Review: Play to win

 

Finished in 100 minutes.

I wanted a short and easy hack to finish the week-end. Picked one at random on smwc that doesn't looked vanilla, let's see what it has.

Very nice map.

It's as I would call it a hack resourced from smwc, in that most if not all external content (graphics, musics, sprites) are taken from smwcentral resources section. That is not a bad thing, my hack is the same in that regard. The question is how it was used. In the aesthetic department, it's great. The graphics are really nice looking, and the musics good too. Every level has it's own aesthetic and most of the time their own sprites that makes each one unique. Although the hack author must love jumping piranha plants. The choice of custom sprites are also great...

 

Jumping piranha plants, the hack's fetish sprite.

 

Except the bosses. They aren't very good. Using smwc bosses is not bad, but there should fit with the game. First boss is Iguy, but then Mooser? There's no coherence between the bosses, nor between the levels. Only world 3 fits has there's a thwomp boss in a thwomp level. Thwomp boss is lame but at least it's not the old bomb version. Special mention to the piranha plant boss that is just a bad boss and glitchy as that. Please don't use it, this boss is bad.

You suck!

About the level design, it's good. It's linear, platforming romp that you breeze through, and it feels good. And when I say linear, I do, there is literally only one secret exit in the game. I would have liked a bit more, at least 4 for 4 switch palaces. The game is easy, but a bit too much. Especially, there's too much powerups, making enemy obstacles not threatening enough as the levels are full of powerups blocks (with only flowers).

 

Despite the graveyard aesthetic, it's an athletic level!

 

I may sounds negative, but negative points are easier to pinpoint. In reality I liked this hack. It's just a fun romp that you can enjoy without thinking. I wish it was a bit harder and with better bosses or no boss at all, but it was a fun time anyway.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Good

Review: Yoshi's Crack House

 

What the...   (completed in 70 minutes)

 

As I was browsing my "to be played one day" romhack folder in search of a short hack to play, I stumbled into one called Yoshi's Crack House. Not remembering when I downloaded it or what it was about. With a name like that I wasn't expecting much. But...

 

That's the sort of OW I would make.

This was a surprisingly enjoyable hack. It's a "joke" hack in that it has funny and vulgar story and text, but it never goes too far offensive (for me at least). In fact I think it could have went harder some times, especially the ending that was a bit of a wet fart like most joke hack. A funny final cutscene after the final boss would have been cool. But for the rest of the story, it was kind of funny. Not extremely humorous but funny and original enough.

 

Challenging enough.

And the the game part, it's good. The level design is challenging but fair and good platforming. It doesn't innovate but it's strongly decent and offer a good time. There's a bit of a difficulty spike at the end, but the sections are short and there is instant retry. In previous levels there's enough powerups too.

The boss are kind of meh, they are just boss taken from smwc, nothing new. I admit I found kind of funny to have an epic touhou music just for that stupid overused thwomp boss.

bread

Overall I enjoyed my time playing it, it's a good short hack with stupid humor attached to it.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Good

Review: SMW Gaiden

 

World 1-7 in 13 hours (in a row 😵), world 8 in 6 hours, special world in 3 hours (with some feathers)

 

 SMW Gaiden is a collab with a new team comprised of old school SMW hackers, some relatively know. This hack aims to be some old school challenge, let's see what it has. Sorry if I lack details, I made this review a while after I finished the main game.

Yuck! Plants everywhere!

One look into the game and you can feel the old school. Sort of. Let me explain: the graphics are mostly vanilla, with new palette, mostly well done but a few questionable. One thing that I hate, is the music. The game only use musics from SMW and SMB:AllStar for that retro feels. I'm fine with SMW musics but I'm not a fan of SMWAS ones, it get tiring to hear them after a while. Also only the level have retro musics, the OW has nice custom musics, so the contrast really feels weird. It could have made the levels stand out more. The fact that all the level have generic names doesn't help. The overworld is very nice though.

Weird rhino palette.

The game has few custom sprite, and only retro one. And the mark of fabric of this hack are piranha plants / venus fire plant. They are in EVERY level, and I'm not exaggerating. I understand the idea, really. But that doesn't means I enjoy this decision. It's an annoying sprite and having it in EVERY level gets annoying. It's not even a modern one, it's the old school venus that means upside down always ignore Mario and comes out. They could have at least used modern one with red stem venus to mix things / identify them better. About sprites, most common sprites in the games like koopas, spinies, etc. have slightly different properties, in that they are quite faster. This is a nice change to shake things up. Strangely, the exception are the SMB3 hammer bro that throw less hammer than the typical custom sprite. It's an annoying sprite so I won't complain. Also it's green here.

And despite being classic, the final boss is custom. It's a really impressive custom boss, but it makes it contrast with the classic feel of the hack even more.

Even underwater, PLANTS!

But beside the overuse of Venus, the level design is great. It's classic, but the obstacles are well put together, it's challenging but fair. It's the typical linear Mario platforming, but very well polished. If you're good at Mario, seeing all those enemies (mostly plants) and blazing through their fireball is a lot of fun. The game has a few secrets, but overall the levels are simple and neat.

Some postgame levels are a bit of a pain though. Thankfully powerups aren't filtered. You can even bring Yoshi, though they greatly reduced the timer before he eats items in his mouth, so you can't grab a blue shell and fly.

Two plants one pipe?

The hack feels classic but also mixed with modernity, and seeing those modern aspect sometimes feels like missed opportunities, like how the OW have custom musics but not the levels or a few custom sprites. The hack having a fetish sprite (the plants) seen in every levels is kind of interesting but may or may not be annoying. However, the great level design makes for some fun challenge and it is a superb hack if you're looking for good old fun Mario platforming.

 

Even in your switch palace, PLANTS!

 

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Good

Fkuc

Review: A plumber for all seasons

 

Finished in ~3h30

 

 A hack that's been on the work for for 9 years. This hack's main feature are the mostly completely custom made graphics by WYE along with some ASM and a neat season gimmick to deliver an unique experience.

WYE love to put his logo into the ground graphics.

 

So first the aesthetic. It's just wonderful, all the tricks were used to make is looks as good as possible. The beautiful custom graphics, but the clever use of layers 2/3, parralax and so on. Each level has a unique appearance that fit well with the seasons. The custom musics are new too. They are nice, albeit some are a bit forgettable. The underground theme is my favorite, while I think the first castle theme would fit better a mountain. Still, very nice.

The snow's getting thicker.

The season gimmick is you have to play 8 levels on an island, 4 times for each seasons. But the levels are completely different between the seasons, only the theme remain. For example the fourth level is a forest level, but it looks different in each season. Light green with flowers in spring, rainy in summer, orange in fall and frozen in winter. Each world has also it's set of new enemies like some flowers in spring, although koopas are present everywhere, and a bit too much of them, but they are the classic enemies. The gameplay is classic SMW, a few change here and here that aren't bad. The cape is replaced with a raccoon leaf, but contrary to other hacks you only need to hold the jump button to fly and fall slowly, which is much better on the hand. The dragon coins (star coins here) are still 5 in each levels, and you must get all of them for 100% completion, which isn't hard and when you collect them once they stay collected forever.

A good raccoon tail finally?

 

The levels are fairly linear, with some detours and small little challenges to get the stars coins which are good. The few secret exits were also nicely implemented. Some levels have unique sprites or gimmick that makes playing them really fun. Even the more classical level, due to the unique aesthetic and season theme are refreshing to play. There was a lot of creative setups, except maybe a bit too much use of blocks on the ground you need a koopa shell to hit them.

I need 99 lives? Say no more fam. I won't spoil what it unlocks.

The game in intermediate difficulty on smwc, which is easy for veteran SMW players. I admit I breezed through most of the level, 100% the hack with it's 41 exists took me only 3h30 to complete, but it was still very fun. If you're looking for a short or easy hack with classic gameplay and extremely charming atmosphere, I definitely recommend this one.

Autumn best season don't @ me.

Rating: 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Amazing, must play

 

Review talk: Rating system

The reviews are only made for me, but still I will talk about how I review the hacks, and how I will change the rating.
At first it was a rating system out of 10. For a game to get 0 it need to crash before it can be played. My rating was as follow:

1.  King of kusoge
2. Very bad
3. Bad
4. Poor
   
5.  Middling
6. Ok
7. Good
8. Very Good
9. Amazing
10. Masterpiece
    

Where games between 1 and 4 I don't recommend playing, 5-6 I usually don't recommend but they can have a niche appeal, 7-8 I recommend and 9-10 are must play for hack players enthusiasts in my opinion.

 

But I notice that I won't use all numbers, so I want to simplify it. It will now be rated from 0 to 5, using stars. The new rating will be as follow:

1. ⭐ Poor - I didn't like it and wouldn't recommend it (4-5 previously)
   
2. ⭐⭐ Okay - It was okay, I wouldn't recommend it but I understand it's not bad and some people may like it, or it may have a niche appeal that I wasn't particularly attracted to (5-6 previously)
   
3. ⭐⭐⭐ Good - It's good to play, I recommend it but not as much as the 4 and 5 stars hacks (6-7 previously)
   
4. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very good - I like it a lot, I recommend playing (8 previously)
   
5. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazing, a must play for fan of romhacks of this genre (9-10 previously)
   

 No need to have too many numbers for bad games, one is enough (only 1⭐ is bad). I don't intend to play bad hacks.

Also 0 stars will be possible, but if it's really bad (1-3 in previous rating), a game where I hated most of my time playing it and don't find any appeal.

Review: The Misfortunes of Little Denise

 I wanted a short rompy hack to play. This one caught my interest. Is it good?

 

 Finished in 2h30

 

 In this hack you play as Denise. The town was invaded by monsters and you have to find the culprit. The story barely exist, past the intro you just go from level to level, defeat bosses characters that are humans too with their own names but no backstory developed. Also Reznor. Near the end you have a cutscene that reveal the bad guy, but it's delivered so abruptly. Whatever, this is not a story hack. Let's concentrate on the level design. Being rated medium difficulty on smwcentral, that means it's an easy hack for decently experimented SMW players, which is alright. I don't mind easy hack, but it's a bit harder to impress since some levels come and went.

 

Only local girl Denise can help.

New playable character, new system. This time it's an health system, you have 10 HP total (that sometimes can be increased to 11HP due to bugs, aka grabbing a +2HP heart when at 9HP) and enemies deals between 1 or 3 HP. It seems to be depending on the enemy, but it's a bit random, no clear way to know which enemies deal more unless after they hurt you. Even then, 10HP is a lot, more hits than in vanilla SMW so it makes the game easier (there's also plenty of hearts that recover HP in the levels). Gameplay is the same, except Cape was changed to Raccon tail of course. There is one change that I HATE, is fireballs can be shot upwards. This is cool, except to shoot upward, you need to either hold up OR hold jump button. That means shooting fireballs straights while jumping is ass because you have to stop holding B before pressing Y. 90% of the time I want to jump and shoot a fireball but the ball goes up and so I get it. Well the game is easy enough that fireballs aren't necessary, still this is frustrating.

Cute squirrels

Graphically it's ok. The new characters graphics (Denise and the bosses) are ok, levels GFX are varied, but there's some instance where it clashes, especially in the enemies graphics. The music choices are great, except the overworld music, there's only one and it sucks. For a submap it would be ok, but why have the whole OW music of the game be that Boo carousel music from SM64. Doesn't fit and gets annoying quickly.

Can't destroy big blocks with the big shells. Meh.

Level design is okay. It's just straight romp, which is what I asked for. There's some parts with item babysitting that wasn't always needed. I don't mind rompy style, but this was just okay here. Nothing original. It gets a bit better near the end. I honestly don't have much to say about it. The generous health system makes rushing through the level not punished enough, so levels were gone so quickly. There's also few levels with secrets exits, except to get switches palaces. And about that, one level had a message box implying that you should have found the key for the secret exit, but you can't: you can only get the key later. That was mean.

Cool effect.

So this is a short quick romp hack. Some little annoyances and lacking potential, but enjoyable.

⭐⭐

Okay

Phred's Cool Punch-Out 2 Turbo

I tried something different today, to play a Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! romhack. I played two in fact.

Very cool.

 First Phred's Cool Punch-Out, this hack is actually only a graphical hacks. The appearances of the fighters have changed, as well as some of the texts, but their patterns are identical. I decided to play it because might as well do, I haven't played Punch-Out!! in a while (when I played it it was on the gamecube in Animal Crossing), so I can play the original before playing a romhack so I can see the changes better.

 

 Very mature.

 

And so about Phred's Cool Punch-Out, the new graphics are cool. They are not amazing or better than the original, but they make a nice alternative if you played the original Punch-Out!! a lot (not my case) and want something slightly different. Most of the new texts are just stupid, but funny. I did chuckles some times. I just noticed one error when you lose against Mask X is head change into's Bald Bull.

 

 Creepy dude.

 

So that's it. I would rate it 2 stars I guess. But anyway, here's for the main course :

 

 The cooler Phred's Punch-Out!!

 

 This hack, compared to the first one, has new patterns for all the boxers. And they are all news. It's subtitled turbo because indeed the game is faster like Street Fighter II Turbo... or is it? The music sure is faster, the rest idk.

 

 Boxing with glasses on?

 

So the game has new elements but the same base. The same 3 tournaments, with the same boxer order except Joe switched with Flamenco. This time more text was modified (with a feeling of old internet slang, some may like it some not). Other than the boxer's info and talks, the tournaments names and other things are different. Each fight as it's own color palette, with one having a particular palette that does change a bit some things. It's not ugly, it's different. The boxer appearance are decent, except the two girls have some frames that looks really bad.

 

You fight Doc! But because of limitations, the strategy is the same as King Hippo.

 

The fight themselves are good. Some boxers have a simple pattern, some have a particular one that requires some time to understand how to overcome them. It makes the difficulty a bit uneven, some fights can be harder than the next one. Overall the difficulty is a bit harder than the original Punch-Out!! There's one fight I had a lot of troubles, because I kept getting punched even when I predicted the attack. Either my reaction was too slow or the dodge window too tight.

 

F*** this robot.

 

There's also some change in the game system. Important is you start each fight with two stars, and also get two stars after you get knocked out. The maximum stars is 7 now. So if well used, that can make some fights goes faster if you use your uppercut at the best moment.

 

lel

 

So a Punch-Out!! hack is very original. P-O is not my favorite game series, but I enjoy it. A romhack with new fighters is nice for a change, and the free uppercut stars is good.

⭐⭐⭐

Good 

 

For download link to the ROM and more infos about Phred's Cool Punch-Out, check out the creator's website: http://master_phred.tripod.com/punchout/index.html

Video games talk: Etrian Odyssey

This blog isn't only about romhack reviews, even if I only used it for that previously. As the name yogui's fourre-tout, it's a place where I can say whatever I want about any subjects I want.

Today I want to talk to you about one of my favorite video game series: Etrian Odyssey. EO are RPG dungeon crawler for DS and 3DS. What I love about this series is:

- The great gameplay. It's turn-based combat, but done well. Normal enemies requires a bit of strategy and not only auto-attack, and boss a lot more so. Ailments are both useful against random encounters and bosses, the binds ailments are great.

- The dungeons designs are good, and the innovation of having to draw the map yourself make you more invested in exploring.

- Nice art style and amazing musics composed by Yuzo Koshiro.

- You have lot of choices at your disposition, you chose your class, portrait and name. You decide yourself what skills to learn with your skill points.

- It's minimalist. The playable character are just a single portrait, they don't have any dialogue. That last point is something I like, as it makes you imagine yourself how the characters will interacts in events and battle with each other. Yes I'm making my own head-canon with my characters, and this is how these games are meant to be played:

Ultimately, the series isn't something 100% unique never done before, a lot of the points above were done in other RPGs of course. It's just that all of them are done really well together in the EO games.

When I play them, I usually make a team at the start and never change it, as I get too attached to my characters. Even if it's just portrait chosen from a limited pool, because I named them and adventured with them for the whole game, for me they are unique characters. Your protector isn't the same as my protector even if they have the same portrait.

I'll now present you the guilds I used in the games (I sometimes used other characters for gathering items or some sidequest but I will not list them), in order of the games I played.

I first discovered Etrian Odyssey IV on the 3DS eshop. I downloaded and tried the demo, and after playing it for two hours, I literally, immediately ordered a copy of the full game. The game hooked me from the start. For my characters (in all EO games actually) I mostly chose the characters portraits I like the best. It usually result in party of 1B/4G or 2B/3G. I do not like party of only girls (or only boys). I also make sure to have unique characters in each games. I think of the names of the characters when I create them, not in advance (but I think for a while).

Anyway the girls in IV are pretty cute, I though the adult, more serious looking medic would make a good contrast with the rest. He's the most rational and cautious member of the guild for sure. In my head I have developed the personalities of the characters, and imagined their stories before they formed a guild together and what they became after they finished exploring the labyrinth of Yggdrasil. But I'll keep it for myself for now.

I did not want to play Story mode, even if it meant missing some contents. For this team I maybe didn't chose the best classes, it was a bit of a mess. I means, I had troubadour in the front (because dancer in IV worked good in front but this is not the same) and also front survivalist as a dodge tank? Truth is, I played the game in normal difficulty (not knowing back then that normal was actually easy and the true Etrian difficulty was Expert) so I managed it. If you ask what does the "P" means in the medic names...  well I don't really know myself.

I really like this team. War Magus is such a fun class, one of my favorite. I really like the Hexer and Gunner too. And this time in Untold 2 you don't miss on the story mode content beside the Fafnir class. Well some boss were made with the Fafnir in mind so they felt a bit annoying without it (I hate the dragon cores) but it was still fun. After I had chosen most of the party members, I noticed they all have similar colors palette. You could also call this guild Orange team. Oh yeah, names are limited to 8 characters max. The guild names doesn't have particular meanings, it's just names I though at the time. I called the restaurant FioreRosa.

EOV added a lot more customization with possibility to change color of the skin/hairs/eyes. You can also set voices, but I disabled them because it didn't felt right to have voices in EO, and the english ones aren't very good. You can also get a class specialization (legendary title) and rename it, so I added the title under the name. You may have noticed an anomaly. That's right, Xodia was a shaman but I decided to reclass her to a Warlock to have immediate elemental damage (that can be chained with Valiance). So it's a brouni warlock instead of a celestrian, which work too, they stats aren't too different, the elemental damage may be slightly lower but they are bulkier and faster. I didn't use Therian because well didn't liked their class (Rover could have been cool but I wanted to reserve all my summon slots for my necromancer) and I absolutely wanted two brounis. Since there's 4 races, most people would at least want to have one character from each race. But I didn't, and it's okay. I have the freedom to chose the races and classes I want, no matter how optimal it may be, and still win this it*; that's the true RPG pleasure. *except the true final boss that may need specific classes. So I admit I did everything but beat the last boss in EOV. And for EO1U and EO2U I beat the last boss with the difficulty lowered because it was too much for my party.

With Nexus killing all chances for a EO3Untold, I decided to play EOIII. It aged well, I had no problems going back after V. I think EO3 didn't need an Untold because it's great enough, unlike EO1&2. This party is another party where I just chose my favorite portraits no matter what. That means 2 buccaneer! 2 of the same class on the same party! Yes! But since they can have different weapons and work on different rows (sword in front for Morgana, gun in back for Marjorie), and with having different sub-classes, they were not identical. I loved having two pirates on the teams. Wildling is also a really fun class even if people say they aren't very good (or more like people prefer to give the sixth slot for Ninjas).

After doing the two routes, I decided to use a different party for the true route. The problem in new game+ is everything stay unlocked. All the maps are already drawn, all side-quests done (can't get exp with quests), all the weapons unlocked (so it's hard to buy the right weapon, one not too powerful for the current stratum), so it wasn't very fun. For the postgame, I wondered what team to use, maybe I could make a mix and use the best class of each teams. I opted to just use the old main team above. That newgame+ team was Shogun/Yggdroid/Hoplite/Arbalist/Ninja and wasn't too bad. Ninja sure is OP. And Yggdroid are...   something. I also used a farmer team for gathering and a Gladiator+Princess combo to cheese the last boss so technically I used all classes.

Instead of finally playing Nexus I decided to play the original EO1, because I wanted to see how the series progressed, and how antiquated the game was. EO1 is the only EO that was published in Europe by Nintendo and have french language, so I wanted to play to see how the french translation was (it's ok, the only weirdness are FOE being DJIN). For this team I wanted to use the two classes I didn't used yet in EO1U and EO2U, the Landsknecht and Dark Hunter (sorry Beast, I don't think I'll play EO2), and I didn't want to use a Medic because I know Immunize is broken so I wanted to challenge the game without it (I only used one for the ultra final boss). So a Protector because without medic I needed damage mitigation, Survivalist because although I used one in EO1U I won't use it as a badly evasion tank but a proper back row attacker (it's great in this game, crazy damage output). And troubadour because I liked this portrait over the Alchemist one (not using Samourai or Hexer as they are unlocked too late and aren't good). Edit: I finished the game, it wasn't too bad. Compared to EO3 though it does feels dated, in the balance, the mechanics and especially the map drawing. But this sort of retro, clunky old game is nice too~

After I finish EO1 I will finally play Nexus. But I also want to replay IV. Or maybe EO2 DS orz. I want to try the beasts, even if I know they suck in EO2.

edit: With Etrian Collection announced, I think I'll play EO2 using the collection version (and because I don't want to spend 100€+shipping for an used physical copy of EO2).