Cleared X Challenge in normal mode

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The collection itself is well put together with some really nice extras, and the soundtrack remixes are really good too. Although the Day of Sigma OVA could have had more audio options other than the english dub...

The X Challenge mode is such an interesting concept, especially when both of the bosses work really well together (spiral pegasus and neon tiger come to mind), and it's a fun time at least on Normal difficulty.

On Hard, stage 2 is a nightmare as expected, and the increased boss HP makes the whole thing a lot slower and not that fun.

Cleared Master mode 101%

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Not bad at all.

Fun and simple action puzzle gameplay with bullet avoidance elements, decent music reminiscent of the GBC days... yes, this is right up my alley. You can even marry a treasure chest too!

Oh, and it's also free.

Opening the jealous chest in Master mode can turn the early game into hell, be warned though.

The engine doesn't handle upscaling very well and the game looks like a blurry mess if you play it fullscreen on a recent monitor sadly.

All Hearts | All Treasure Maps | All Gems | Stowfish caught | All boat parts | Temple of the Ocean King cleared with 25:00 remaining

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This game suffers from heavily holding your hand all the time, even by TLoZ standards.

The infamous lid puzzle is the one that gets mentioned all the time, and the reason for that is that it's the only puzzle in the game that you don't get told the answer 5 seconds later after finding it.

There's creative usage of the Grappling Hook for example, but the game is scared of you taking too long to figure it out, and it straight up spoils the answer right after you find a torch. It also happens with the enemies that are weak to loud sounds, among other places.

The controls haven't aged very well too. Combat is fine because it's very simple, but you'll find yourself doing actions you didn't want to do, rolling when you didn't want to roll, etc. It can be a bit frustrating sometimes.

Sea travel is whatever, and the crane minigame gets a bit boring after a couple of treasures, and a bit frustrating when the jumpscare current changes start appearing (minor nitpick because you get plenty of hearts, but you still need to teleport to the first island in order to fix the Salvage Arm).

The Temple of the Ocean King actually gets more shit than it deserves. Sure, you need to go back to the isle all the time, but you need to anyway given that it's the only place where you can fix your boat / change parts / sell treasures, etc.

The temple itself enables a teleporter on your first revisit, meaning that you'll only need to replay the same part of that place once, and then once more for the second half of the temple. There's shortcuts that you can take if you got the items too, so it's not that bad.

For what I liked the most of the game, Linebeck is a cool dude, and drawing your own map on that particular isle was an interesting concept too.

All achievements | Gold ranked everything

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Pretty good. The stages can feel long on a first playthrough (because they are). Getting used to the boss weapons and especially to the double gear gimmick does wonders on the other hand, and subsequent replays just feel great in my opinion.

If there's something to criticize is the Wily stages. There's only two real stages since the other two are the boss rush and the final boss, therefore, the game will be over before you realize it.

I wasn't really a big fan of the electronic music Capcom went with either. There's fortunately the option to change the robot master stages to instrumental arrangements that I liked a lot more, so that's fine.

The weapons in this game are fantastic. It's one of my favorite array of weapons, (maybe second behind MM9), because they are all very useful. They also work very well as boss weakness, with the exception of maybe the Acid Barrier (which also happens to be the final boss' weakness :P).

The bosses are just great, very charismatic thanks to the voice acting, and very fun with and without using the buster to defeat them.

Finally, I have to praise the double gear system, even if it's confusing to use at first (you'll be mixing the buttons to use either of the modes a lot). The speed gear is extremely useful through the levels to one-cycle certain patterns or kill the sturdiest enemies really fast with decent mashing, whereas the power gear is best to finish off bosses quickly, but it's certainly the least useful of the two.

There's also the ultimate move that you can use when you're at low hp, and combines both gears at the same time for a small amount of time before leaving you powerless. Let me tell you that there's no better feeling than getting at one hp on a boss, and using this to turn the tides of the battle.

Defeated the final boss

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Huuuuge step up from SMB 1 and 2.

The overworld allows you to "save" your progress by opening shortcuts after you clear a fortress, or use certain specific items from the roaming enemies. Big positive change compared to restarting the entire world in SMB 2 or the aberration that is restarting the whole game in the original SMB. The iconic flag poles were removed, and that's OK.

The levels go from your usual plain / sidescroller / underground mario levels, to some very gimmicky levels where you will get big or small, traverse pipe mazes and a long etc. You can even anchor the boss airships to the ground to prevent they from fleeing! This is by far the best part of the game.

The controls / physics, on the other hand, are akin to the other two previous Mario games, and the inertia they introduce turn the level design into a frustrating experience from time to time. That's the main reason I didn't love the game as much.

Earned all the Default stage achievements.

All achievements
Hi-score: 228

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Big balance issues show that this is just a proof of concept for the dev's next game.

In order to progress, you need to unlock the next cars because the computer will be using those and there's nothing you can do with the default car.

Other than that, it controls decently, has a cool soundtrack and some fun gimmicky vehicles like the floating boat, although they are sadly pretty useless by the time you unlock them.

All achievements (No miss, Hard TLB...)
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Since there aren't options/items/bombs in this game, the gameplay is straightforward. There's a shield system that gets 60% refilled after each boss, allowing to take quite a bit of hits on every stage, and the scoring consists on destroying big enemies as close to them as you can.

Once you get used to the big hitboxes (the game is old after all), the hardest challenge will be surviving stage 6 with at least half of the shield in order to spawn the TLB. It's more annoying than hard though because the boss battle is so long that a lot can go wrong there, since you can get screwed by rng in several occasions.

I'm not the biggest fan of the final boss, but the TLB itself is really fun once you've learned it, for what you'll need to climb the stage 6 wall several times since you can't practice it for some reason.

It's not the most innovative or better polished game in the genre, but it's a fine game overall.

All achievements | Hexagon: 71:31 | Hexagoner: 67:43 | Hexagonest | 60:42 | Hyper Hexagon: 62:56 | Hyper Hexagoner: 60:10 | Hyper Hexagonest: 69:28
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Dead simple gameplay: move left and right and avoid the walls. However, it lends itself for a rather decent skill ceiling.

Cleared the levels "in order" (e.g. first normal then hyper), however would have I known hexagonest was harder than the first two hyper levels, I would have cleared them first, because hexagonest felt like a very high difficulty spike.

Fun stuff.

Normal mode Type A 1CC (2352600). Moderate mode soon?

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Fun game, if only a bit hard on the eyes.

Got to Hunter Rank 999 and Master Rank 777

Main game: 13320 | Score Attack: 16080
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There's a tricky part in stage 2 where if you die after the checkpoint, you're locked out of rear weapons, and the stage pretty much expects you having one. Other than that, it's a short but very nice game.

Guxt heavily rewards knowledge, that's why it may look a bit hard first, but once you find the secret weapon spots and learn how to get shields before stage 5, it will be much more manageable.

Final score: 15500
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As a curiosity it's ok, but as a game it's a silly one. Maybe I'd like it better if the gameplay wasn't so button mashy and the sprites didn't have that ugly filter.