I've already said most of this in Discord, but I'm going to put it here so everyone on the interweb can see it (So if you read this on that platform, it's almost all the same).
Regardless of the repeated review, it was a fun mod, reminiscent of when I first played Cave Story.
There are also a lot of bugs, glitches, and purposeful bad design in some areas to try and replicate a somewhat unfinished game, even though this is finished and has an ending...
Anyways, here's the review:
I've never seen the beta videos, so I have no frame of reference for "beta accuracy". It's just another CS mod to me. I made it to the first save point or around there when I realized that as typical with most videogames, this one was well out of my skill range, so I resorted to my good friend HXD and started screwing with the save file. This isn't unusual for how I like to play my videogames. I played HL1 and HL2 with godmode on out of the gate, along with pretty much every other videogame I can think of (not puzzle games, though. those are within my skillset). I'm the type of person who reads the wikipedia plot of a movie before going to see it. I don't care. Hate me. The only things I modified were player's HP, Ammo, and money, so yes, I cheated, but I didn't skip anything. Even with all these "handicaps", it still probably took me longer to beat this than most of you could.
For the most part, the mod is well put together. I only noticed a few minor TSC hiccups here and there, but they were mostly unimportant. For example when the salesman sells you the "missile launcher deluxe" in Central, there is no confirmation text that you bought it, so I accidentally bought 2. I had many reminiscent thoughts when playing this mod back to my initial playthrough of Cave Story, like when I got stuck in Grasstown (original CS) for quite some time trying to find where the gum base was, not knowing I had to talk to Kazuma a second time to get the key. Since this beta remake is less linear than the original CS, this happened much more frequently because those story advancing elements could be anywhere, not just somewhere else in the same stage. This happened when I was trying to find the Sand Zone. I travelled all over the place before I finally whipped out Booster's lab and found that the entrance was inside one of the digging levels.
Don't worry, I also had good reminiscent thoughts too, like eagerly pressing through the levels so I could see how the story develops.
Speaking of story, I spent probably waaay longer than I should have trying to figure out what steps I needed to take to get the best ending. Just like with original CS, I progressed as I thought I should up to almost the end of the mod before I realized I was no longer on track for the best ending, so with a sigh of disappointment, I restarted the game over. From scratch.
In hindsight though, I probably shouldn't have done this, because the sub-optimal credits list a tool that you need for the best ending, and knowing what this was would have helped me in my subsequent search. I knew where I had to go, but I couldn't figure out how to get there. There was a door in one of the water levels that required you to swim up in order to reach it. Since I didn't know about the goggles, I figured you needed Froggy to get to the door, but all exits for him were blocked, so I beat my head against this wall for a disappointingly long time.
Even the second time, I thought I missed it, so I whipped out Booster's Lab again and started picking through stage transitions and flag jumps until I found what I needed, A chest containing goggles that appears in the first water-logged cave that is only there between when you climb up the outer wall and sleep in the bed. I was distracted by several other red herrings, like several unused chest events that also give you the goggles and an unused shopkeeper item.
Of course I gave that one thing the tangerine. I'm still not sure what it is, but it seems to like tangerines.
*
From a technical standpoint, this mod is equally impressive. It contains custom sounds, movement, weapons, items, enemies, and bosses, whose behavior, no doubt was painstakingly replicated from the scraps of beta footage. (once again, I haven't seen the beta footage, so I have no idea how close to the mark they are.)
All of these seem to be fairly robust and are fun to interact with, making the game a fun experience overall.
Props to you (and all who participated) for taking one of the biggest Cave Story modding "Memes" and kicking it straight into next Thursday. There is now a complete and feature-filled beta remake for content enjoyers to sink their teeth into.
