raocow's talkhaus

Pimp Yo Ride (King1216): Huh, SAJ was right when he said that this level could be cheesed by stacking the protable drill roses on the right-hand side of the clown car. Otherwise, I probably would have died several times to this level since, even with the sheer amount of choice I have for rides, most of them end up having inadequate protection and/or maneuverability. Still, it's not as bad as some other levels I'm bound to run into. Also, gotta love the ad-spot on the Big Boo.

Sheath Partakes In An Interlude (Mikkofier): It's unfortunate that despite all the finesse you'll need as Sheath to beat the level, the boss himself is a rather pathetic Birdarmos

who is even more ruinable with the easter egg

. Still, the atmosphere definitely feels Zelda-like. Yes, even the Alone in the Dark music, which I honestly thought was from a really obscure Zelda title or something!

The Planet of Preventable Forests: Overall, despite the step up in difficulty compared to World 1, this world is still pretty simple to play legit. I like how most of the levels were deliberately grouped together not only in terms of difficulty level but also overarching theme, something I can see will be true of future worlds as well. If there ever were any leeks I might miss in this world, I would gladly play the levels again to find them.

Pimp Yo Ride!- Not the best gameplay-wise, sure. However, it's short and is one of the most (if not most,) malleable levels in terms of difficulty. There are a lot of options, creating a type of replayability most other levels don't come close to. It's fairly impressive on a technical level, as well. There's a lot to see and do here, and at the same time you don't have to do most of it. I really like this one, in all honesty.

Sheath Partakes in an Interlude- I'm split on this one. I'm not personally a fan of Zelda 2's graphics, and while the level does put them together well, they're still not visually appealing in my opinion. It really doesn't do too much with Sheath, either. The whole "Ye Olde English...eth," joke is a bit overdone by this point. All of that said, there are things I really liked about this level. Ratio Tile is a delightful NPC, and I'm totally cool with Error having retroactive naming denial. The super-speed skeletons are really great, and I probably like them a lot just for being silly skeletons but whatever. The land layout is pretty good for Sheath. The music choices are solid, and are hugely preferable to the same Zelda 2 songs used in every Zelda 2 level. Being able to just walk up to the boss and stab it, while anticlimactic, is pretty funny, too.

World 1 Best- I'd give it to either Giant Egg or Pet Rock, for different reasons. Giant Egg is easily the prettiest level in the first world, and overall is just really pleasant to watch and play. It's exactly what I want to see in the early game. Pet Rock, on the other hand, is a silly, inventive gimmick that I really appreciate. It's not really challenging in any meaningful way, especially to Mario veterans, but not every level needs to give the player a run for their money. Breathers are nice, even in World 1.

World 1 Worst- Dense Jangle is my pick for this one. I don't think it's even that bad. It's more average than anything, and that should be indicative of an overall high level of quality thus far. In any case, this level does have some flaws in level design. It still feels very unnatural and janky. So, that's that.

World 2 Best- Again, I'd have to choose between two levels for different reasons. Just Rusty! is a great concept executed well. Changes in gameplay keep things fresh, and this does a wonderful job doing that while referencing Lemmings. On the other hand, Poison Tree is kind of like Giant Egg in that's it's a nice, atmospheric level. It's built pretty well overall, aside from one or two areas. Pimp Yo Ride is a personal runner-up, though it falls a bit short in terms of gameplay.

World 2 Worst- Plant Zone. This isn't like Dense Jangle, where I just thought it was kind of average. I just really don't care for Plant Zone. I don't mean to sound mean or anything (I do know that Monkeyshrapnel put a lot of work into improving his work for this game, and by no means can I ignore that.) Some personal preferences do play into it (once you've worked with SMBX long enough you kind of get sick of the SMRPG Forest theme, for example.) I'll also concede that this level has more going for it than I gave it credit for, such as the alternate paths actually playing differently without one being too favorable over the other. All-in-all, though, I don't enjoy Plant Zone.

My "most favorite" level here is MAKL Vanilla. Not only is it well-designed around Kood's special capabilities - not just the float jump, but also throwing things straight up - but it also offers two distinct paths to victory once you get to the center of the level: up and around to the left, or down and around to the right. I see it as the most effective fusion of a "gimmick" plus legit gameplay challenge that appears in World 1.

My "least favorite" is Dense Jangle, for pretty much all the reasons Sedron said. I think perhaps the level's "averageness" comes from its lack of a solid theme, at least as compared to other World 1 levels. As it stands, the level throws a bunch of unrelated enemies at the player over a short span of time, most of which can be trivialized using the rocket apple. I personally prefer a more solid theme - something I get from the other World 1 levels, but not Dense Jangle.

My "most favorite" is Canopy Journey. It's hard to put my finger on why, but every time I did a testing run of the game, I always got a big grin on my face when I came to Canopy Journey. I think raocow said it well in his vid - the level's a romp done well; it keeps you moving while dealing with a thematic set of enemies and platforming challenges. It's not the hardest level of the World, but to me, it's the most fun to play. (I also like the secret that hasn't been shown yet.)

My "least favorite" is Plant Zone. Though I confess that, in my mind, this level will always be its "you have to complete the entire bottom and then the entire top" version that it was for so long during beta testing. Changing it to a choice of paths was a very wise and important change. But even with that, the level still feels haphazard to me in its landmass and enemy placement. Also, it's one of three levels in World 2 that rely heavily on plant enemies coming out of the ground/walls - this, Poison Tree, and Edge of the Night - and I think that's a gimmick both Poison Tree and Edge of the Night pull off more effectively.

Who the *hell* thought Baker Street was a good idea? That was such an un-fun, to quote raocow, garbage piece of garbage. The first half was fine; I loved the "film noir" aesthetics, and it was challenging, but still felt quite reasonable... but then... then came the second half. My freaking god, that was Bullet Hell in Mario form. A list of obstacles you have to deal with:

-Bouncing boulders that you can only kill by spin-jumping, placed on slopes.
-Loads of Bullet Bill cannons.
-Giant reskinned Snifits that cannot be picked up.
-Bullet cannons shooting from the bottom of the screen.
-Bob-ombs in bubbles floating around all over the place.
-Statues that shoot lasers at you.
-Floating, homing koopas.
-Hammer Bros. spam

And to make matters worse, there was a rain effect in the foreground that made everything hard to see, *and* there was a complete lack of powerups to help deal with that onslaught. It was just completely unreasonable, especially for a world *5* stage. It might've been more at home in, say, world *8*, but even after dealing with several stages in a row in which I died 10-15 times (and were hard, but fair), I was completely taken by surprise at the ridiculous difficulty spike there. I eventually beat it, but I died close to *30* times there.

Things I would have done differently:
-Add at least one more powerup. Maybe give you two mushrooms at the start. You're basically *going* to take at least one hit, so that would give you a *little* more wiggle room.
-Remove the first boulder bouncing down the hill. That probably resulted in at least a third of my deaths.
-Remove the hammer bro on top of the blocks, and at least one of the three at the end.
-Remove either the upward firing bullets, homing koopas, or the bomb bubbles. Any one would do, but all three make it truly excessive.

I *just* beat the stage, so these are probably just some spur of the moment "anger" feelings talking, but though the game has been far from easy so far, I've still greatly been enjoying it, and this is the first stage that's truly made me rage.

Favorite: Pet Rock. Once I figured out how to deal with the text box (which was admittedly my fault for being stupid and not reading *that* text box out of all the ones I'd seen so far), the stage was fun. I love silly "destroy everything" romps, as I said before. I just wish it was longer.

Runner up: Another Castle. Everything being replaced with Peach was confusing, but it made me laugh. I gotta count that for something.

Least Favorite: Dense Jangle. That sure was a stage, sir! It wasn't even that it was *bad* or anything... just extremely forgettable. I actually had to check raocow's video just to remind me what it was.

Favorite: Poison Tree. I loved how beautiful the stage looked, despite using only vanilla graphics throughout. The Final Fantasy 9 song worked perfectly, giving the stage a nice mellow feel, and the challenge was just right. I liked how all the buried coins could double as makeshift shields in order to help deal with the enemies. That was probably unintentional, but it was definitely a lot of fun.

Runner up: Just Rusty! I just loved it. "SUDDENLY, LEMMINGS!" What more can I say? It was a lot of fun, and rather well put together, given what it was.

Least Favorite: Koopa Time. Again, not a bad stage in and of itself, but I admit, I wasted a *lot* of time there trying to kill all the enemies, which was quite a feat considering you're dealing with probably the worst character for killing enemies (no spin jump), and there's limited "ammo" to kill the enemies you can't stomp on. I felt pretty silly when I discovered the secret path and realized you didn't *have* to... I think changing Bowser's line slightly would help to reduce confusion. "Kill all the enemies! ... or not, see if I care!" Something like that.

Favorite:
MAKL Vanilla: There aren't really many levels that are really based around Kood's hover ability, so to see one that actually was was pretty neat IMO. I liked the way the level was laid out to where it wasn't just a straight path and you could actually go 2 separate ways to get to the end. Also I liked the joke at the beginning.

Least Favorite:
(edited out because I hate the reasoning I used here and I don't really dislike the level all that much)

Runner Ups:
Pet Rock: Even though it wasn't really much of a challenge, I just felt like it was pretty fun to just plow through mountains of enemies like that.
Another Castle: Admittedly this was mostly for the joke, though I thought the boss was a pretty decent use of the default bosses.

Favorite:
Poison Tree: It was hard to pick a favorite from this world. I like Poison Tree for both the atmosphere and the fact that it's fairly difficult for where it is, but not murderously hard. The only part I wasn't much of a fan of was the part with the 8 or so plants that spit fire at you at once, mainly because I couldn't figure out that the vines were climbable at first and kept trying to use the pipes with the plants in them to climb up.

Least Favorite:
Pimp Yo Ride: I really do like the concept of this level, however it seems like the spammy nature of it makes all of the rides the player isn't in direct control over useless due to the fact that they move very slow, so you're forced to spend a lot of time bombarded by enemies. The ones with top covers particularly backfire because if a paragoopa gets trapped in there, you essentially can't dodge it.

Runner Ups:
Canopy Journey: A fun little rompy level. I particularly liked the little mini-plot going on near the end to add a little bit of flavor to the level.
Just Rusty: Not much to say other that I thought the gimmick was pretty neat. I would've liked to see a bit more of it.

Favourite
A tie between MAKL Vanilla and This Sounds Accurate: MALK for all the reason people have already stated so far (solid design, utilises the abilities of a lesser used character) but This Sounds Accurate manages to shoot up there for me because... it's just so charming to me!

You've got pleasant music, simple (but not heavily flawed IMO) platforming, chatty NPCs that don't take a million years to get past and surprisingly don't feel like they stagnate the gameplay at all (which surprises me, really), a well hidden secret (which if you pay attention isn't too hard to find after your first playthrough) and it's just all in all such a pleasant experience gah

Least Favourite
Dense Jangle for all the reasons everybody else already mentioned.

Favourite:
Just Rusty! for Willhart always being a genius somehow a really unique gimmick that got pulled off extremely well (I'll also have to look into the level file sometime and figure out how you got that reset working).

Least Favourite
Sheath Partakes in an Interlude for one thing that I just really don't like playing as Link.

The stage feels flat and uninteresting to me, with the only interesting obstacle being the Green mouse for which you have to use the quick leaf + attack combo. Issues here is that a lot of design like this isn't entirely Mikkofier's fault, but more so the limitations brought up by focussing on Link as your playable character. He moves so clunky and staggering you can really make much dynamic design with him, and beating up enemies using a sword or hair or whatever just never felt satisfying to me with how short the range is. It's like any enemy you come up against can just bonk you in the face because you hit the attack button two tenths of a second too late (jumping isn't a fine alternative either because again, Link jumps like he's the fifth member of the DK crew).

BUT WITH THAT IN MIND: a particular stage in World 5 managed to handle this limitation a lot better (and even then I don't play that stage with all the great joy in the world), which only allows me to find more dislike in this stage.

Error and cousins are fun to talk to, but unlike This Sounds Accurate they don't feel like they add much to the stage as a whole and are just sort of there to pad things out a bit more.