Spoiler-free TL;DR: I recommend this mod, provides a very unique experience with great atmosphere and banger music. Gameplay needed more time in the oven to polish up bosses, clear up gameplay elements to prevent confusion, and avoid repetition. Also press A on the question block bombs to beat the first boss.
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!!! SPOILER WARNING FOR WEGA'S WANSION!!!
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No idea how long this took to make, but for what it is, it's pretty cool. I like how it used unique bosses and made first person mode feel like I was playing an entirely different game outside of the CoopDX engine. The sound design really helps with that imo, and the cutscenes, albeit there only being two are a nice touch. From what's stated in the mod's description, everything other than the gibs and main menu music were all originally made by the creator themselves, which is really impressive! The music especially caught my attention, big fan of all the tracks made for this, as I have a love for music. (love myself some DNB/whatever WEGALOVANIA is)
But where this mod shines in it's atmosphere and music, it falters in gameplay, arguably the most important part of any game where the player must take control and move things forward.
Some specific issues with gameplay are:
- the player doesn't automatically leave The Factory after destroying everything
- only Metal Wega can appear rarely, despite Maltiga mentioning he invited some friends, adding more entities would make things more chaotic
- gameplay is too unforgiving given how long it takes just to beat a single boss (two hits until death for GS, one hit until death for Maltiga)
- you never need to sprint during the GS fight, since Trollfaces move slower/just as fast as the player
On top of this, two big aspects of the gameplay fall short for me, those being:
Player Direction
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What I mean by direction is how you tell the player what to do and where to go without being intrusive and slapping a bunch of text just to explain how to do one simple task.
In The Factory, you're given a crowbar and 1 minute to break everything within the facility. When I first played through this level, I thought you had to gather items to eventually fight against Wega coming out of the Wega doors. I was then swiftly jumpscared and proved wrong. All there needed to be was a line of text that says something along the lines of, "Destroy Wega's Factory before time runs out!," and there would be no confusion.
In the Golden Sigma bossfight, the key to winning is to wait for Golden Sigma to throw question blocks, which will either spawn a Trollface or a bomb. As the bomb is bouncing, you have to press A to throw the bomb back at Golden Sigma, reducing their HP. There's no indicator to press A at these specific bombs, nor do these bombs look any different from the bombs that already spawn within the arena. If I hadn't seen an explanation within these reviews for how to beat this boss, I would've been stumped and would've quit trying to complete this before ever figuring it out myself. All that needed to be done was to make some visual indicator while these bombs are bouncing to indicate that they are different and should be investigated.
All it would take for both of these issues is just a simple way of indicating that "this task should be done" or "this item should be interacted with". It was done fairly well in the Maltiga bossfight, so I'm confused as to how these slipped through the cracks.
Repetition
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This applies directly to both bosses, Golden Sigma and Maltiga. No need for long winded explanations on why I think their individual fights are repetitive, since from playing them, anyone would find them to be more tedious than fun. Bombs/Wega Plushies dealing small amounts of damage with no boss phases really hurts the flow of battle. There two obvious solutions to this:
1. Add phases to both fights to make things more interesting as the fight goes on.
2. Just let the player deal more damage. (what i would prefer given the time strains)
I don't know if the length of each fight was done to pad out the time spent playing, but frankly I think prolonging both fights just serves to turn them into mindless slogs that can be fixed by just reducing their HP/increasing the damage the player can deal with each attack.
These critiques arent say that this was unenjoyable (at least for me), I still had a lot of fun with this mod and I think it should get more recognition despite it being a singleplayer experience (which I believe is fitting for this type of game at this scale). I just wished there was more focus put on the gameplay, maybe with the help of a friend or with better time management.
Regardless, I'd recommend this mod to those looking for something different outside the endless gamemodes and romhacks oversaturated with low quality ports/romhack choices.
Actual rating: 3.8/5
I will say, before the final release I actually had a lot more content planned, but a large chunk of it got scrapped due to time constraints. For example, i originally planned Metal Wega to have his own level, which you would race against him.
Also, i'd like to mention, most of your issues are things i've wanted to fix before the final release, like The Factory not having an exit. and honestly i just forgot that it would've been a good idea to explain the mechanics, most likely because while developing this mod i never had someone else playtest it, which also caused me to get too used to the bossfights, which made them less difficult in my mind.
Thanks for playing my mod as well as the feedback!