Difference between revisions of "User:TheKman100/Temple Of Light and Dark"

Oh... this level. This did not inspire positive feelings. The Temple of Light & Dark is basically two levels stitched together: They both have two routes, one short and one long, and they each have two tokens, one early and one late. Props for consistency, but both temples have very severe flaws. Not only are both of them confusing to navigate, but they're also chock full of hard-hitting enemies and spikes - more than the average Capcom water level. That alone is frustrating, but they're also both pretty long temples to boot, creating a downright draining experience.

For specific problems: The Dark Temple blackout is hard on the eyes, since we have jet-black enemies against a *very* dark purple. I have to squint and lean forward to see them at all, and I already use glasses. For that matter, the Tomahawk Platforms have a tendency to dump enemies into spikes, rendering them useless. The Light Temple gimmicks are Yokus and Force Beams, both of which have a penchant for brutalising you at the slightest misstep. Yes, even with the lasers 2HKOing you instead of killing you outright. While I appreciate the attempted consideration, dodging them is quite precise, and the check-points aren't merciful enough to prevent some Tank chugging.

Speaking of tank chugging, the bosses are a mess. Taking Dark Man and Solar Man, doubling their health, and increasing their strength a bunch? Not the best idea. My blind run with Dark Man was downright miserable, owing to his speed, his ability to kill me in 4-5 hits, and being a shield boss with 56 HP. And when I got to Solar Man? I erased him with Water Shield, I didn't have the patience at that point. The minibosses aren't nearly as bad as the end bosses, but they also don't seem to be implemented right, leading to desyncs or floating in the floor.

The Enker fight is the most doable of the three outright bosses, which is ironic considering he's the Bonus Boss of the Dark Temple. Still, as far as Token challenges go? I prefer Enker to the challenge for the late Light Token: Killing a giant gorilla for a key. Taking the key through a huge Force Beam gauntlet. Three more highly deadly rooms where one mistake can kill you. And then you get the token. Completing this sequence from start to finish took nearly half an hour by itself - because of course I died a lot, which is too much for one token.

As a whole, this level was frustrating. It has ambition and some creative ideas, but the execution leaves much to be desired. There was *one* section that I enjoyed, though: the dark illusions with the Crystal Joes. This was the most interesting (and, IMO, fair) section of the level, and I really appreciated that Crystal Joe was allowed to be interesting. It's not much of the level, but there's something. I wish the rest of the level was more like that part.

There's...a lot to unpack with this one.

First off, a good chunk of this level is a maze. Mazes and Metroidvania-styled levels have a very...checkered past when it comes to the MaGMML series. I know there's plenty of people out there who enjoy these sorts of stages for how they mix up the gameplay, but I can't say I'm one of them. Personally, I just don't think these types of stages are suitable in the context of a level design contest like MaGMML. More often than not, they tend to take much longer to complete than a regular Mega Man stage, have harsh punishments for death (mainly thanks to odd checkpoint placement), and overall have too much trial-and-error thanks to an over-abundance of winding and confusing pathways. Sadly, this particular level ends up ticking pretty much every single one of those boxes (plus a couple more).

The stage itself is divided into two sections (light and dark). It doesn't matter which one you explore though, because both areas have their own share of problems. The light section has rooms that are packed to the brim with enemies in almost every corner, along with some incredibly frustrating sets of yoku block puzzles. The one leading up to the diamond token has blocks that are just out of reach of your maximum jump height, meaning you need to clip on top of them to progress (assuming you're not just using utilities to bypass all this). However, by far the worst of these is the block puzzle in the long vertical room. Having yoku spikes that spawn on top of the player as they're trying to work around this part is a cheap shot at best, since you're pretty much guaranteed to die unless you've memorized where all the spikes are beforehand.

The dark section is a little more tolerable thanks to the lack of yoku blocks, though not by much, seeing as it has sections with platforms and enemies that are barely visible. Going deeper into the stage eventually puts you on more linear paths for both sections, but they still have the same basic problems as the maze parts: Enemy placement that gives very little leeway for being hit, overly tight jumps where the punishment for failure is often instant death, and a severe lack of checkpoints. The lower light path is easily the worst of these, with rotating force beams that come out of nowhere (they definitely could have done with some better visual indicators) coupled with an overabundance of enemies that make this path far more hectic than it should be.

Out of all of these sections, there was only one that I actually enjoyed: The spotlight segment with the Crystal Joes. Having the enemy's projectiles (along with your own shots) reveal the stage's surroundings is a really neat idea, and one that I wish had a greater presence throughout the stage. It certainly feels like a better fit for the level's theme more so than surprise yoku spikes and rotating lasers, that's for sure.

On that note, I can see where you're coming from in using Solar Man and Dark Man as the main bosses...but recoloring them and ramping up their damage output to absurd levels really didn't do their fights any favors. If anything, they just serve as an annoying climax to an (almost) all-around unenjoyable stage.

Ancient Domain of Illumination and Illusion!

So right off the bat there are branching paths, there are "light" and "dark" versions of the stage you need to switch between, and there are keys to find. Labyrinth-styled stages can be hard to pull off right\s unfortunately, this is one that didn't cut it.

A maze stage naturally means the player would be expected to explore through the same areas at least a few times before they have the layout mapped out in their head. The stage didn't really quite make this process a pleasant one due to multiple reasons:

- The enemies, consisting mostly of Mets and Joes, have a common theme of being shielded. The other half of the roster is various stationary turrets. With how most of these elements only serve to stop you from traversing too quickly, it overall ended up feeling more like padding than actually spicing up the challenge of each room.

- There are many instant death hazards, which means you lose your keys really often from all the exploration you need to do around the mazey layouts. While the keys are not mandatory for reaching any of the bosses, it still adds up to the frustration of repeated traversal needed to reach any of the side areas with collectibles. The side areas aren't necessarily a breeze in the park by themselves, either.

- Checkpoints are few and far between, spelling disaster with the brutal and unforgiving platforming challenges.

The Dark Temple in general is exceedingly difficult due to the inability to see or parse anything in the rooms. It doesn't help that in some rooms the platforms are outright hidden and only visible up close. The nail in the coffin, though, is that there exist fake ladders, which is just an absolutely mean design decision for what's already a really miserable section. I very much did not approve of this.

Boss fights are not much better. They are basically normal engine-default bosses, only given more health and maybe a speed or damage increase here and there. Kind of a lazy way to increase the difficulty of the fights for the sake of increasing the difficulty. It overall really doesn't lead to a satisfying conclusion to the stage.

Speaking from experience, mazes are difficult to do well. This might've worked as a puzzle level inspired by A Link to the Past or Metroid Prime 2, jumping between a light half and similar-yet-different dark half to reach the end. Instead, it's an exercise in memorizing two completely different level layouts full of branching paths leading who-knows-where.

Rules and expectations are thoroughly unclear. There's no obvious goal, too many paths, and zero warmup for the challenges. Keys and key doors further complicate matters. Secrets are more likely to be stumbled on than sought out\s there's no logic to how most are hidden. Light and dark are mostly interchangeable in terms of design, and they lack memorable landmarks to aid in navigation.

Almost every room is saturated with enemies - often the same few types, in configurations that can't reasonably be overcome without taking damage or using special weapons. Some enemies aren't positioned properly, falling off platforms and into pits. There's an excessive amount of instant death for *any* level, let alone one involving so much backtracking. The bosses don't need multiple health bars.

Downgrading to damage spikes, adding more checkpoints, allowing the player to see more of the Yoku block patterns before jumping in, and/or requiring less precise jumps from the player would go a long way in making the current challenges more palatable without completely reworking them.

On the plus side, the music sets a great tone for the level. The visuals are clean and easily distinguishable, even in the darkest rooms. Poking around is rewarded with super-secret secrets. The choice of assets toward the end of the level reflects some deliberate theming, with lasers, laser-shooting flowers, and Solar Man contrasting nicely with the MM7 visibility gimmick, shadow clones, and Dark Man. The level is at its best when it focuses on developing more linear challenges with these themed assets.

Oh boy, this is a stage that has lots of little moments dragging it down. But those moments are born from a few very clear and global problems throughout the stage.

There are positives here. In terms of how the mechanic is handled and pulled off, the 'dual worlds' seen in games like Link to the Past and Metroid Prime 2 is actually pulled over very well here. Rooms are familiar between the Light and Dark Temple, but with differences in enemy layouts and terrain to make them wildly different to play. I also think the general Aesthetic & Atmosphere fits. The actual tileset and method of tiling the level looks pretty good, and I appreciate that pits are clearly telegraphed - a very significant issue another certain exploration stage in MaGMML2 failed to do.

But the issues lie with the level design, not the theme. It is yet another 'Metroidvania' style stage that tries to have the player explore every nook and cranny for keys, and navigate between the Light and Dark to get to one of the two bosses or tokens on the side paths.

Unfortunately it misses the fundamental gameplay that Metroidvania or exploration games relies on: The challenge should be in the exploration itself, and not in how the player executes their movement.

This stage has an ungodly reliance on instant death or high-damage challenges. Some challenges require pixel perfect jumps, enemies deal heavy damage, and there are death spikes and pits everywhere. Certain challenges take almost as long to clear as entire main series Mega Man stages (the green token takes a whopping 2 minutes even using weapons to get.)

Two of the primary gimmicks are the worst offenders. Force Beams might not be instant death, and the layouts combined with rotating force beams offer some decent and potentially fun timing challenges. But without background cues, rotating force beams are incredibly hard to parse - oftentimes players will take extreme damage even standing in locations that look safe, because the force beam clipped them for a nanosecond as it tries to figure out what is and isn't blocking it.

Yoku Blocks are just a catastrophe here, with the entire challenge relying around 'SURPRISE THERE'S A SPIKE YOU FORGOT WAS HERE'.

All this, and a severe lack of checkpoints means the stage quickly becomes frustrating mere minutes in. Thankfully certain challenges can be completely bypassed through use of Magnet Beam - the player is able to get into slide passages and skip rooms entirely - but this is only a small bandage on lowering the difficulty.

The enemy selection is also problematic. So many enemies are too defensive, further damaging any flow the level required to make exploration rewarding, and during the dark area it's even worse. In the dark areas, some enemies blend in so much it's almost impossible to see. I realise, seeing how some of them are pure black, that is the point, but it's still irritating to get sideswiped by an enemy you didn't realise was there.

Lastly, the Bosses have an arbitrarily large health bar. This isn't a challenge, it's tiring.

Weapon use and Energy/Weapon Tanks are the only thing making this stage even slightly playable, and that does not help in the long run - I consider myself a decent Mega Man player, and I am having to rely on these things heavily here. I fear anyone else with lesser skill might never see the exits to the stages, let alone the tokens.