Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is a great example of how making a metroidvania is a lot more difficult than it seems. CotM should be looked at as a guide of how NOT to make one:

- All of the powerups besides the first two do absolutely nothing outside of opening new passages
- Combat stays mostly identical for 90% of the game
- Double tapping to move is really annoying
- DSS is novel, but completely luck-reliant
- Every DSS combo is either borderline useless or OP
- The best sub weapon (the boomerang) has only two locations where you can get it
- Level-up system essentially forces grinding
- No shops whatsoever, so all of the duplicate items in your inventory have no purpose
- Many of the enemies are the same knight guy with a different color
- Fast-travel points are really poorly placed, making backtracking often boring
- While not an issue in the early game, late-game bosses have irritating run-ups
- Rooms blend together really easily and most of them are just corridors with enemies
- All of the bosses are boring, with three attacks and way too much HP
- The final boss is absolute agony

In short, don't play this game. Please.

After playing through Infernum for the first time, I'd say that this mod can be a pretty fun time for an experienced Calamity player.

The main feature of Infernum is how it completely overhauls all the bosses in the game. Some personal favorites include The Perforators, Skeletron, The Twins, Aquatic Scourge, Golem, Ceaseless Void, DoG, Exo Mechs, and Supreme Calamitas.

Some of the overhauls I'm not really a fan of, though. Profaned Guardians are ridiculously hard for the first post-ML boss, Providence takes an incredibly long time due to her invulnerability phases, and Empress of Light has some pretty unfair attacks (in my humble opinion).

Notably, another big change is how the Great Sand Shark is now a unique boss in its own sub-world. The sub-world itself is very well-done, but the fight itself is pretty mediocre (along with the boss drops and weapons being useless for Rogue). The Adult Eidolon Wyrm is additionally fought after Yharon, and while it's not the most difficult boss in the world it's a fun diversion from going straight to the Exo Mechs.

Alongside the boss overhauls, Infernum also adds a small bit of extra content. There's now a sub-biome in the Underworld where you fight both the Profaned Guardians and Providence, and is also where you get the Wayfinder. It's a neat quality of life item that saves you plenty of time on boss "run-backs," but I just wish its location was more obvious.

Lastly, Infernum does a complete overhaul of the Abyss. I personally never noticed the supposed "food chain" that it implements, but I think it's a good addition/change regardless.

As I stated before, if you're an experienced Calamity playthrough I'd recommend giving Infernum a shot! Even just fighting King Slime will give you an idea of what you'll be in for.

I've now played all three versions of Metroid II, but this was the first of them that I played. AM2R is also the best of these, in my opinion. It encapsulates a lot of the good aspects of the original Metroid II and adds a bunch of new additions to it, such as new power-ups, banging music, and fun boss fights to make it a much better experience overall. It does a great job at surpassing the original in terms of fun and playability.

However, AM2R loses a lot of the things that make Metroid II what it is. The cramped screen and the weird ambient music are two of the things that made Metroid II so unique, and AM2R gets rid of them. Despite this, however, I still consider AM2R to be the definitive version of Metroid II and has warranted five separate playthroughs from me.

If you can find a copy, give it a try! It's both a treat for experienced Metroid fans and people who have never played a Metroidvania before.

Harmony of Dissonance is very okay. While I don't think this game has quite the same level of magic as SotN I still think it's a decent game to play through and easily surpasses the previous GBA entry.

+ Movement's pretty good
+ Essentially no grinding required
+ Spells are pretty fun to use, good amount of variety
+ Lots of bosses that are pretty fun to fight
+ Furniture "side quest" is a fun collectible challenge
+ Good enemy variety

~ The "two castle" concept is obviously lazy, but makes exploring a little bit more eventful
~ Merchants exist, but are kind of useless

- Music is awful
- Spells make the game a cake-walk
- Really spread-out fast travel points so getting to places is often a chore
- Specific "warp points" between the two castles are annoying
- I wasn't a huge fan of the ending--it felt very rushed

I've finally played all three GBAvanias, and this one is easily the best out of all three. It has a few flaws, but combines the good parts of its predecessors and is the only GBA Castlevania I'd seriously recommend.

+ Movement still feels great
+ Lots of different weapons to use
+ Soul system is a great idea, and is executed very well
+ Zero filler content
+ Graphics and sprites are a major upgrade from the other GBAvanias
+ Music is mildly catchy and is a significant step up from Harmony of Dissonance
+ Actual good level of difficulty

~ Story is kind of weird, and the "power of friendship" theme doesn't really work in a series as dark as Castlevania

- Final boss kind of sucks
- Surprisingly short. I suppose that's what happens when you don't have filler content, but still, this is the shorted of the GBAvanias by far

Code Vein is... pretty okay. Its gameplay loop starts out a little slow but gets more and more in-depth as you unlock new abilities, and the ichor and blood veil system adds a neat layer of complexity to combat that sets it apart from other soulslikes. Of course, it still has a lot of obvious inspiration from the Souls series, including one area that's practically a copy + paste of Faron Keep from Dark Souls 3.

However, the actual gameplay is about all I can recommend this game for. The story is nothing to write home about. There are way too many cutscenes throughout the game, and a lot of the character's backstory is told through "memory recollection" sequences, which are excruciatingly slow to go through. The characters themselves aren't too interesting, either, so there's not much motivation to watch all of the memories especially when there are so damn many of them.

In short, Code Vein's okay if you want to scratch your soulslike itch (or if you like excessive amounts of cleavage). Buy it on sale and give it a shot.

Tiny Rogues combines pretty much the best elements of many other roguelikes. Of course, it has all of the bullet hell goodness you'd expect from your Binding of Enter the Nuclear Hades, but adds onto it with the insane amount of run variety. Almost every single run you'll have will feel different one way or another. One run you'll be cleaving through enemies with a greatsword bigger than you, and in the next you'll melt off the final boss' face with DoT effects like that one scene from Indiana Jones. Almost all of the classes you can play as have specific builds they encourage, but you can pretty much build any class however you'd like if you really wanted to.

I would have given this game a good review even before the massive update it had in December but now it's even easier for me to recommend it. The fact that this game still has several updates planned for the future is ABSURD, since there's already so much content in this game.

Metal: Hellsinger was a disappointment for me. I'm a huge fan of singleplayer FPS games like Doom Eternal (which this game clearly takes a lot of inspiration from), alongside really liking and being somewhat above average at rhythm games. I bought this game when it went on sale expecting it to be an easy home-run, but after beating it on the hardest default mode I came away from it feeling rather underwhelmed.

First off, the big selling point of the game is the music. I'm not a gigantic metal fan, but I can't deny that every single song in this soundtrack goes unbelievably hard. The song Dissolution was the reason why I bought the game in the first place and I stand by it being the best song in the game. The idea of syncing your shots to the rhythm of the song is neat, and occasionally makes for some badass moments. The lyrics only turning on after you get to the highest point multiplier is also an incredible incentive for you to actually play well.

However, outside of the music, the game is... kind of shallow. There are about four or five weapons that you can use, although you can only have two equipped per level. They aren't really anything to write home about, and do their job well enough. I also found the enemy variety to be rather limited; there are about a half-dozen unique enemies and a few of them have "upgraded" versions. Also, every boss (besides the final one) is the same enemy with a slight variation of both itself and the music, making each boss fight feel pretty repetitive.

I do think a reason why I didn't enjoy this game that much was due to me playing on the hard mode. The game clearly feels like it was meant to be played with "revives," but playing on hard mode gets rid of them. Every single level has zero checkpoints in it, meaning that if you die you have to do the whole level over again. Fortunately, they aren't THAT long, but it does feel like a slog to have to redo a 5-10 minute level after you died to the boss.

Metal: Hellsinger isn't a bad game, and in fact has some pretty awesome moments in it. Outside of the rhythm mechanic, though, the game's systems aren't interesting enough for me to ever want to replay it instead of just listening to the soundtrack by itself.