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For the veterans this is a great hack. For beginners, get better, MUCH BETTER, before trying it. Because even on the lowest difficulty, this hack is Castlevania/Clock Tower hard AND frustrating. Especially when you get farther, and further, into it. If there were rating number for this game I would give it an 8. Very nicely done.

Played on Nightmare because I can usually handle hard hacks, especially when it comes to ZM.

I can't remember the last time I needed to just put something down with how many things just struck me the wrong way.

Way too many enemies per room, most enemy layouts being 2 enemies 'per platform' and since vertical movement in ZM is a crapshoot, you usually end up touching something which on Nightmare is about 60-80 energy and since it's ZM's Hard difficulty, usually means you're taking two hit deaths. Other layouts in big rooms consist of fast flying bug mobs and Rippers the latter which is in that category named above. Not even to mention dispatching them was 3 to 5 full seconds of mashing per enemy with beam to conserve ammo for harder threats such as Hoppers and the like. Only once you have Plasma does the relief of mashing come.

A personal pet peeve of mine is being punished for exploring, and that happened with this Hack's "Inescapable Death Pit" in the first map. Don't know why it's there but I definitely despise that it is. Dying because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss something but instead got dunked in a pit is extremely infuriating especially with how little save points there are. Most maps have 2, three if you're lucky, and generally spaced out so you have to go through *a lot* of the above before finding it.

Last gripe just comes from a trend I see in most Metroid hacks is giving access to rooms you have no reason to go into. A lot of missile doors in this hack gives a weird sense that the room will have something inside only to be met with either: A) A Nothing room that turns out to be The Exit of a path you'll find later or B) a room full of, yet again, a lot of enemies that once you slowly and painfully dispatch them learn you need late game items to even get the the thing in the room, if I have to spend resources to access a new room, the room should be important enough that the resource is worth using, Again that's just a general nitpick.

There is plenty more but that alone should be enough to go off of.

As it is, can't say I had a good time.

This has probably got to be one of the hardest Metroid hacks I've played. There is alot of good and a couple bad things about how this hack is played. Each feature in fact, I feel has a good and bad side.

In terms of Design this map knocks it out of the park, all the stops and flag setting for pathways were pulled, I rarely felt like I didn't know where to go. It took me 4.5 hours and I never felt bored exploring.

However I did feel a bit of sluggishness with how much work you have to go through to progress your power levels. There are many enemies in basically every room and they take some hits. On the other hand it feels good 15-20 minutes later going back through these rooms with an upgraded beam and destroying them all in half (or less) the hits. The slog it takes to power up makes powering up so much more satisfying though.

The amount of enemies also caused some Rom Slowness and the occasional input lag, which I believe is a hard line 'don't' for design in having too much in Ram all at once. There were also some issues with bursting through Speed Blocks and them not re-appearing which made me need to use cheats to get out of the room.

The Difficulty for "normal" was a bit much, especially for bosses, which is a slight criticism. But in the over-world it just caused to you take it slow and be more deliberate, which is the silver lining of the difficulty.

All in all, I would only recommend for those patient individuals seeking a good Metroid style challenge.