, from personal experience), meanwhile Force has *extreme* survivability since V1 (Photon Absorb + cast Resta, this was a primary thing versus HM V1 Brak imo), being more an all-rounder.
And, there's Hunter with a Photo Blast to sustain fatal damage from non-multihit attacks (with multiple uses), giving almost complete invulnerability if you save your trimates and dimates for the usage of it, practically a free Scape Doll for 1 type skill point (Free Will), irrelevantizing supportwork with Chain Adrenaline, large chainbuilding with Hunter's Gale. Of course these all have level requirements and downsides to extents, but the amount of "self-sufficiency" it's given feels a bit too much, but I'm likely just looking at it the wrong way. The possibility of 3 total free revives is just really insane to think of (TSCM/Angel (yes, i know it would have to be held, so this is theoretical i part) + Free Will + Scape Doll) when the max others can have is 2, and of course, by themselves, not from teammates.
The balancing can be iffy, but it's only if you care enough to be grinding the mod a lot or wanna get everything.
To make it clear, I REALLY love this mod. If ratings were still a visible thing I'd rather wish this was on the #1 spot of top resources. If I thought otherwise, I'd probably not have went for a 200 hour landmark.
To be a critic, the only large issues in my opinion are occasional lack of a quick playtest on some items (take, Gungnir pre-v2.0.2), or types being a little unbalanced on use, but not on paper.
I've been playing Force since V1 and will honestly love seeing whatever is coming forward in V2, and considering the plan listed on the latest log; all I can say is that this is honestly the sole thing that's made me wanna get on the MB at all, and I look forward to whatever's gonna happen.
If I may make one small suggestion, perhaps include a link to the Wiki in the mod itself so people can read on a few things if they do not wanna datamine for the info, even if the Wiki is still being edited largely. Knowing things like how elemental damage functions is something I didn't know until reading about it in the response given a few reviews down.
I adore this, and apologies if I regurgitiate a lot of points here. I wanted to try and not just go "i love this" on every scale.
With all that said, Bernie gaming.
To go point by point...
-Yes, jump pads are relics of v1.x, however, I didn't change the level design of these earlier maps as there was nothing inherently wrong with them and remaking them would've taken time that was better spent making on the new stuff.
- The café shop lets you exchange rare weapons from the fields for the weapon types of your choices and eventually fuse all of them into a stronger weapon. It also has exchanges that act as a pity system for rare drops in hard mode.
Also worth knowing that you can get items to "limit break" weapons from the café which boost their stats closer to the strongest weapons, which lets you keep using the ones you like the Potentials of.
-Inventory space is more of a holdover from how things are in the source material rather than specific consideration being put into it. I don't actually have anything more to add to it but it's maybe something that'll be taken a look at eventually.
-Mission length is intentionally much higher starting with the ver.2 content. Missions before then were very easy to complete without putting much thought into bringing anything, whereas the longer ones means players prepare a bit more and also make use of telepipes every now and then. 7-2 is of course intentionally the longest mission.
-Weapon / Armour element is indeed not explained anywhere and kind of relies on general gaming tropes of "hit weakness for more damage". Every enemy does actually deal elemental damage, the element being the opposite of their main weakness (Fire <-> Ice, Elec <-> Earth, Light <-> Dark), and matching armour element with enemy attacks' will reduce damage.
With that said, I'll look into adding ways to tell which element dealt damage to the player as well as some extra visual flair when hitting enemy weaknesses.
Overall, I'd like to add some tutorial missions to explain both basics and advanced concepts with more numbers at some point but it unfortunately isn't in the cards yet.
- The lack of postgame is something that is being adressed in the next update which will add a new difficulty level to all missions (and new non-story missions) where strong equipment and mechanical skill is *expected* of the player.
Right now, it's true that equipment (especially 10 and 11-star rarity gear) outscales the difficulty curve set by late hard mode.