SM Redesign: Axeil Edition FINAL

[Hitaka]

There wouldn't be any point in "spamming" them if a single use stuns all the metroids, and the 3 metroid rooms are the only time you would really need it. In 2 metroid rooms killing them one at a time is all you need to clear the room, so you don't need to expend any PBs. Is something really a "game breaker" if it brings difficulty from high down to reasonable? With the whole zebetite puzzle, Tourian still wouldn't be a cake walk.

[Scooterboot9697]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who resorted to cheat codes (infinite missiles) to open purple doors?

I understand there'll be less of them in 1.5, but couldn't you also change them to require just 10 missiles? That is, if the aim was to recreate the 10 missile doors in NES'troid. Though, if that seems low enough to defeat the purpose of the requirement of more expansions, then at least make it require 15. Because 25 is ridiculous, imho. :bounce:

[The Envoy of the Beginning]

5. That one E-tank in brinstar with the water room that you have to freeze fishes in. That whole thing is terrible, I feel sorry for those without save states. It's lots of slow and tedious backtracking out of the room if you accidentally kill anything. Not to mention the lowest fish can leave the climbing area. (In fact, it's on the way to do so right as first find it!) If you don't want to re-evaluate this entire puzzle, then at least fix it so that lowest fish can't leave the climbing area.

[spoiler]You don't need to stand on the lowest Skultera if you crouch-jump from the leftmost slope in the room while you have Hi-Jump enabled.
https://youtu.be/D5CeGSDE1po?t=16m3s[/spoiler]

[Xenesis]

Well, if Metroids do become so abrasively weak to Power Bombs, then people would just constantly spam them. It does sound like an interesting idea, but one that could be a game breaker. How about this: make them weak to PBs like you said, but make it so no enemies in Tourian drop Power Bombs; ammo stations would still refill them though.

Breaking the game so that'd be too easy is far less of a sin than breaking the game so it's too hard. I don't think Drew needs to be so worried about 'degenerate' gameplay as he is.

[Quietus]

I can't be certain, since I never finished this due to new versions being releases (I'll wait for the final), but from what little I have seen, it would be a suitable enough difficulty increase for the metroids to just have them dodge your beams, and maybe take a bit more damage.  Adding additional difficulty beyond that just seems to be adding difficulty for the sake of it.  Clearly people are having far more difficulty with the metroids that with the bosses, which kind of kills the idea of bosses being bosses.

[Scooterboot9697]

On the topic of Metroids...

A pack of 3, flying in a formation...
They dodge your shots...
They attack when you're not looking...

I recognize this pattern. Drew, I'm going to assume you played and beat Metroid: Other M?
For those that don't know, in the end when fighting the Queen Metroid, there'd be a pack of 3 infant Metroids that attack you, and their fighting pattern was a lot like in Redesign(Axeil)'s Tourian. But the trick in Other M was to use Sense Move to dodge the Metroid attacking from behind, then proceeding to hit them with a charge shot.

I'm all for this interesting fighting pattern, but Drew, where's my Sense Move? :heheh:
(http://www.metroidwiki.org/wiki/Sensemove)

[RealRed]

I can't be certain, since I never finished this due to new versions being releases (I'll wait for the final), but from what little I have seen, it would be a suitable enough difficulty increase for the metroids to just have them dodge your beams, and maybe take a bit more damage.  Adding additional difficulty beyond that just seems to be adding difficulty for the sake of it.  Clearly people are having far more difficulty with the metroids that with the bosses, which kind of kills the idea of bosses being bosses.

Yeah. Tourian is so large, challenging, and filled with new features that fighting the motherbrain is the part where you're taking your sigh of relief before the escape.

[Zeke]

As a huge Redesign fan, I'm stoked and I'll have a lot to say when I'm done, but first two questions for anyone who can answer.

First: Hell's Run area, morph ball maze room, fall through the first bomb block into the lava. How do you get out? This happened to my brother and we tried everything we could think of. Is a fall here seriously unrecoverable? (This was after Varia, so it's not a "you'd die anyway" situation.) We're on 1.1, but I don't see anything in the 1.4 readme about a fix.

Second, the $64,000,000 question: has Axeil played this yet?

[Lunaria]

Uh, you just bomb jump out of that zeke and roll to the left, where a wall can be bombed open. That room is a carbon copy of a room in prime 1.

[Quote58]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB363sv1rZw&feature=youtu.be
(the map is messed up because I used quickmet to make the video since when I played it for real it was on a wii)
(video was on the latest version btw)

So this is where I stopped axiel, not because I couldn't move past it, and not because many of the changes weren't great. Rather, I simply got too tired of the amount of bullshit in the hack that makes it feel like it's a constant struggle against the player. There's probably a sure fire way to get out of that lava, but the fact is I'm a good super metroid player (I'm not amazing but I sure didn't collect speedbooster 4 times) and I found myself stuck in lava slowly dieing because I simply didn't hold right soon enough. That, is just plain silly. The player should not be so harshly punished for doing almost nothing.
As I said, there may be a way of that (and as you can see in the video getting stuck in the bomb block works), but it wasn't apparent to me any of the times I tried to escape from it. That is just bad game design.

I wanted to like axiel edition. I really, really wanted to like it. I always thought fondly of when I first played redesign because even with the awful physics it felt truly special. I loved how massive the world was, how much of it felt like an homage to various games in the series, and even the chozo guardians puzzle (as tedious as finding them all could sometimes be). But there were certain things that always kept me from going back to it. Redesign: AE promised to fix those things and even brought some nice new features as well (such as morph flash and an absolutely gorgeous new morphball). However for every part of redesign it fixed, it added another one to hate. Auto walljump is awesome, even as someone who was fine with the old walljumping, and certainly lives up to the promise of automating tricks. But then you have stuff like arm pumping slowing the player down. It's one thing to remove a trick Drew, it's another to punish the player for attempting something that doesn't break the game. Hell I'm sure for some people it's just a reflex at this point.

Anyway, there's so very much to love about this version of the hack, but I'm not going to play a hack that feels the need to punish the player because the creator has control issues (sorry Drew, you're a good guy but this whole hack screams my way or the high way, which isn't cool for an exploration based game like metroid).

The worst thing is that was my favourite room from the original version. Best morph room I've seen in a hack, but it's been ruined for me in axiel.

[MetroidPeter]

Arm...pumping...? That sounds like something NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

[Boomerang]

Arm...pumping...? That sounds like something NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

It's when you angle up or down Samus' arm cannon diagonally using the L and R buttons. It shaves off about 5 seconds off of a Super Metroid speedrun by advancing Samus one pixel or something whenever she does it. It's pretty trivial but taking it out is a bit of a lame move, I agree, especially when it's not mentioned in the readme.

[Technomagus]

Arm...pumping...? That sounds like something NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

It's when you angle up or down Samus' arm cannon diagonally using the L and R buttons. It shaves off about 5 seconds off of a Super Metroid speedrun by advancing Samus one pixel or something whenever she does it. It's pretty trivial but taking it out is a bit of a lame move, I agree, especially when it's not mentioned in the readme.

Not only is it taken out, it actively slows you down.  Arm pumping in Axeil pushes Samus backwards one pixel each time it is used, and it resets the run timer for speed booster, making it take even longer to activate.

[Zeke]

Heh! To let everyone in on the joke, Quote58 is my brother who got stuck there last night. As his video shows, bomb jumping alone is no use. (I hadn't yet seen the method that actually gets him out in the vid, but it's clearly a fluke; that timing is impossible.)

[MetroidPeter]

Hey Drew, I was thinking of starting a Let's Play of SMR Axeil Edition on my YouTube channel. Do you think I should wait for the 1.5 update? What new features will be in it?

[DonnyDonovan]

I find it fascinating that the original redesign was one of the most talked about, some love it/some hate it hack ever, Axeil edition was supposed to correct most of what engendered all that hate, and yet it's creating the exact same mixed reaction and strong opinions, just for different reasons. 

[Technomagus]

Now that I've had a couple of days to settle down from finishing Axeil, I'm going to try and give a more constructive review to address all the problems I had while playing it.  Hopefully without devolving into a frothing rage in the process.

Good things:
-Physics.  Compared to the original Redesign, Axeil is a significant improvement.  Samus no longer plummets like a rock when she so much as steps off a ledge, and the player has much more horizontal freedom when jumping, giving better control and longer jumps.
-Hint System.  With such a sprawling expanse for a map, having a bit of guidance on where to go is quite useful.
-Reduced ammo for Crystal Flash.  With Samus starved on ammo for the majority of the hack, and with the scarcity of blatant E-Tanks and expansions giving little to no ammo, having a non-farming source of healing is quite good.
-Ammo Stations.  Instead of only refilling missiles, these refill all ammo instead.  Now if only they were more of them...
-Auto-Wall Jump.  I can't tell you the number of times I would wall jump in Redesign only to have Samus decide one pixel away from the opposite wall to stop dead in her tracks and then drop like a rock.  This greatly reduced the frustration with the already finicky wall jump.  Also, as a seemingly happy accident, holding jump and hitting "away" causes Samus to immediately somersault straight up from a standing position.  Not sure where exactly this is useful, but it's a nice option to have.
-Auto-Morph.  It didn't always work when you want it to, but it helps getting through a lot of areas that would be a pain otherwise.
-X-Ray.  I liked the input change.  It made X-Ray into a somewhat useful item, since you could still have full mobility and combat capability even with it equipped.  Can't exploit Draygon with Plasma, but that's alright.  I would have liked to be able to pan the screen up and down while using X-Ray, but I'm not going to be greedy.

Bad things:
-Ammo and Health.  I thought I explored pretty thoroughly, but I still entered Tourian with less than half the total health and ammo available.  There were maybe 3-5 expansions I had access to that I didn't pick up because of how far out of the way they were, and there were at least another 5-8 that I could see but were inaccessible to me because they required techniques that I couldn't do without cheating (chain-sparks, IBJ, Speedball, etc.).  I don't mind the ones that required advanced techniques, they're to reward skilled players and I'm ok with that.  I do mind the ones that sit there the entire game and require you to backtrack over half the map at the endgame for a measly 2-missile pack.  Not even a pack of supers or PBs.
-Super Missiles and Ice Beam.  You've done a fantastic job of discouraging their use with how slow they fire.  Considering that Supers only deal 3x damage compared to Missiles and fire at less than 1/6th the rate, the tradeoff isn't very good.
-Ammo, again.  More specifically, enemies that are immune to the power beam.  Like Green Pirates and Sidehoppers.  With ammo so scarce in the beginning of Axeil, the player wants to conserve their missiles, and you keep throwing rooms full of these enemies at them.
-Crystal Flash.  you reduced the ammo requirements.  That's awesome.  You reduced the health restored.  That's NOT awesome.  Why punish the player for collecting more than 7 E-Tanks?
-Screw Attack.  The current incarnation of the puzzle is not fun, since it requires waiting and a stopwatch.  Not exactly something the player necessarily has access to.  Now, I know you're making adjustments to it, so I'll hold off until the next version.
-Beam Combo.  Why is this so late?  Better yet, why does it even exist at all?  It's basically a required item because of the Metroids, but by the time you get it, that's really all you get to use it on.
-Plasma Beam.  Why is this even later than Beam Combo?  You don't even get to use it on a major boss unless you fight Ridley and GT early, and even then you only get to use it on Draygon.

Ugly things:
-Ridley.  Fighing him on Ceres to reduce his health in Norfair is a nifty idea.  Buffing his damage based on how much you hurt him would have been an alright idea, had you been transparent about it.  It's not in the readme, so people only learn about it after being told.  Also, considering the effort required to make a modest dent in Ridley's health, his damage output is disproportionately increased as a result.  You're better off just fighting him normally, as by then you'd have either Beam Combo or SBAs to tear him apart in far less time than it would take to deal the same amount of damage on Ceres.
-Crateria Depths.  Actually, just Underwater segments without Gravity in general.  With the change to how Samus moves underwater without Gravity, you take an already unfun mechanic and turn it into blatant tedium.  Now, I don't mind a little suitless underwater hereand there, but it should be optional, or if mandatory, should not require crawling through over 80 screens worth of map tiles, fighting two sets of Ninja Pirates, and a boss.  Now, if you drained the water from the first half of the Depths, having it only post-Phantoon, it wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as it is now.
-Arm Pumping.  Removing the pixel advantage is fine.  Pushing back the player?  Why?  And why does it also reset the run timer?
-Speed Booster.  No short-charge, no speed keep, and shine sparking still drains health.  I do like that you can resume speed booster by hitting slopes, just like in the original Redesign and the GBA games, but actually activating the spark gets tricky because the input timing has changed.
-Respin.  Respin is awesome.  Having to wait for Samus to hit terminal velocity is not.  From what I've seen, there is exactly one place where the respin delay is vaguely warranted, and it's not even a good reason.  And because of the respin delay, there is a door in Tourian that if you enter it incorrectly, you immediately die without a chance to save yourself, since you do not reach terminal velocity before falling into the instant-death laser, and getting damaged in midair resets your fall velocity and forces you to wait even longer to respin.[spoiler=Video Demonstration]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h5HesYu5BjY#t=140[/spoiler]
-Instant Death.  During my let's play, there were four moments where I instantly died through no fault of my own with no chance to save myself.  Three of them were in Tourian, thanks to the Lasers.  One of them was in Norfair because I fell through a crumble bridge on the way to Crocomire with no way to get back out of the lava.  Save the instant death pits for Mario or bullshit "Challenge Hacks."  They have no place in Metroid.
-Purple Doors.  There are too many of them and they require too much ammo.  Why 25 missiles?  Why not 10 like in Metroid 1?  Why are there over 20 doors?  That requires more ammo than the maximum allowed in the game to open.  And that's not even getting into the ammo requirements for enemies and bosses.
-Tourian.  More specifically, the enemies.  I liked the infiltration aspect, where you have to hunt down the Zebetites to stop the death lasers.  I thought that was kinda cool.  I did not like that Tourian more or less completely invalidates the Screw Attack item, Super Missiles, and Power Bombs.  Supers and Power Bombs are useless against Metroids, and for all the effort the player is required to do for Screw Attack, making every enemy in Tourian not only immune to it, but also knock you out of it is basically a slap in the face.
-The Escape.  It's a lot easier than the original Redesign.  And that's AWESOME.  Then it has the blind mid-door transition jump in the feeding pit tower.  That's NOT awesome.  And it still has the underwater segment.  WHY.
-Shot Blocks in Morph Tunnels.  More specifically, why can't Power Bombs break shot blocks?  This was a problem I had with the original Redesign, too.  It makes certain morph mazes (esp. in Tourian) exceptionally tedious since you can't easily clear the path.  All this does is discourage the player from getting or using more Power Bombs than the default 3 since they already have such limited use to begin with, other than Crystal Flash and SBA.

Misc:
-I actually liked the idea of Mother Brain's Rainbow Beam offlining all your upgrades.  I thought it was a cool twist in the original Redesign.  What I did not like, however, was the escape basically rubbing in your face that all your cool stuff was gone.  Couldn't you have at least allowed the player to keep Hi-Jump or Speed Booster?
-Even with his bullshit secret damage buff, Ridley seemed easier than in vanilla SM.  I dunno.
-Other than the issue with Screw Attack and enemies, I liked the first half of Tourian, where you had to hunt down the Zebetites to deactivate the lasers.  That was kinda cool.  Having to open MULTIPLE Purple Doors along the way, however, severely dampened that enjoyment.

[Zeke]

:: DrewSeph sighs, goes away for another 9 years, and comes back with an "Axeil Squared" version that fixes all the new problems ::

(and adds even more)

[Daltone]

EPB complete on console, suck it!

[spoiler][spoiler]
[/spoiler]
12:37 (i would say closer to 30:00 lol)
45.9%
This is an amazing game, the whole thing is a puzzle. I liked the EPB run a lot more then the normal game, i would say i died over 100 times throughout. the hardest parts are lower norfairs escape and the amount of patience required for maridia. the metroids were bad at first having to charge ice to freeze them lol, the feeding pit ones didn't give me trouble either. the new way acid works is silly being really slow then instantly takes all, it should be the way it was in 1.3. it seemed like i shouldn't have been able to make at least 2 of the jumps in maridia like a ghost pushed me the extra half block up.[/spoiler]

[advancedpillow]

EPB complete on console, suck it!

[spoiler][spoiler]
[/spoiler]
12:37 (i would say closer to 30:00 lol)
45.9%
This is an amazing game, the whole thing is a puzzle. I liked the EPB run a lot more then the normal game, i would say i died over 100 times throughout. the hardest parts are lower norfairs escape and the amount of patience required for maridia. the metroids were bad at first having to charge ice to freeze them lol, the feeding pit ones didn't give me trouble either. the new way acid works is silly being really slow then instantly takes all, it should be the way it was in 1.3. it seemed like i shouldn't have been able to make at least 2 of the jumps in maridia like a ghost pushed me the extra half block up.[/spoiler]

You're a madman! Well done.

[Axatax]

I find it fascinating that the original redesign was one of the most talked about, some love it/some hate it hack ever, Axeil edition was supposed to correct most of what engendered all that hate, and yet it's creating the exact same mixed reaction and strong opinions, just for different reasons. 

This is easily a top-3 hack, no questions asked. 

I think the expectations are so high WRT to this hack that ppl. tend to be extremely ciriticial if it doesn't match their expectations exactly - ie. this hack has received 500% more criticism than Christian Homenag or WTF that botched abortion is called, but could someone honestly hold the opion CH is the better game?  I doubt it.

[advancedpillow]

This is easily a top-3 hack, no questions asked. 

I'll ask some questions.  :<_<:

[Quote58]

I find it fascinating that the original redesign was one of the most talked about, some love it/some hate it hack ever, Axeil edition was supposed to correct most of what engendered all that hate, and yet it's creating the exact same mixed reaction and strong opinions, just for different reasons. 

This is easily a top-3 hack, no questions asked. 

I think the expectations are so high WRT to this hack that ppl. tend to be extremely ciriticial if it doesn't match their expectations exactly - ie. this hack has received 500% more criticism than Christian Homenag or WTF that botched abortion is called, but could someone honestly hold the opion CH is the better game?  I doubt it.

What you're overlooking is the fact that the criticism is completely different between the two. You know why people had high expectations? Because of the things it specifically promised as the purpose for the hack. The premis for the hack was to make an easier, more enjoyable redesign. One that automated difficult tricks, and provided a hint system.
That gets your expectation of the hack high, escepially since most people here played redesign and many didn't like it for the things that were supposed to be fixed in this.
The reason so many people are being so hard on this, is because we want to like it so much. The disappointment is not just oh this hack is not good, its oh I can finally enjoy this massive game that everyone says should be experienced.
CH is a joke at this point, as it sets the standard for unpolished messes. Hacks like that don't have an expectation set for them. When you start axiel it gives you hope of being able to appreciate the polish and detail. When you start CH you know what you're getting into so you're not as disappointed.

[DonnyDonovan]

Exactly right.  Nobody discusses Christener Homenag because nobody CARES about it.  The high profile, full, overhaul type-hacks that take YEARS to make are what generate conversation.  Redesign is near the top of the list because of it's sheer size and scope.  The 2006-2007 iteration generated a ton of strong opinions on both sides.  I was one of the people who played it, but, never went back to it because too much of it felt like more of a chore than fun to complete.  Some disagree with me.  That's fine.

Axeil was marketed almost completely to people like me.  Drew basically said "there was a lot wrong with that version.  I know why people didn't like it.  I fixed it!"  We played it.  And for everything he fixed (and he fixed a LOT, it's way more fun to explore the massive world overall), he did something else that make many (again, not all) players go "huh?  Why did he do THAT?"  At the end of the day, it's Drew's hack.  He could have stopped at 1.0 had he wanted.  But, at the same time, if you put something out there that hundreds (thousands?) of people are going to play, you're going to get feedback.  I think the vast majority of us offer that feedback constructively, respectfully, and recognize and appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that Drew put into this.  What he does with it, if anything, is Drew's call.  I couldn't begin to create something like this. 

So that's the difference.  Of course Redesign is light years ahead of some spike-filled dopey half-hack that nobody gives two shits about.  That's why we're on page whatever of this thread.

[RealRed]

The issue is widespread offense that axeil edition didn't do what it was supposed to.
It IS one of the greatest super metroid hacks that exists. Redesign already was. The problem is simply in its false advertising.

People are critical and defensive because Axeil edition was supposed to be a beginner/vanilla level hack, as opposed to Redesign's expert skill requirements. It just isn't there yet.

I promise you if Drew just said "it's a modified/upgraded version of redesign", its reception would be very different because players wouldn't have gone in expecting "easy".