[M1] Metroid - Rogue Dawn - Version 1.21

[Grimlock]

[spoiler=review?]
So, I didn't finish yet, but I'm practically done at this point, so I think I can give a fair review given what I've seen thus far.  Why didn't I bother finish before writing a review? Well, I'll get to that.

So, the first part of the hack between starting and getting hijump is a bit difficult. Without any etanks, and starting at 30 energy, making the rather long trek to where hijump is at can be quite a chore, especially if like some (not me) you are having trouble navigating through those caverns because of its maze like qualities.

After this point, the hack hits its stride. You start getting Etanks, and a variety of main items, and the hack progresses fairly smoothly. Exploration feels rewarding, and its an enjoyable time. If I hadn't been silly and realized which doors were missile doors I would have made progress faster, so I blame myself slightly for that, and won't take that out on the hack.

However, once you get to the teleporting mazes, the hack starts to get pretty frustrating. It sounds like a neat little concept, but in practice, trying to navigate around when every wrong path teleports you back to beginning is pretty annoying. I was able to skip the first one by walljump midair morphing to grab the nearby etank, and then descending that way down into the chozo ruins area. And after awhile, I was able to figure out that areas teleport maze.

And then we get to the final area. Oh boy. I was really enjoying this hack, besides the teleport mazes, but I was gonna let those slide. But this final area, really ups the difficulty (unnecessarily in my honest opinion). This area wouldn't so bad if there wasn't three vertical rooms that if you fell down you had to restart most of the area. This area wouldn't be so bad if M1 had save points, so you could have checkpoints in the area. This area wouldn't be so bad, if when you ran out of missiles fighting (what I assume is) the final boss, you didn't just lose and have to restart the entire area over again and hope you don't run out of missiles again!

Will I finish this hack? I honestly don't know. I don't like abusing save states, but I feel like I will have to to have any chance of beating the final area. Guess I'm just not good enough. Oh well.

Score: 3/5

Despite how frustrating some of this hack is, it has some neat graphics and pretty good music. The enjoyable parts were very enjoyable, if the parts I disliked were looked into, I could easily see this hack being one of my favorite hacks I've ever played. But as it stands, 3/5 is about as high as I feel comfortable ranking it.
[/spoiler]

Review Response (contains spoilers)

[spoiler]Hmm, I can see the frustration if you kept falling in the final area, I added a bunch of those jelly looking Metroids to catch you (I actually kept adding them so it was actually hard NOT to get caught on one of you fell).  Also there are three short cuts you can take in the final area, one of them is at the top of the second "drop" shaft, you can wall jump up to a healing spot and then take a tunnel past the third shaft.  At one of the shafts (left one) near the bottom there's a short cut that skips a chunk of the area, just wall jump up and there's a hole on the left.  The final shortcut is an open room that has Rinkas spawn if you jump up exposing the upper screen, if you freeze a Rinka you can use it to jump off of and skip a bunch of screens.  I'm not sure how you ran out of missiles, no one else reported that issue (play testers), in the final area I think the missile pick ups give you like 30, also at the boss you can farm the Metroid if you need too.  Anyway thanks for the feedback, if I get a lot of complaints about the drop shafts I'll consider changing them.

EDIT:  There's several shortcuts throughout this game.  I had speed runners in mind.

[/spoiler]

[Odb718]

No beep? Complete shock when I die isn't good. Having to keep looking at my energy isn't good.
Also the mini-map and map being different is weird. But I'm pretty sure that's all on the mini-map.
Starting in the water wasn't the funnest.
The ramps get annoying when I try to do the fast shot trick where you press forward and fire to shoot.

I'm very impressed with this hack.

[squishy_ichigo]

[spoiler]
3:29:01 - 71%

I didn't realize that the Metroid's dropped 30 missiles, so I didn't bother farming them. Why bother if it takes 5 missiles to kill them and if you have a small chance of them dropping 5 missiles tops.

Once I knew that, I was able to beat the game.

I feel like too much of the 'challenge' of the final area is nestroid knowledge. I was just lacking it would seem. Silly me.
[/spoiler]

[passarbye]

[spoiler=review?]
So, I didn't finish yet, but I'm practically done at this point, so I think I can give a fair review given what I've seen thus far.  Why didn't I bother finish before writing a review? Well, I'll get to that.

So, the first part of the hack between starting and getting hijump is a bit difficult. Without any etanks, and starting at 30 energy, making the rather long trek to where hijump is at can be quite a chore, especially if like some (not me) you are having trouble navigating through those caverns because of its maze like qualities.

After this point, the hack hits its stride. You start getting Etanks, and a variety of main items, and the hack progresses fairly smoothly. Exploration feels rewarding, and its an enjoyable time. If I hadn't been silly and realized which doors were missile doors I would have made progress faster, so I blame myself slightly for that, and won't take that out on the hack.

However, once you get to the teleporting mazes, the hack starts to get pretty frustrating. It sounds like a neat little concept, but in practice, trying to navigate around when every wrong path teleports you back to beginning is pretty annoying. I was able to skip the first one by walljump midair morphing to grab the nearby etank, and then descending that way down into the chozo ruins area. And after awhile, I was able to figure out that areas teleport maze.

And then we get to the final area. Oh boy. I was really enjoying this hack, besides the teleport mazes, but I was gonna let those slide. But this final area, really ups the difficulty (unnecessarily in my honest opinion). This area wouldn't so bad if there wasn't three vertical rooms that if you fell down you had to restart most of the area. This area wouldn't be so bad if M1 had save points, so you could have checkpoints in the area. This area wouldn't be so bad, if when you ran out of missiles fighting (what I assume is) the final boss, you didn't just lose and have to restart the entire area over again and hope you don't run out of missiles again!

Will I finish this hack? I honestly don't know. I don't like abusing save states, but I feel like I will have to to have any chance of beating the final area. Guess I'm just not good enough. Oh well.

Score: 3/5

Despite how frustrating some of this hack is, it has some neat graphics and pretty good music. The enjoyable parts were very enjoyable, if the parts I disliked were looked into, I could easily see this hack being one of my favorite hacks I've ever played. But as it stands, 3/5 is about as high as I feel comfortable ranking it.
[/spoiler]

Review Response (contains spoilers)

[spoiler]Hmm, I can see the frustration if you kept falling in the final area, I added a bunch of those jelly looking Metroids to catch you (I actually kept adding them so it was actually hard NOT to get caught on one of you fell).  Also there are three short cuts you can take in the final area, one of them is at the top of the second "drop" shaft, you can wall jump up to a healing spot and then take a tunnel past the third shaft.  At one of the shafts (left one) near the bottom there's a short cut that skips a chunk of the area, just wall jump up and there's a hole on the left.  The final shortcut is an open room that has Rinkas spawn if you jump up exposing the upper screen, if you freeze a Rinka you can use it to jump off of and skip a bunch of screens.  I'm not sure how you ran out of missiles, no one else reported that issue (play testers), in the final area I think the missile pick ups give you like 30, also at the boss you can farm the Metroid if you need too.  Anyway thanks for the feedback, if I get a lot of complaints about the drop shafts I'll consider changing them.

EDIT:  There's several shortcuts throughout this game.  I had speed runners in mind.

[/spoiler]

I have a lot of the same opinions/criticisms that Squish does regarding the design of this hack. Still haven't beaten it tho.
[spoiler]I ended up running out of missiles at the end as well, even though you can farm the metroid it mostly just gave me health when I didn't need any. The jellyfish were hard to stay on actually, they do damage and fuck up your jumping/aiming if you hit the tentacles.
The only teleport maze thing I couldn't figure out was the optional one in the chozo ruins/lower forest (where it repeats the same small vertical shaft over and over if you keep falling). I considered many ways to solve the puzzle (bombing everywhere of course), but i just didn't get it. I also couldn't find walljump until I finally tried bombing around the first elevator and the sand, which took me about 2 hours of searching the same places I'd already been. Some bomb tunnels are harder to find than they should be imo, and the whole thing just feels a bit claustrophobic.

I love the graphical design, music, secret rooms, pretty much all of the hack itself, I just had a hard time finding out what to do and where to go.
These few criticisms make the game very frustrating for me, but I never had a problem keeping stocked up on missles/health until the end, so I think the game is well balanced just too mazey for me. I like Rogue Dawn, but walljump and bomb were the hardest to find for me. [/spoiler]

[Grimlock]

No beep? Complete shock when I die isn't good. Having to keep looking at my energy isn't good.

We removed the obnoxious beeping from the game, all it did was annoy you into collecting health...

[AuroraxPhilic]

RD is finally out? Psh, I'll be doing a speedrun of it soon.

@squishy_ichigo a lot of your complaints are the same ones I have. And i did find many of those maze glitches; apparently those can't be fixed...

[Grimlock]

RD is finally out? Psh, I'll be doing a speedrun of it soon.

@squishy_ichigo a lot of your complaints are the same ones I have. And i did find many of those maze glitches; apparently those can't be fixed...

[spoiler]Actually after the play testing I reduced the number of passageways in the bug hive, also I added a very subtle hint as to which hole to go done.  if you look below the entries the one with brown grass has the E-tank (take the top tunnel where you have multiple options once in the hole), with the green grass it's the way through.  Also once you go down the right hole (center one of 5) there is no way to get it wrong, you go strait through.  I made those changes after the final beta testing).[/spoiler]

[PKstarship]

I've been playing this for 4 or so hours and it's pretty fun, just one problem I have so far...

[spoiler]I think the Kraid reskin is extremely frustrating. It's annoying how small the footholds are, and falling in the pit below pretty much means you're gonna take an energy tank's worth of damage due to it being near impossible to get out of. It just isn't fun. The worst part is that after you die, you have to go ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING, and it takes forever to even get to the boss again, just to get knocked into the pit for cheap damage until you die. I'll try my best to do this, but I don't like how unfair it is.[/spoiler]

[Grimlock]

I've been playing this for 4 or so hours and it's pretty fun, just one problem I have so far...

[spoiler]I think the Kraid reskin is extremely frustrating. It's annoying how small the footholds are, and falling in the pit below pretty much means you're gonna take an energy tank's worth of damage due to it being near impossible to get out of. It just isn't fun. The worst part is that after you die, you have to go ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING, and it takes forever to even get to the boss again, just to get knocked into the pit for cheap damage until you die. I'll try my best to do this, but I don't like how unfair it is.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]If you don't already have the freeze beam I'd suggest getting that first, you can freeze his projectiles and then use your missiles.  You can also just jump to where he is and spam missiles or bombs up close and personal. [/spoiler]

[Grimlock]

So, I just completed the game with an ingame time of 2:54:44 and the credits didn't scroll at all for me, so I couldn't see my item percentage. It was like a slideshow of pictures for me. The rest of the game was working normal. I really enjoyed the hack tho.

Was that on a Powerpak cart?

[Grimlock]

Updated to Version 1.10

[RT-55J]

1:48:54 71%

You guys did good.

EDIT: re: the last boss. It feels like the guy has invincibility frames, in contrast to every other enemy in the game. Can anybody else confirm that?

[LinkaMeister]

no, I injected the rom into a virtual console wad for the wii. I don't know if that's the reason why it did it. Also here's the highlight of how the credits looked like for me [spoiler]https://www.twitch.tv/linkameister/v/114817541[/spoiler]

[Odb718]

We removed the obnoxious beeping from the game, all it did was annoy you into collecting health...

You mean not dying?

[AuroraxPhilic]

I found a way to get into the final area extremely early; no bosses killed.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

It was frame and pixel perfect, and stupidly difficult; but sub 20 minutes is possible with this.

...why am I posting this here? Psh...to tease. Duh.

[Metaquarius]

[spoiler]Shaktool confirmed :lol:
I smell a shy guy...[/spoiler]

[LinkaMeister]

The recharge station things aren't working anymore in the 1.10 version.

[altoiddealer]

Quick comment
[spoiler]I played for maybe 15 mins yesterday (I was busy but needed at least a taste of this)

I found it odd that I did not encounter a missile door... and I snagged 2, maybe even 3 missile packs.  Just seems like something I should have run into before or shortly after grabbing the first one.[/spoiler]

[Grimlock]

The recharge station things aren't working anymore in the 1.10 version.

There appears to be an intermittent issue unrelated to which release version.  If you leave an area and return they seem to work.  Not sure what's going on with that, Snarfblam would have to take a look at it.

Quick comment
[spoiler]I played for maybe 15 mins yesterday (I was busy but needed at least a taste of this)

I found it odd that I did not encounter a missile door... and I snagged 2, maybe even 3 missile packs.  Just seems like something I should have run into before or shortly after grabbing the first one.[/spoiler]

There is, depending on the area.  Not all areas even have bubble doors.

[C0zM1c]

just wanted to leave a big Thank You for this great experience, even I'm not finished yet. I actually have 6 E-Tanks, 240 Missiles and all the items, but did not manage to solve the maze puzzle yet. Also the easter Eggs were a lot of fun and made me smile (I'm not sure if  I even have all discovered yet). The new items were very welcomed as it adds more depths and exploration feeling. We all love the secret hunting and being "out of the map" ;).
I loved the level designs, custom tiles and also that you guys added own composed music which is fitting great to the feel of the unique levels. All in All a superb experience. This hack will set the standard high for upcoming M1 Hacks. They all will be measured to "Rogue Dawn" from now on ;) Congratulations to the whole Dev Team and Thank you for your effort and enthusiasm.

[Grimlock]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, definitely appreciated!

Known bugs V1.10:

[spoiler]1. Health charger on planet surface appears to work intermittently.  I have confirmed that the first encounter with the one in the water area sometimes does not work.  If you leave and then return it appears to work fine.

2. There is one item not marked on the pause map that got over looked (it's on the planet surface in the region below the left elevator)

3. A small number of permastucks have been found on the planet surface (cavern area), Note: you are very unlikely to get stuck in them during normal play.

4. There may be one item E-Tank item that is not tracked properly once you save (you lose it and it becomes available to acquire again).  This one is redundant and hidden so you can still get the main 6 E-Tanks no problem.  This may however lower your final item collection to 98% if you collected it and then beat the game instead of getting 100%.  This is reported but not confirmed, it could be an issue with the PowerPak, we're checking it out.
[/spoiler]

[Jiffy]

Time to write a review.

[spoiler=Profanity included]



This may not look that bad, but... I spent 8 and a half HOURS alone on this hack. Most of which was spent looking for the first few damn items.

Let's start with the good stuff that is noticeable (will add anything if I remember). The graphics are incredible, and so is the music. As soon as I opened it, I fell in love. All the rooms look pretty, and the Chozo ruins is my favourite area by far, just because of the tiles used. From the get-go, I found the hub area quite neat. I was kinda confused by the space pirates, but then I remembered that it was a prequel to Samus' Zero Mission. The Health Chargers are very nice. Even though they don't recharge missiles... I liked the little gimmick rooms. I only found one and I still know about the nose-picking one.

Nooooooow for the bad. Good lord. When I went down to the surface of the planet, I really had little idea on where to go. Everywhere was either blocked by bombs, higher jumps or wall jump shafts. There's no guidance on what item to get and what comes next. It's just a "here's a planet, fend for yourself" area.
What's also bad about this area is that there are literally no E-Tanks anywhere, and a shit ton of Missiles. My first E-Tank was in the Chozo ruins. Seeing as each enemy hits 20 dmg or more in the first area, it was just a long, hard slog, while trying to find where I was going. That really sucked. What's worse was the pickups; I kid you not, I am literally given the pickup that I just don't want. I get a ton of Missiles from enemy pickups at the start when I need Energy, and I get only Energy at the end of the game. More on that later. Eventually when I got to Hi-Jump, the pace started to pick up, and I knew where I was going. However, that morph maze drew me up the fuckin' wall at this point. Especially since the room had those damn bugs which flew from below and kept on hitting me, over and over. Spent a while on that. Chozo Ruins went pretty smoothly. Killed Kraid with bombs since nothing else hurt him, and that worked pretty well. However, at this point I still had no items, no Varia suit, no Walljump boots, or anything of that kind. Walljump needs to be a little more obvious, especially considering its importance in the entire damn game. The Crashed Science Ship took a damn long time. I ended up asking Suku for help because I couldn't find that one door to Ridley. It really made no sense on the map. However it was still a pretty nice area because of the tileset and music. Still no Walljump boots though, and that made me lose out on the nice items, like Wave Beam. Then I searched the entire Chozo Ruins for items and hoping to get Walljump boots, but instead got Varia. It actually took me about another hour to find the Walljump boots before I could get to the final area. And then... my will to live just snowballed into a meat grinder. The Metroids were pretty easy, and weren't required for the kill. However... they constantly dropped health, and I didn't need health. The pools didn't refill missiles either, and that really sucked. Whenever I wanted missiles back from 00, I had to reload the map from the elevator with Select+A+B, kill an enemy in the room before the miniboss and then pray to god that a Metroid dropped 30 missiles, and then 6 other Metroids would drop missiles with that, until I got to max again. The Metroids weren't threatening at all, it just got really fucking tedious. Also fuck the drop shaft.

And that's my review. Overall, the engine changes were pretty good but you could've done a whole lot more instead of releasing something that seems really unpolished. Also keep in mind that I'm a SM based player, and I've only beaten NEStroid once. There are still things to take into consideration however.
[/spoiler]

[Grimlock]

Time to write a review.

[spoiler=Profanity included]



This may not look that bad, but... I spent 8 and a half HOURS alone on this hack. Most of which was spent looking for the first few damn items.

Let's start with the good stuff that is noticeable (will add anything if I remember). The graphics are incredible, and so is the music. As soon as I opened it, I fell in love. All the rooms look pretty, and the Chozo ruins is my favourite area by far, just because of the tiles used. From the get-go, I found the hub area quite neat. I was kinda confused by the space pirates, but then I remembered that it was a prequel to Samus' Zero Mission. The Health Chargers are very nice. Even though they don't recharge missiles... I liked the little gimmick rooms. I only found one and I still know about the nose-picking one.

Nooooooow for the bad. Good lord. When I went down to the surface of the planet, I really had little idea on where to go. Everywhere was either blocked by bombs, higher jumps or wall jump shafts. There's no guidance on what item to get and what comes next. It's just a "here's a planet, fend for yourself" area.
What's also bad about this area is that there are literally no E-Tanks anywhere, and a shit ton of Missiles. My first E-Tank was in the Chozo ruins. Seeing as each enemy hits 20 dmg or more in the first area, it was just a long, hard slog, while trying to find where I was going. That really sucked. What's worse was the pickups; I kid you not, I am literally given the pickup that I just don't want. I get a ton of Missiles from enemy pickups at the start when I need Energy, and I get only Energy at the end of the game. More on that later. Eventually when I got to Hi-Jump, the pace started to pick up, and I knew where I was going. However, that morph maze drew me up the fuckin' wall at this point. Especially since the room had those damn bugs which flew from below and kept on hitting me, over and over. Spent a while on that. Chozo Ruins went pretty smoothly. Killed Kraid with bombs since nothing else hurt him, and that worked pretty well. However, at this point I still had no items, no Varia suit, no Walljump boots, or anything of that kind. Walljump needs to be a little more obvious, especially considering its importance in the entire damn game. The Crashed Science Ship took a damn long time. I ended up asking Suku for help because I couldn't find that one door to Ridley. It really made no sense on the map. However it was still a pretty nice area because of the tileset and music. Still no Walljump boots though, and that made me lose out on the nice items, like Wave Beam. Then I searched the entire Chozo Ruins for items and hoping to get Walljump boots, but instead got Varia. It actually took me about another hour to find the Walljump boots before I could get to the final area. And then... my will to live just snowballed into a meat grinder. The Metroids were pretty easy, and weren't required for the kill. However... they constantly dropped health, and I didn't need health. The pools didn't refill missiles either, and that really sucked. Whenever I wanted missiles back from 00, I had to reload the map from the elevator with Select+A+B, kill an enemy in the room before the miniboss and then pray to god that a Metroid dropped 30 missiles, and then 6 other Metroids would drop missiles with that, until I got to max again. The Metroids weren't threatening at all, it just got really fucking tedious. Also fuck the drop shaft.

And that's my review. Overall, the engine changes were pretty good but you could've done a whole lot more instead of releasing something that seems really unpolished. Also keep in mind that I'm a SM based player, and I've only beaten NEStroid once. There are still things to take into consideration however.
[/spoiler]

Review Response (contains boilers)

[spoiler]

:grin:  :nod:

[/spoiler]

[Registered]

A print map would be nice, the pause menu thumbnail isn't exactly fun to use.

[Grimlock]

A print map would be nice, the pause menu thumbnail isn't exactly fun to use.

Yea, I'm sure one will eventually surface.