docked a whole star for how atrociously obtuse the map system is and the fact that like 20% of the game is hidden behind a secret passageway that looks identical to every other wall in the game. otherwise it's game of the century. "lmao mad because bad" i radianted every pantheon boss including absolute radiance and i also fucked both your parents.
but yea game is magical it just foozles the map and exploration feels 20% fun and 80% like a slog of backtracking which is like yea theres supposed to be backtracking in a metroidvania and it does a good job of making changes to familiar areas as you progress but when enemies can deal 2 damage in a giant explosion area it feels less wondrous and more obnoxious. hope silksong improves on that bc it's really the only thing i think needs improving; everything else is either fine or perfect

Frankly i think it's a glorious victory for video games that the beloved 'hardcore competitive' mod was made by people who still have a love and appreciation for the casual side of the game, aka what made smash The One in the first place.
Project M struck the same casual-competitive balance that Melee did where you COULD go super-mega-tryhard and find a great, complex, and mostly balanced competitive game, but even if you didnt, it was still perhaps even more fun to play than the game it's based on when playing casually. The changes that they made to the characters were nigh perfect; where something like HDR made big sweeping changes to the whole cast with the only documentation being a google doc with few if any images (often including changes that are daunting, scarcely intuitive, and make you wonder if they were really necessary), PM changed the cast in subtle enough ways that anyone with smash experience could jump in and play any character like they would normally. When you start playing PM and you pick Captain Falcon or Wario or Samus, they feel similar enough to their base game counterparts that you won't feel lost while playing them while also having subtle, exciting changes under the hood. Instead of being confused at what's different, any new player would marvel at how PM changed things that anyone would want changed. Originally this was a short list, but I think it deserves to be more exhaustive:
-Decloning Ganon without completely changing how he plays,
-Giving Donkey Kong a dash attack so clever and appropriate that it got copied in the next official smash game,
-Making each pokemon in pokemon trainer's kit their own character so you wouldn't be punished for wanting to stick with just one,
-Giving Wario his iconic Shoulder Bash,
-Giving Roy and entirely new, from-the-ground-up moveset that's still heavily reminiscent of Marth but shares almost no direct functions, making him an agressive, combo-heavy speedster even before his appearance in smash 4,
-nerfing Meta Knight without removing all of his appeal factors; for example, letting him keep a super fast up air but compensating by giving it more endlag,
-giving Sonic a more robust and interesting moveset, pulling moves from his prior fighting games,
-Even smaller aesthetic things; giving melee veterans new taunts to match Brawl's standard of 3 per character, giving Ike his iconic blue flames, adding a host of custom character skins across each update, and on and on and on.
Every change - sans dubious things like them removing warlock punch - is something a casual player would either love instantly or come to understand after even just a few matches of playtime.
I think the fact that they gave every custom character their own fully unique final smash and made subspace fully playable is the most plain and obvious touchstone of this fact; the dev team very clearly loves and cares about the simple, silly, fun fanfare that makes smash what it is and used their immense skillset to match nintendo at their own game. Even the aforementioned removal of warlock punch was compensated by them giving this same function of slow, strong, style-points move to his down taunt - which even doubled as allowing Ganon to finally use his sword!
In my opinion, if I could only play one smash game for the rest of my life, it'd be PM with no hesitation. I give out a lot of 5 star ratings on this Backlooggd shit, but I think this mod easily and comfortably deserves it without the slightest doubt.