Beating Every SMBX Episode: [The Princess Cliche 2 Review]

[SAStar777]

Pit of 100 Trials 0/10

Spoiler: show

Essentially you had to kill the right enemy almost 100 times to progress to the next section. Was extremely repetitive and dragged out for way too long. To top it all off the ending was a boss rush with no interesting layouts, so needless to say I did not have fun with this episode. Also was not sure if restart level on death was active or not, the episode has no checkpoints at all so if it was not active you had to play essentially 1 hour without dying.

Based on this, it sounds like this was a lot like one of the Pits of 100 Trials in Super Paper Mario, so the details of this episode didn't surprise me.

...And now I can only guess what you'd think if/when you take on any Pit of 100 Trials in either Paper Mario game with at least one.

Wasn't it also used in a Super Mario World ROM hack?

Yeah. Same idea, differently executed concept. I've heard Eclipsed wants to check out some hacks of SMW on stream, though, and he mentioned that very one as one he's really interested in.

[MegaDood]

Wasn't it also used in a Super Mario World ROM hack?

Yeah. Same idea, differently executed concept. I've heard Eclipsed wants to check out some hacks of SMW on stream, though, and he mentioned that very one as one he's really interested in.

Come to think of it, I haven't really seen much other than just SMBX on Eclipsed's channel. Maybe he would like to branch out some more with his streams. Nothing bad of course, just maybe it might bring a bit more variety.

[Eri7]

Wasn't it also used in a Super Mario World ROM hack?

Yeah. Same idea, differently executed concept. I've heard Eclipsed wants to check out some hacks of SMW on stream, though, and he mentioned that very one as one he's really interested in.

Come to think of it, I haven't really seen much other than just SMBX on Eclipsed's channel. Maybe he would like to branch out some more with his streams. Nothing bad of course, just maybe it might bring a bit more variety.

Well as far as i know, most of his audience wants to see smbx content as eclipsed is currently the most active smbx youtuber.

[Eclipsed]

The title is obviously and exaggeration.
SMBX is obviously a wonderful engine that allows infinite possibilities for creativity.

Honestly, I am so sick and tired of playing one thing and then it being turned into complete garbage due to one aspect.

So, I was playing Generic Adventures - Insane Islands and the last level is complete garbage
It's essentially a boss with 4 sections.
Section 1, there are a bunch of slimes that are fine to deal with
Section 2, is a birdo with 4 bowser statues that is fine to deal with but in combination with the rest of the level, this area takes around one and a half minute on average and the rest of the level is completely awful
Section 3, is a kill room with 4 bowser statues, around 8 slimes, 4 zelda 2 running guys, and 2 snifits which you cannot jump on so essentially you're almost guaranteed to take a hit everytime unless you have flawless RNG which is not fair nor fun
In Section 4, you have to fight SMB3 Bowser with 4 bowser statues, which are RNG when they shoot. What makes this even worse is that you cannot run under the bowser fire so you're forced to jump over it hoping link does not screw you over by jumping when you're jumping above him or shoot a fireball where you're going to land. Furthermore the ammo for both the boss fights is snifits which you cannot jump on which means if you miss then you have another projectile to deal with in a one screen area. This sure sounds like fun, please do not test a episode section by section, that's really unviable and honestly after 3 and half hours of playing this garbage I never want to play another SMBX episode or level ever again (again an exaggeration), because the majority of things on this forum are completely godawful. Out of 141 episodes, there have only been 25 (that are not remakes or contests) I would consider suggesting and around 10 I would actually replay. How fun.
Literally out of 3.5 hours 97.5% of the deaths have been due to factors out of my control and just RNG. Furthrmore, there's no hammer suit in this level, also no two different powerups that are not mushrooms so I can't i-frame abuse and there's also not even a fire flower. This can just screw off.
Why is there no midpoint in this level?

I'm giving this fake kaizo stupidity a 1/10. Also, this is a first episode so quality like this is expected.

Addedeum: Due to how frustrated and how many times it demands I press the down key and run back and forth this godawful level actually started irritating my wrist.
Addedeum 2: Oh Great, now my carpal tunnel feels weird instead of only my cubital tunnel

Added in 9 minutes 47 seconds:
Also I forgot half the time the generators are clogged by bowser fire for both the birdo and the SMB3 bowser

[Eri7]

Don't worry Eclipsed, people like me will make smbx "great" again!

[Cedur]

the majority of things on this forum are completely godawful

something that was certainly not known before.

[Eclipsed]

the majority of things on this forum are completely godawful

something that was certainly not known before.

I honestly think that I'm fine with playing stuff that isn't that great. It's more of that the longer that it's played in combination with everything else, the more intolerant of bad stuff I feel. Since there's only so much patience someone can have. Storster is trying to beat every SMW hack (non-kaizo) currently, but the forums due to over abundance have quality control so while he's playing hacks that aren't that great, they're better on average.

Added in 4 minutes 41 seconds:
Here's my current mod.
What if you wanted to finish page 14 of the forums this weekend
But RNGesus said: Screw off, Kid.

Spoiler: show

[Darkonius Mavakar]

Don't worry Eclipsed, people like me will make smbx "great" again!

Ok so:

1)Yikes, please refrain from quoting MAGA, not a good look
2)That's a good joke, with the attitude you've proven over Discord many times towards everyone, that definitely will not be the case

[Rhosty]

Don't worry Eclipsed, people like me will make smbx "great" again!

Ok so:

1)Yikes, please refrain from quoting MAGA, not a good look
2)That's a good joke, with the attitude you've proven many times towards everyone, that definitely will not be the case

What attitude are you talking about?

[Enjl]

Don't worry Eclipsed, people like me will make smbx "great" again!

Ok so:

1)Yikes, please refrain from quoting MAGA, not a good look
2)That's a good joke, with the attitude you've proven many times towards everyone, that definitely will not be the case

What attitude are you talking about?

Every symptom from this list, basically.

[Eri7]

Don't worry Eclipsed, people like me will make smbx "great" again!

Ok so:

1)Yikes, please refrain from quoting MAGA, not a good look
2)That's a good joke, with the attitude you've proven over Discord many times towards everyone, that definitely will not be the case

I am not joking and by what i meant from my comment is to give him something fun to play.

[Eclipsed]

I wanted to collect my thoughts into a more organized and thorough review rather than a stream of consciousness.
The level has finally been beaten after slightly more than 4 hours, but here's a more organized review

Spoiler: show

Final Frontier has been one of the worst final levels, I have played in a while.
There are four sections in the level which can be described in the following: The Entrance, The Knights, The Kill Room, and The Link
The Entrance:
- This section is fine and the only part of the level that is not frustrating to deal with. The layout is just some slimes and a running guy, which is more of lazily made than obnoxious more than anything else.
The Knights
- In this section, there are 4 fire statues and you are required to kill two knight birdos who have eggs that you cannot pick up or land or. Instead you have to wait for a veggie generator of snifits to pop up every 10 seconds. However the area just so happens to correspond to where the birdo and fire shoots, so half the time the generator is clogged. These gray snifits you cannot jump on so if you miss, you have to deal with another projectile. Therefore, this room takes on average around 2 minutes twice amount it should have before you can proceed.
The Kill Room
- Initially you drop down and there's two bowser statues 3 blocks to the left on you as you fall, so you can take damage before you can jump off the ground. Also it spawns you around 4 slimes, 1 running guy, and 2 gray snifits, so essentially you have to luck out in order to preserve both of your powerups. Furthermore, sometimes a textbox randomly appears, not knowing what triggers the textbox it might as well be pseudo-random, so when you're in a perfect place to dodge bullets or enemies and a textbox appears, you take damage due to pseudo-RNG anyways.
The Link
- Everything about this room is an issue
Statues - the bowser statues in this room start shooting at random intervals so if you receive poor RNG, you can lose all your powerups right away. Furthemore due to the spawn rate, the position of the fire intersection changes so it is required you keep that in mind while trying to deal with a sporadic SMB3 Bowser. Furthemore, sometimes your only option is to do a full height jump which means if the top statues don't align, you die.
Link - The issue with link here is that sometimes you're cornered between link and a bowser statue, meaning link will do empty hops and you have to decide whether to jump above him or wait for him to jump with no indication. Essentially these two aspects combined is the equivalent of playing blackjack and hoping you will win with a 90% win rate only deciding to stay at 20.
Snifits - The ammo is the gray snifits again, which you cannot jump on. This ammunition essentially means if you miss, you have another obstacle to deal with. The conudrum here is do you wait for the statues to fire before killing the snifit and deal with another projectile or kill it right away and risk statue fire.

All in all, this boss fight is completely terrible, however this boss fight is not even within the 5 worst boss fights I've seen, it's just I was not able to cheese this way through i-frame abuse or hammer suits that made this the SMBX equivalent of finding a string of hay in a needlestack.
I just want to get to the 2k16 episodes on page 12 at this point

Also contest favorites:
Crazy Cat Corridor Iced Artic by Superiorstar
Kaizo Contest X A Very Waaaaaarm Cave by Zyglrox Odyssey
Super Mario and the Tower of Biased 1 Acropolis Ascencion by Kyo
Super Mario and the Tower of Biased 5 Majestic Mountain by SuperMario7
Super Mario and the Tower of Biased 8 Celestial Starstorm by Chad

[Radiance]

Furthermore, sometimes a textbox randomly appears, not knowing what triggers the textbox

It is triggered by seeing an NPC. I can't really remember what NPC it is but I'm pretty sure it's on the right side of the room. The reason that the textbox appears randomly is you don't go to the right side of the room immediately.

sounds like fun

nice

[Eclipsed]

Day 53: I was playing Super Luigi Bros. 3 today and for some reason every time I died on a World 8 level the game would register it as complete and unlock the next path. It was really weird and I have no idea what causes it, does anyone have any idea?

[Eri7]

Day 53: I was playing Super Luigi Bros. 3 today and for some reason every time I died on a World 8 level the game would register it as complete and unlock the next path. It was really weird and I have no idea what causes it, does anyone have any idea?

On which version did you play it?

[Cedur]

Day 53: I was playing Super Luigi Bros. 3 today and for some reason every time I died on a World 8 level the game would register it as complete and unlock the next path. It was really weird and I have no idea what causes it, does anyone have any idea?

On which version did you play it?

good old 1.3.0.1. I guess? viewtopic.php?f=36&t=16644

[Eclipsed]

good old 1.3.0.1. I guess? viewtopic.php?f=36&t=16644

It still persists in 2.0 versions, I have no idea what causes it, probably an easy fix in the world map but I guess it's useful for speedrunning if I find a similar instance to that

[Eclipsed]

Day 58: During this venture, I have explored the depths of 156 episodes, and for a while thought Super Luigi Bros 3 was the worst episode and that nothing could come worse to that. However after setting a new record of 147 threads (not episodes of the episodes) I encountered Yo Mama

Yo Mama is the worst episode I have played on every fundamental level, even including the title
World Map
The world map is absolutely marvelous, here are some of the stunning visuals

Spoiler: show

Moreover, there are some parts of the world map where it was forgotten to put a level file so the new path just built.
Also, it was very unclear where some of the pipes lead you, so I ended up traversing the world map again.
World 2 is just playing the same levels you just played in World 1
World h for 100% is entirely skippable since it has no stars and the path just leads to world i
Also there's no end credits level and pretty sure the game can't register it as 100% due to offscreen paths

Stars
This episode has 13 stars, unlabeled, most of which are exit stars and 3 in plain sight collectable stars.
Since 100% requires gathering all stars by any means, 2 of the stars uses exploits not known at the time
One of them required the spin jump tanooki statue clip method (1 frame trick)
The other required a crouch floor clip (4 frame trick)

Levels
The levels look atrocious overall. The enemy and block layouts are essentially haphazard.
The bosses are either entirely skippable or just fighting the boss on a flat uninspired surface.
Invisible Coin Bridges: (That's a 5th of the game play)
Invisible Blocks killing you (All over the place)
Excessive P-switches + Digging (Yep, that's there too)
Exits and Pipes that kill you (Got that covered)
Pipe + Door Mazes (Delightful)
Random Powerups in Random Blocks (Sure)
There's also invisible npcs or blocks that damage you (Scrumptious)
Softlock (Yeah if you don't play a level as mario or luigi in one of them you just get softlocked)
Repetitive Design (Oh Boy)
Random Water (Water placement made zilche sense)
None of the levels have any sense of cohesiveness and for the majority I thought I was going in random pipes
Also there's no sort of consistency for which levels you can fly over/under and which ones you cannot with the blue boot it gives you in World 1
In fact there was an offscreen spikes that hurt me once that was out of nowhere
The shortest level took 4 seconds to beat, the longest one took 10 minutes
The only positive things I can say is that the bosses did not enrage me (since they were uninspired) which isn't that much of a compliment
And the best levels were at the very end of the game, which isn't saying much and after people would stop playing this episode

Here's what the average level looks like

Spoiler: show

However at the end of the episode instead of being a clustered mess, it becomes barren and empty

Spoiler: show

Other
A majority of the music choices are nonsensical or missing paths
i. e. Lost Woods in Metroid Gfx, Katy Perry in a cave area
It also used Darkonius' End Goal Graphic so that was weird

Both SLB3 and Yo Mama have the same amount of average play time
Compared to Super Luigi Bros 3, the previous worst episode, I can at least tell the creator put effort into their episode and it was made by one person, for this episode I cannot say the same
The worst part is that this episode was a collab between 5 different people, so there's fundamentally no excuse why this episode became the worst one I have ever play
Yes, I get that a lot of 2016 episodes were made by people 16 or less at that point and this could have been also, but again there's 5 different people collabed on this this so it makes no sense that no one noticed how atrocious the design of Yo Mama is even if it was made by people of young age.
The only explanation or reasoning I'll give a pass is that a person found SMBX and asked their family members who have no sense of level design to make levels for it also.

Overall, Yomama is now the worst smbx episode I have ever played.
Tl;dr Yomama is completely awful 0/10

Twitch VoDs

[TheNewGuy]

Challenge castle is gold compared to Yo mama

[Eclipsed]

Trials of RNG is one of the worst contest entries I have ever seen, that being said I have been playing it for a while and figured out consistent ways to deal with each of the section for anyone else who wants to torture themselves through this level.

Goomba Spam

Spoiler: show

Once you enter the level if you door jump and then kill the goomba right away and run to the 5th block from the right, you are consistently safe and the biggest goomba stack will always be 3 so it won't spawn the goombas that kill you way on the high ground

Pirhana Plant Spam

Spoiler: show

If you rush this section with an optimal speedrun route, it's consistent each time. Not going into detail but essentially this is what it was

Lakitu Glass Spam

Spoiler: show

This section has no way of nullifying the RNG so good luck buddy. However there is a way to ameliorate it, if you run from the left side of the screen to the right and then use the wrap around 3 times, for some reason the 3 lakitus eventually bunch up making there less glass thrown. Next spawn the next 2 lakitus and enter pipes back and forth and they bunch up. These two methods combined help but there is still a lot of RNG that can kill you

Last Section

Spoiler: show

Firstly you want to kill all of the goombas you see. Then once you hit the blue switch you damage boost down, take the mushroom in reserve under the vine and do a failed crouch floor clip facing left while you have i-frames which allows you to damage boost through the rest of the enemies and since there's no goombas then you win

I have not beaten this level yet because I have not done the Laktiu Glass Spam and this level doesn't even accomplish its goal the name set out for 75% of the level.