first off, this mod appears to apply a colormap to every level; this may or may not be bad for netgames, and I am NOT saying that these should be removed for netgames
though it would be nice if the colormaps get flagged with flag 12 if they aren't already flagged as such
As I was playing through this mod as Sonic without the encore part of the mod, I went through the levels and stocked up on extra lives and took some notes about criticisms with this mod
I beat the mod with
over 70 lives and got no game overs
granted, I really should've also been using the encore part of the mod; I died several times throughout the mod, but about half of the deaths were due to doing dumb stuff like going backwards on the top of the first polyobject section in CEZ2 to get the monitors on the ledge
but I would've had alot less deaths if I had access to tails, knuckles, or metal sonic
and there definitely wasn't anything in this mod,
excluding special stages, that look like they were ripped from a kaizo hack
because I didn't use the character-swapping part of the encore mode; that is, I only loaded the level pack, I won't give this mod a rating since it wouldn't be fair
if I did, however, then it'd be 3/5 stars
also,
if a more ordinary player were playing this, that player would've died a whole lot more than I did
anyway, the criticisms:
-some hazards in NiGHTS stages expect you to know the level layout ahead of time; this is bad level design when you can't see the hazards ahead of time, but it's also forgivable
to an extent because there isn't much that you can do to make NiGHTS stages harder without doing this other than decreasing the time limit and increasing the sphere requirement, both of which were done to the mod
in fact, after having experienced that in special stage #2, I'd unironically became wary of troll hazards for a while as if I was playing
Super Mario Maker 2
-I sort of question if being able to fall off of the platforms in DSZ3 makes the level harder; I'd say you should at least make it deeper and put some kinda platforming challenge down there that you probably won't skip by accident by just falling down there, such as a non-limp spring chain
-theres' missed opportunities in ACZ1 to make the last hangrail section harder by putting spikeballs beneath some hangrails and expecting players to jump over them, like earlier in the level
-theres' missed opportunities for at least the southern minecart section in ACZ2 since it seems exactly the same as before; I'd say that every minecart section should have an easily-noticeable difference from vanilla
-some spindash spring chains, at least in THZ1 and ACZ2, defy the player's intuition by having the ends be replaced with spikes, which cause the player to have to assess the situation at an unrealistically-high speed(at least compared to how hard the surrounding levels are), causing the player to be caught off-guard if the player intuitively spindashes into a spring to begin the chain
-it seems like the 2nd part of the last minecart section of ACZ2 is... easier, than in vanilla; this is in reference to a part before you get indoors
-ACZ3 may or may not be exactly the same aside from the visuals; though making slight changes to ACZ3 can cause macs to crash in this level for some reason, you could've at least given fang more hp or changed his Damage in his object definitions to make phase 2 start earlier... speaking of which, you may want to ask Weegs if ACZ3 crashes for him upon level load
though it's just a mac bug so it ain't so bad if it does
-the spikebombs
being attracted by magnet shields make getting magnet/electric shields in levels after ACZ2 be something that the player will be wary of until the player beats the campaign; for example, after I got a magnet shield in ERZ1 after the laser puzzle section before the conveyor belt section, I'd immediately dumped it on the spincushion to prevent spikebombs from getting attracted to me during the conveyor belt section that'd knock me off of the conveyor belts... and then there weren't even any spikebombs in there
-maaaaybe get rid of the flame shield & elemental shield in RVZ, replacing the elemental shield with a golden invincibility monitor, and the flame shield with a force shield; after I'd gotten the secret flame shield in RVZ where
a token had used to be, the level was basically over and I never even took damage
-I question if BCZ2 was different than it is in vanilla aside from its' visuals; I think metal sonic's phase 2 may or may not have him bonk around faster, but I'm not entirely sure
I'd say it should be changed in a way that's a bit more obvious; maybe a few squares of electric floor could be placed in the level?
-the 2nd extras checklist item needs to wrap around to all fit on the screen at once, but it doesn't wrap around, causing a number of characters to not be visible to the player
now, some commentary that doesn't criticize the mod:
the method in which you increase the difficulty of the stages seems somewhat uniform; for all but a few non-boss stages, the difficulty was increased by approximately 1 zone's worth of difficulty
so like, GFZ was as hard as vanilla THZ, DSZ was as hard as vanilla CEZ, ACZ was as hard as vanilla RVZ, and etc.
I liked how
ERZ2 includes sections that existed in earlier versions of SRB2
that all said, I'd hope that the criticisms of mine that can easily be addressed are addressed by the next version of this mod, and I hope that this mod gets an average of at least 3.5 stars
for a more detailed criticism of this mod, you may, if you wish, view this full playthrough of the mod(level pack only) as Sonic, here
wherein I'd needlessly made some comparisons to my own mod that I shouldn't have made:
again, if a more ordinary player were playing this, that player would've died a whole lot more than I did
