Alright, I've finished playing the game. I ended up getting the good ending. Just want to share my thoughts. First thing's first: I really enjoyed this game. There were parts that frustrated me to no end (we'll get to that later), but overall, it was a great experience. You have done a great job capturing the essence of Symphony of the Night and making that into a Mario game, as a general rule. I would rate it 8/10 overall, and I highly recommend anyone who hasn't already to try it out. I also highly appreciate that this game saves your progress after you beat it, so that you can continue to explore, level up, or just enjoy wandering through the castle. I find it perplexing that a lot of major commercial games of this type don't do this. However, I did have some gripes. From here on out, I'll be including spoilers (without spoiler tags), just to warn anyone else who might be reading this. Firstly, it's a bad design for Mario to automatically change his facing to the direction that he's pushed into either by attacks or by moving platforms. It takes control away from the player and frequently caused me to miss shots that I otherwise would not have missed. The only time Mario's direction should change is when the player presses a direction, as a general rule. Secondly, I found the treasure card blocks to be a bad design. Here's the thing: when I see a strange blue block that makes a noise when I hit it, I don't assume that it has an item in it; I assume it's a switch of some kind. Additionally, and this is the important bit, I'm not going to remember the locations of all of these. For the most part, if I didn't already have a treasure card to unlock it when I found it, I would need to exhaustively search the entire castle for it after I've explored every single area. I also don't see the point; why not just have the items in the regular blocks that are currently used to hold the treasure cards? That makes more sense to me. I suppose being able to use the treasure cards on the blocks of your choice lets you prioritize certain ones, but this is only relevant if you know what each treasure card block has, and where they all are (you're not going to have that knowledge unless you're already intimately familiar with the game). Thirdly, there were a couple secret areas that I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get past, even though I explored the entire map. This might be related to the previous point; I ended up with 3 spare treasure cards, so that tells me I'm missing 3 special items from those blocks. For reference, I will attach my combined map with those areas I couldn't figure out how to get to circled. Two of them are in distortions, while one of them is on the main map. The obstacles I couldn't figure out how to get past were the red spikes, the black vortex thing, and something that kind of looked like a door with a red outline. The black vortex thing, however, has some sort of bug that allowed me to fall into that particular room twice, getting me stuck there and forcing me to reload a save file, so I was able to see what is in it. Fourthly, some of these areas are annoying to navigate. Other than the enemies (which I'll get to in a bit), this mostly is a result of spikes, lava, and/or tight spaces. As an example, though I don't remember exactly where this was, there was an area where I had to do a triple-jump within a one-screen space, and I was surrounded by those annoying Dry Bones that ghost out in intervals. The worst offending area was the distortion at the Bowser's throne area, mostly because of all the lava and tiny platforms everywhere combined with tons of enemies that inflicted huge amounts of damage. When I found out that one of the areas had nothing more than coins in it, I made a conscious choice the next time to not go into that room, and that's why there's a fourth unexplored area on my map. Fifthly, I found that there were several items that were totally useless. Elemental protection was useless because no one element seems to be particularly prevalent in any given area or boss. Petrification resistance was useless because enemies that caused petrification were few and far between, though this might be a good thing considering how annoying it is when it happens. Almost all of the weapons are useless once you can use magic because they cost too much and don't do enough damage to make a particular difference in boss fights or have any special properties that make them useful in other areas; the only "weapon" I found to be generally useful was the magic shield. The only magic that was any use toward the end was the magic wand, the Lakitu bolt, and occasionally the Magic Beetroot for the specialized purpose of hitting blocks and breaking walls. Everything else sort of fell by the wayside due to being slow and unwieldy. The worst of the magic was the Shadow Flower; I actually tried to use this against some enemies, and it was utterly useless because of the randomness of how it fires, even against enemies it should be strongest against. The only suits I found to be generally useful were the Life Suit, Magic Armor, and Thor's Cloak, while the Luigi Suit was helpful for a couple areas where you had to jump high (most notably the vertical passage leading to Kamek's arena, where you can't reliably do a double-jump). Sixthly, I found many abilities obtained from relics to be entirely useless beyond certain designated uses: the ground pound, the spin jump, and sliding, in particular. Also, the spin jump comes so late, I completely forgot it was a thing. I think it would be better to remove the useless "spin" key and replace it with a dedicated "weapon" key, since being the same as the magic key makes it really easy to waste stars because you happen to be doing a lot of raccoon tail floating. But the biggest problem I had with this game was the enemies, and especially the bosses. I'll go through all the gripes I have about each of them individually: The various swimming enemies all relentlessly charge at you when you attack them. This was really annoying and difficult to deal with in the beginning, especially combined with the fact that you would instantly turn away from them when they touched you, making it difficult to shoot fireballs at them. I would have preferred if they gave up chasing you at some point. The piranha plants that shoot projectiles are a real problem when all you have to defend yourself are fireballs and iceballs, especially when they're all clustered together like they frequently are. Not to mention, all piranha plants come out of their pipes regardless of the player's proximity to them, which typically means you have to kill them (and given the number of projectiles shot, any plant that shoots projectiles has to be killed anyway). I suspect these would probably be a lot easier to deal with if they didn't come out of their pipe when you were right next to them and had less of an effective range for their projectiles. The laser plants are extremely deadly when you first meet them. Because they shoot in whatever direction you were in when they started and continue shooting for a few seconds, they can cause a situation where you can't stay away from the laser. Worse, they have a ridiculous effective range, and when you have multiple laser plants firing at you at the same time (which can easily happen if you go forward too fast in some areas), it can almost be impossible to get away from all of them, not to mention retaliate with things like fireballs. The Sniper Koopa is far too deadly when you first encounter it, mostly because it's hard to know how to dodge it once a shot is lined up due to their wide range and how the weapon works. I know this would be less realistic, but I think it would be far better if the weapon could only damage you at the specific point aimed at. That way, the attack could be avoided just by jumping or running out of the way at the right time, rather than also having to figure out and take into account where the attacker is. The chain chomp's attack range is ridiculous. He can sometimes go all the way across a sizable room. I guess this might be a bug, though. The Holy Goomba's movements are random, as far as I can tell, and I never figured out a reliable way to deal with him. Luckily, they're not terribly dangerous and often just ended up falling into an abyss, so they didn't cause any problems in practice. The Necrokoopa's attack is practically impossible to dodge, and they give you "curse" status, preventing you from using magic. These were the bane of my existence before you pointed out that the Holy Pants are protective against curses, at which point I started making it a habit to switch to Holy Pants any time I saw him. It wouldn't be such a problem if the attacks just went in a straight line or even if they worked like the Koopa Priest attack, but instead they curve around seemingly randomly in a way that makes no technique a reliable way to dodge it. The Clear Dry Bones is practically impossible to deal with. I don't understand why you are even allowed to stomp it since stomping it while it's in ghost form hurts you. All I was ever able to do with them is jump over them, treating them more as annoying obstacles than enemies. "Fuzzy" (which I tended to call "metroids", since that's what they act like) are almost as annoying and deadly as metroids, though not quite as bad as I later found out, since you can get them off you just by jumping a few times. I hate this enemy design as a general rule, but worse, a lot of the time they're right at the entrance of a room. This is a bad idea and should be avoided; you need room to be able to run away from it and deal with it from a distance. Reznor seems to have infinite range and it's very difficult to dodge his attacks. The only way I was able to reliably deal with them before I was strong enough to beat them in a war of attrition was to hide behind a wall, and that was sometimes impossible due to the level design. Novaboo isn't too bad in general, but has ridiculous defense that made it impossible for me to realistically kill them at first with anything other than the Magic Beetroot. The Hammer Giant. Oh boy, the Hammer Giant. This enemy, but even moreso its evil golden twin the Hammer Master, are the worst enemies in this game by far. These are impossible to deal with in anything other than a war of attrition or blind luck because of how huge and fast they are, and to add insult to injury, the damage they inflict is tremendous, especially the Hammer Master, which still kills me in only a few hits. Here's an interesting story: in one of the later distortions I played through, there was a Hammer Master a couple rooms away from the core. It was a late core, and I had very little problem defeating it. Which was a good thing, because I did have a problem getting past this single Hammer Master that was blocking my return trip. I think it's a sign of a serious problem when it's not the boss I'm worried about dying from, but one random enemy a couple of rooms away on my return trip. For the record, I didn't get past it by defeating it; I had to fly over it with a P-wing. Ptooie's spike ball is constantly at your height, and Ptooie doesn't move when this happens. So if the Ptooie is below you and you need to get across where he is, possibly even just to go down and kill him, you are forced to take damage. I don't understand why it's like this, either, because it's not at all how he behaves in SMB3. Mecha-Plant v.2.6b has all the problems of the original Mecha-Plant, but the added bonus of the laser constantly facing you, making it literally impossible to dodge as far as I can tell. To add insult to injury, many of these are in rooms where there aren't even walls that could protect you from the lasers. Zombie Yoshi is way too fast, way too agile, and inflicts way too much damage. Worse, he is often right at the entrance, like the metroids are, which gives you no room to dodge; all you can realistically do is start shooting at it with the magic wand and hope for the best. On a side note, when you see him in-game, it looks like he's wearing sunglasses. The Dark Star inflicts a huge amount of damage and is annoying to deal with. Worse, it's difficult to dodge the main component's "disappear and reappear right next to you" attack because it requires such precise timing. It's nowhere near as bad as the Hammer Master since you can dodge it, but I feel like it should give you more wiggle-room. The Sorckoopa is generally fine, but the poison attack gives you only a really subtle visual and auditory warning, so I tended to not notice he was using that attack until it was too late. Boom Boom Boom was almost impossible to dodge when I encountered him at the beginning of the game. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think I also found it to be practically impossible to safely stomp him; I only beat him when I later found the green koopa shell and was able to use that, and even then it was much more difficult than it should have been. Being the first boss, this gave me a very bad first impression. Orobunagi's fast, random movements were difficult to dodge. Twomp Destroyer inflicts way too much damage when you come into contact with it, bullets are all over the place making it unreasonable to even attempt to dodge them, and I think it's a terrible design to make it have an instant-kill attack. I got the impression that I was supposed to hide inside that little crevice of the Tox Box Max, but when it moved, I didn't move with it (and it moved too fast for me to reliably get in there anyway), so I ended up fighting a war of attrition instead, which turned out to be easy since I faced this boss fairly late in the game. Someone watching the stream at the time commented something about the game where the enemy comes from that I didn't really understand, so maybe the problem is just that I'm not familiar with how it works in that game. Goombfalloon was ridiculous simply because of the sheer amount of damage it inflicts and the difficulty I had avoiding taking damage. I don't know where you were going with the Omnisledge Bro. All he does is constantly spam random projectiles, so I can't think of any real strategy that you could use against him. The little platform out of reach from most of his attacks is the only thing that prevented him from being a total nightmare. Death's entrance where he instantly kills you if you don't jump is bad design. Other than that, he was underwhelming, thankfully. Luigi was, surprise, practically impossible to dodge because of how fast he moved, and his attacks were all over the place. This was yet another war of attrition. Kamek was the straw that broke the camel's back for me when it comes to the bosses, but ironically, he's probably my favorite boss now that the arena has been fixed. If anything, I think you nerfed him too much with regard to his stats. I still don't think the lava below the arena should be there at all, though, and he also still inflicts more damage than he should from touching him. The Chaos Core was really hit-and-miss. Some of them were absurdly easy, while others were absurdly difficult. One thing I think is particularly worth mentioning: the last core had an attack where the screen went black and then red, and you just got damaged no matter what as far as I can tell. I think this is very bad design, especially considering it was one of the most damaging attacks. The way I ended up dealing with it was using the Enchanted Mirror whenever this happened. But the worst of the cores, and the worst boss in general, was the one that has the giant spiked thing come at you from the side. That thing kills you so quick, I had to focus all of my attention on it. And as if to make fun of you, it has a laser circling around the core, as if you're expected to perform circles around the core too, something which is realistically impossible if you have any intention of dodging that death spike thing. Bowser was really annoying to fight against. Firstly, he teleports randomly, sometimes even on top of you, and inflicts a huge amount of damage when he touches you. Secondly, the fireballs are extremely difficult to dodge. Thirdly, the poison hammers are practically impossible to dodge if you don't happen to be far away. Fourthly, it's very difficult to predict what attack he is going to use. Then there's his charge attack, which as far as I can tell is impossible to dodge; I ended up using the Enchanted Mirror for it. With all of this added up, I was only finally able to beat him in a war of attrition once I had leveled up enough and gotten the full Triforce set, and even then it took several attempts and some luck. Mega Bowser had projectiles all over the place. I didn't even try to fight this boss properly; I just did another war of attrition, using the healing items I had stacked up, because I had just finally beaten Bowser and didn't want to have to start over again on him. This boss also has the dreaded lava beneath the arena thing that Kamek has, another reason I didn't even try to learn how to dodge his attacks. In general, the bosses seemed to have two common problems: Firstly, I found it to be a very common problem where there was one attack, or possibly the boss itself, that inflicted a ridiculous amount of damage. I also found that bosses tended to have a range of attack types, so no particular outfit would protect you from all of their attacks. This was easily the most annoying common thing about the bosses, and I think it's the number one thing that needs to be worked on. Especially, protection from magic is easy to come by while protection from regular attacks is not, so for most bosses, I was encouraged to ignore the bullets I was supposed to be dodging and focus my attention on avoiding the boss itself, because the bullets would inflict only 10 damage while the boss itself would inflict 200 damage. This shouldn't happen. If a boss uses mostly magic attacks, then its magic attacks should inflict far more damage than touching the boss, to the point where a player equipped to defend against magic really well will still not take significantly more damage from touching the boss than from getting hit by the magic attacks. And if a boss has multiple attacks, they should generally inflict the same amount of damage. Secondly, and this is the main thing that made the bosses so frustrating, every single one of the bosses has attacks that are basically impossible to dodge. This is sometimes caused by the attack itself (e.g. from being a homing attack or laser), sometimes caused by the sheer number of bullets on the screen at once (The Omnisledge Bro comes to mind), and sometimes caused by the attacks just being random and all over the place (Luigi is a great example). This makes even trying to figure out the bosses' patterns completely pointless; it's better to focus on dodging the one or two attacks that inflicts ridiculous damage and rely on your stats for the rest. I suggest doing some radical changes to the bosses to address this. For an example of a good boss, I would point to the current version of Kamek, who only uses one attack at a time in a consistent pattern, with very little randomness applied. Anyway, that's my review. My apologies if it's a bit scattered. Like I said, while all these problems bugged me, I still very much enjoyed the game overall. I hope this review inspires you to make the game even better.
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Alright, I've finished playing the game. I ended up getting the good ending. Just want to share my thoughts.
First thing's first: I really enjoyed this game. There were parts that frustrated me to no end (we'll get to that later), but overall, it was a great experience. You have done a great job capturing the essence of Symphony of the Night and making that into a Mario game, as a general rule. I would rate it 8/10 overall, and I highly recommend anyone who hasn't already to try it out.
I also highly appreciate that this game saves your progress after you beat it, so that you can continue to explore, level up, or just enjoy wandering through the castle. I find it perplexing that a lot of major commercial games of this type don't do this.
However, I did have some gripes. From here on out, I'll be including spoilers (without spoiler tags), just to warn anyone else who might be reading this.
Firstly, it's a bad design for Mario to automatically change his facing to the direction that he's pushed into either by attacks or by moving platforms. It takes control away from the player and frequently caused me to miss shots that I otherwise would not have missed. The only time Mario's direction should change is when the player presses a direction, as a general rule.
Secondly, I found the treasure card blocks to be a bad design. Here's the thing: when I see a strange blue block that makes a noise when I hit it, I don't assume that it has an item in it; I assume it's a switch of some kind. Additionally, and this is the important bit, I'm not going to remember the locations of all of these. For the most part, if I didn't already have a treasure card to unlock it when I found it, I would need to exhaustively search the entire castle for it after I've explored every single area. I also don't see the point; why not just have the items in the regular blocks that are currently used to hold the treasure cards? That makes more sense to me. I suppose being able to use the treasure cards on the blocks of your choice lets you prioritize certain ones, but this is only relevant if you know what each treasure card block has, and where they all are (you're not going to have that knowledge unless you're already intimately familiar with the game).
Thirdly, there were a couple secret areas that I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get past, even though I explored the entire map. This might be related to the previous point; I ended up with 3 spare treasure cards, so that tells me I'm missing 3 special items from those blocks. For reference, I will attach my combined map with those areas I couldn't figure out how to get to circled. Two of them are in distortions, while one of them is on the main map. The obstacles I couldn't figure out how to get past were the red spikes, the black vortex thing, and something that kind of looked like a door with a red outline. The black vortex thing, however, has some sort of bug that allowed me to fall into that particular room twice, getting me stuck there and forcing me to reload a save file, so I was able to see what is in it.
Fourthly, some of these areas are annoying to navigate. Other than the enemies (which I'll get to in a bit), this mostly is a result of spikes, lava, and/or tight spaces. As an example, though I don't remember exactly where this was, there was an area where I had to do a triple-jump within a one-screen space, and I was surrounded by those annoying Dry Bones that ghost out in intervals. The worst offending area was the distortion at the Bowser's throne area, mostly because of all the lava and tiny platforms everywhere combined with tons of enemies that inflicted huge amounts of damage. When I found out that one of the areas had nothing more than coins in it, I made a conscious choice the next time to not go into that room, and that's why there's a fourth unexplored area on my map.
Fifthly, I found that there were several items that were totally useless. Elemental protection was useless because no one element seems to be particularly prevalent in any given area or boss. Petrification resistance was useless because enemies that caused petrification were few and far between, though this might be a good thing considering how annoying it is when it happens. Almost all of the weapons are useless once you can use magic because they cost too much and don't do enough damage to make a particular difference in boss fights or have any special properties that make them useful in other areas; the only "weapon" I found to be generally useful was the magic shield. The only magic that was any use toward the end was the magic wand, the Lakitu bolt, and occasionally the Magic Beetroot for the specialized purpose of hitting blocks and breaking walls. Everything else sort of fell by the wayside due to being slow and unwieldy. The worst of the magic was the Shadow Flower; I actually tried to use this against some enemies, and it was utterly useless because of the randomness of how it fires, even against enemies it should be strongest against. The only suits I found to be generally useful were the Life Suit, Magic Armor, and Thor's Cloak, while the Luigi Suit was helpful for a couple areas where you had to jump high (most notably the vertical passage leading to Kamek's arena, where you can't reliably do a double-jump).
Sixthly, I found many abilities obtained from relics to be entirely useless beyond certain designated uses: the ground pound, the spin jump, and sliding, in particular. Also, the spin jump comes so late, I completely forgot it was a thing. I think it would be better to remove the useless "spin" key and replace it with a dedicated "weapon" key, since being the same as the magic key makes it really easy to waste stars because you happen to be doing a lot of raccoon tail floating.
But the biggest problem I had with this game was the enemies, and especially the bosses. I'll go through all the gripes I have about each of them individually:
The various swimming enemies all relentlessly charge at you when you attack them. This was really annoying and difficult to deal with in the beginning, especially combined with the fact that you would instantly turn away from them when they touched you, making it difficult to shoot fireballs at them. I would have preferred if they gave up chasing you at some point.
The piranha plants that shoot projectiles are a real problem when all you have to defend yourself are fireballs and iceballs, especially when they're all clustered together like they frequently are. Not to mention, all piranha plants come out of their pipes regardless of the player's proximity to them, which typically means you [i]have to[/i] kill them (and given the number of projectiles shot, any plant that shoots projectiles has to be killed anyway). I suspect these would probably be a lot easier to deal with if they didn't come out of their pipe when you were right next to them and had less of an effective range for their projectiles.
The laser plants are extremely deadly when you first meet them. Because they shoot in whatever direction you were in when they started and continue shooting for a few seconds, they can cause a situation where you can't stay away from the laser. Worse, they have a ridiculous effective range, and when you have multiple laser plants firing at you at the same time (which can easily happen if you go forward too fast in some areas), it can almost be impossible to get away from all of them, not to mention retaliate with things like fireballs.
The Sniper Koopa is far too deadly when you first encounter it, mostly because it's hard to know how to dodge it once a shot is lined up due to their wide range and how the weapon works. I know this would be less realistic, but I think it would be far better if the weapon could only damage you at the specific point aimed at. That way, the attack could be avoided just by jumping or running out of the way at the right time, rather than also having to figure out and take into account where the attacker is.
The chain chomp's attack range is ridiculous. He can sometimes go all the way across a sizable room. I guess this might be a bug, though.
The Holy Goomba's movements are random, as far as I can tell, and I never figured out a reliable way to deal with him. Luckily, they're not terribly dangerous and often just ended up falling into an abyss, so they didn't cause any problems in practice.
The Necrokoopa's attack is practically impossible to dodge, and they give you "curse" status, preventing you from using magic. These were the bane of my existence before you pointed out that the Holy Pants are protective against curses, at which point I started making it a habit to switch to Holy Pants any time I saw him. It wouldn't be such a problem if the attacks just went in a straight line or even if they worked like the Koopa Priest attack, but instead they curve around seemingly randomly in a way that makes no technique a reliable way to dodge it.
The Clear Dry Bones is practically impossible to deal with. I don't understand why you are even allowed to stomp it since stomping it while it's in ghost form hurts you. All I was ever able to do with them is jump over them, treating them more as annoying obstacles than enemies.
"Fuzzy" (which I tended to call "metroids", since that's what they act like) are almost as annoying and deadly as metroids, though not quite as bad as I later found out, since you can get them off you just by jumping a few times. I hate this enemy design as a general rule, but worse, a lot of the time they're right at the entrance of a room. This is a bad idea and should be avoided; you need room to be able to run away from it and deal with it from a distance.
Reznor seems to have infinite range and it's very difficult to dodge his attacks. The only way I was able to reliably deal with them before I was strong enough to beat them in a war of attrition was to hide behind a wall, and that was sometimes impossible due to the level design.
Novaboo isn't too bad in general, but has ridiculous defense that made it impossible for me to realistically kill them at first with anything other than the Magic Beetroot.
The Hammer Giant. Oh boy, the Hammer Giant. This enemy, but even moreso its evil golden twin the Hammer Master, are the worst enemies in this game by far. These are [i]impossible[/i] to deal with in anything other than a war of attrition or blind luck because of how huge and fast they are, and to add insult to injury, the damage they inflict is tremendous, especially the Hammer Master, which still kills me in only a few hits. Here's an interesting story: in one of the later distortions I played through, there was a Hammer Master a couple rooms away from the core. It was a late core, and I had very little problem defeating it. Which was a good thing, because I [i]did[/i] have a problem getting past this single Hammer Master that was blocking my return trip. I think it's a sign of a serious problem when it's not the boss I'm worried about dying from, but one random enemy a couple of rooms away on my return trip. For the record, I didn't get past it by defeating it; I had to fly over it with a P-wing.
Ptooie's spike ball is constantly at your height, and Ptooie doesn't move when this happens. So if the Ptooie is below you and you need to get across where he is, possibly even just to go down and kill him, you are forced to take damage. I don't understand why it's like this, either, because it's not at all how he behaves in SMB3.
Mecha-Plant v.2.6b has all the problems of the original Mecha-Plant, but the added bonus of the laser constantly facing you, making it literally impossible to dodge as far as I can tell. To add insult to injury, many of these are in rooms where there aren't even walls that could protect you from the lasers.
Zombie Yoshi is way too fast, way too agile, and inflicts way too much damage. Worse, he is often right at the entrance, like the metroids are, which gives you no room to dodge; all you can realistically do is start shooting at it with the magic wand and hope for the best. On a side note, when you see him in-game, it looks like he's wearing sunglasses.
The Dark Star inflicts a huge amount of damage and is annoying to deal with. Worse, it's difficult to dodge the main component's "disappear and reappear right next to you" attack because it requires such precise timing. It's nowhere near as bad as the Hammer Master since you [i]can[/i] dodge it, but I feel like it should give you more wiggle-room.
The Sorckoopa is generally fine, but the poison attack gives you only a really subtle visual and auditory warning, so I tended to not notice he was using that attack until it was too late.
Boom Boom Boom was almost impossible to dodge when I encountered him at the beginning of the game. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think I also found it to be practically impossible to safely stomp him; I only beat him when I later found the green koopa shell and was able to use that, and even then it was much more difficult than it should have been. Being the first boss, this gave me a very bad first impression.
Orobunagi's fast, random movements were difficult to dodge.
Twomp Destroyer inflicts way too much damage when you come into contact with it, bullets are all over the place making it unreasonable to even attempt to dodge them, and I think it's a terrible design to make it have an instant-kill attack.
I got the impression that I was supposed to hide inside that little crevice of the Tox Box Max, but when it moved, I didn't move with it (and it moved too fast for me to reliably get in there anyway), so I ended up fighting a war of attrition instead, which turned out to be easy since I faced this boss fairly late in the game. Someone watching the stream at the time commented something about the game where the enemy comes from that I didn't really understand, so maybe the problem is just that I'm not familiar with how it works in that game.
Goombfalloon was ridiculous simply because of the sheer amount of damage it inflicts and the difficulty I had avoiding taking damage.
I don't know where you were going with the Omnisledge Bro. All he does is constantly spam random projectiles, so I can't think of any real strategy that you could use against him. The little platform out of reach from most of his attacks is the only thing that prevented him from being a total nightmare.
Death's entrance where he instantly kills you if you don't jump is bad design. Other than that, he was underwhelming, thankfully.
Luigi was, surprise, practically impossible to dodge because of how fast he moved, and his attacks were all over the place. This was yet another war of attrition.
Kamek was the straw that broke the camel's back for me when it comes to the bosses, but ironically, he's probably my favorite boss now that the arena has been fixed. If anything, I think you nerfed him too much with regard to his stats. I still don't think the lava below the arena should be there at all, though, and he also still inflicts more damage than he should from touching him.
The Chaos Core was really hit-and-miss. Some of them were absurdly easy, while others were absurdly difficult. One thing I think is particularly worth mentioning: the last core had an attack where the screen went black and then red, and you just got damaged no matter what as far as I can tell. I think this is very bad design, especially considering it was one of the most damaging attacks. The way I ended up dealing with it was using the Enchanted Mirror whenever this happened. But the worst of the cores, and the worst boss in general, was the one that has the giant spiked thing come at you from the side. That thing kills you so quick, I had to focus all of my attention on it. And as if to make fun of you, it has a laser circling around the core, as if you're expected to perform circles around the core too, something which is realistically impossible if you have any intention of dodging that death spike thing.
Bowser was really annoying to fight against. Firstly, he teleports randomly, sometimes even on top of you, and inflicts a huge amount of damage when he touches you. Secondly, the fireballs are extremely difficult to dodge. Thirdly, the poison hammers are practically impossible to dodge if you don't happen to be far away. Fourthly, it's very difficult to predict what attack he is going to use. Then there's his charge attack, which as far as I can tell is impossible to dodge; I ended up using the Enchanted Mirror for it. With all of this added up, I was only finally able to beat him in a war of attrition once I had leveled up enough and gotten the full Triforce set, and even then it took several attempts and some luck.
Mega Bowser had projectiles all over the place. I didn't even try to fight this boss properly; I just did another war of attrition, using the healing items I had stacked up, because I had just finally beaten Bowser and didn't want to have to start over again on him. This boss also has the dreaded lava beneath the arena thing that Kamek has, another reason I didn't even try to learn how to dodge his attacks.
In general, the bosses seemed to have two common problems:
Firstly, I found it to be a very common problem where there was one attack, or possibly the boss itself, that inflicted a ridiculous amount of damage. I also found that bosses tended to have a range of attack types, so no particular outfit would protect you from all of their attacks. This was easily the most annoying common thing about the bosses, and I think it's the number one thing that needs to be worked on. Especially, protection from magic is easy to come by while protection from regular attacks is not, so for most bosses, I was encouraged to ignore the bullets I was supposed to be dodging and focus my attention on avoiding the boss itself, because the bullets would inflict only 10 damage while the boss itself would inflict 200 damage. This shouldn't happen. If a boss uses mostly magic attacks, then its magic attacks should inflict far more damage than touching the boss, to the point where a player equipped to defend against magic really well will still not take significantly more damage from touching the boss than from getting hit by the magic attacks. And if a boss has multiple attacks, they should generally inflict the same amount of damage.
Secondly, and this is the main thing that made the bosses so frustrating, every single one of the bosses has attacks that are basically impossible to dodge. This is sometimes caused by the attack itself (e.g. from being a homing attack or laser), sometimes caused by the sheer number of bullets on the screen at once (The Omnisledge Bro comes to mind), and sometimes caused by the attacks just being random and all over the place (Luigi is a great example). This makes even trying to figure out the bosses' patterns completely pointless; it's better to focus on dodging the one or two attacks that inflicts ridiculous damage and rely on your stats for the rest. I suggest doing some radical changes to the bosses to address this. For an example of a good boss, I would point to the current version of Kamek, who only uses one attack at a time in a consistent pattern, with very little randomness applied.
Anyway, that's my review. My apologies if it's a bit scattered. Like I said, while all these problems bugged me, I still very much enjoyed the game overall. I hope this review inspires you to make the game even better. :)
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