alright, full-on review time. i really like this hack.
it starts off normal until the player is thrown into the underworld, and it's fantastic. the lighting is pretty, the stars being recolored fits the mysterious feeling. the underworld being a torn-down, mashed together ruin of various levels like bob-omb battlefield, whomp's fortress and shifting sandland is REALLY fun too! it makes the place feel ancient.
a lot of the stars are placed in locations that resemble their level's original placement, which is really nice! though, half of them are kind of just thrown about, which is fine but sometimes feel a little unrewarding. there was one star that was placed up high on a mountain that seemed to require wall-kicking, which did suck a bit since i didn't know how to do it at first. but, once i got the hang of it, it was fine.
the cutscene system is really cool, too. i do wish there was a way to like... let's say, press Z and go back to re-read something like paper mario: TTYD had, but that's neither here nor there. it's really fascinating. when i first fell in the underworld, ironically enough i didn't trigger the cutscene where the shitilizer tells you to collect all of the stars, and i triggered it when i had 29, which was funny. i collected the 30th and the final cutscene played. i was wondering what i could do, but realized, well. the game didn't show it's credits yet, so it can't be over, right? i should probably see if i can follow him. i looked up, and welp. yeah. there's the bright light the shitilizer went in! climbing up to enter it was fun
the arena map was really interesting. the feeling of following him in this broken version of peach's castle courtyard was really atmospheric, and entering the door to confront him was awesome as well. i'm glad the cutscene that plays pre-bossfight plays only once, as this fight is HARD. tips for those reading and wanting to give this hack a shot: don't groundpound. it does minimal damage and the end lag will allow him to attack you. utilize punching him when possible. coins will spawn when he uses his fire attack, so use those to heal. he's a big fan of chasing you, which admittedly, i don't really know how to counter very well. though, if you want a way to cheese the fight: just breakdance. i am not kidding. let him fly to you and just breakdance.
overall, really solid hack! i think the boss fight is really hard (unless you did what i did) and could be modified to have more healing opportunities but i still really like it.
