@brostulip Welcome to MYM! I was very pleasantly surprised reading all your sets that you have a very fun style and some neat ideas, apparently you’re a lurker and I can tell you know a thing or two already. I did read Classic Bowser too, and I don’t think there’s much point in commenting on that one really, it’s obviously not to the standard of your Conker sets. Speaking of Conker, lets get right to the namesake of the movement.
Conker has some very fun characterisation for starters, and sets the tone well for the rest of this project of sets with how it’s ribbing on Rare, Nintendo and what have you. The Rare down smash and the vainglorious aggressive playstyle, full of blood, violence and weaponry fits Conker like a glove. As someone who never played Conker or any of the Rare games as a kid, I got an immediate understanding of the game and the tone of the project from this set, even if I didn’t read it first, it’s a good starting point and makes for a good barometer on the rest of the sets here.
This set does have some issues however. Firstly, while I am actually okay with the OHKO mechanic, it is a bit awkward that it activates on an arbitrary number. The actual idea works and I like that Conker can cut his opponents in half in this gloriously gory way to win, but it could definitely be more elegant in its execution. There’s also just some awkwardness in how powerful all the reflectors become when you compare them to Smash 4, where reflectors are already good enough without having an attack attached to them as well. The closest comparison is Ness’ fsmash, which is fairly slow and telegraphed, whereas Conker has far too many casual reflecting moves. On a positive note, I felt like you did a good job balancing the various weapons you can equip for the aerials and standards.
Overall this is definitely the weakest of the group, but it’s not too bad, and for a character that just beats people up with props and takes out mass props it gets a surprising amount of things correct.
Next up is The Great Mighty Poo, and of all the sets in this project, this one is obviously the most unique… experience. I don’t know if you know that someone else made a set for this character a long time ago, and I did not expect he’d get another, let alone one that is actually good. This set strikes a nice chord of the projectiles, the various manipulation of GMP’s, er, body size and his infinite range singing special. He’s always a big pain in the as
s, again a fitting playstyle on the character as in Conker, but really this set does pretty much everything better than Conker.
It really has to be highlighted how great the writing style is here, from the move names, to the use of scatological vocabulary. It’s pretty much perfect. The moves themselves also get a lot more out of the character than I would have expected by squeezing all you could out of the fairly minor concepts of body size changing and projectiles. Part of why this one is one of the best ones is it has a better balance of say, the projectiles and the size shifting and “goop” mechanics, rather than seeming too lopsided in one direction or another. Overall this was actually really fun and I’m happy it turned out this way, rather than being a turd.
The Experiment and Little Girl is next, this one is one of the odder ones of the group, not because it’s better or worse (it’s actually fairly in the middle of the group) but it has unique qualities to it. The first thing is that it’s by far the most unique body shape. Poo has to constantly size down to keep up his projectile spam, Experiment is fairly big, although not that large, and stays that way. I think a missed opportunity here is not making more use of that. Overall though, I actually think this is still good despite being the second worst.
So this set does some fairly big projectile and minor minion interactions, it’s some straightforward and simplistic ideas like changing the direction or strength of a laser and absorbing attacks into another attacks. It’s quite nice as a simple playstyle, and makes sense for such a weapons-based character. The Robo-Spiders were also really well executed. I also feel like, despite the writing style, this has some of the best quips in the project, especially when it comes to the Little Girl.
There are some issues though, and this is the one case I actually thought the writing style wasn’t good of all 5. This one just gets too ahead of itself because of the interactions at times. I can figure it out just fine for the most part, but it’s a bumpy ride. For example I had some problems identifying what the laser smash does when it absorbs lasers out on the stage already, as it’s worded in a very indirect way. I can relate to going more abstract, but I would try and aim for the writing styles of Panther King or GMP in future sets if you can. Besides that, I just think this set is a bit simple and not the best balanced compared to the others, but still good.
Second to last is Panther King, and this set is surprisingly pretty unanimously liked by everyone who’s read the set. This may be the best written of the entire project, and that’s saying something considering how fun this project is as a whole for the writing style. The playstyle is also very fitting to such a meme character as the set makes clear. It’s very impressive that you chose a direction for a difficult character that actually lends itself to easy flow out of simpler moves, as anything but this exact approach would probably be insanely hard. The self awareness is also refreshing, even the note at the end of aerials was fairly amusing.
Mostly this set revolves around Panther King’s unfortunate table. I would’ve liked it more had it focused on other elements a little more, as it’s mentioned so many times, but as the core concept it doesn’t need all the focus as much as Don Weaso or the milk. The milk is a lot of fun on its own; I don’t think anyone has messed with Rage this creatively yet. It didn’t do a whole lot with the idea though. Don’t get me wrong though, this set was tons of fun, and definitely worth reading for anyone.
Lastly, there’s Professor von Kripplespac. This set is actually my favourite of the group despite some stuff you may want to fix. FA/ForwardArrow is going to tell you more specifics about that, but I would like to focus on some other stuff here instead. First of all, I really enjoyed some of the concepts here. The alien of course, one of the biggest concepts in any of your sets, and the fsmash are amazing fun. A common and pretty accurate complaint is how the alien works is fairly underwhelming and wonkily balanced, but I do enjoy the whole idea a lot.
I wasn’t as big a fan of the mine in the set, and really would've just liked the alien on a special if possible, though it’s not too awful where it is probably would make more sense as a command grab special. The mine isn’t too bad or anything, it’s just a bit automatic and direct how it can be ticked down manually, and flowing into landing such a powerful move is inherently a bit OP. Still, I can’t deny it is some legitimate playstyle, and you don’t usually see a set that works like this to play with explosives in this exact way. This set’s other problem is that it just makes too much use of projectiles for its own good, so much reflection and stuff again, probably most egregious in this set.
This was a very fun one for me though, I especially liked the fsmash and the alien throw, which were both excellent. On a general note, this project kinds of kicks as
s, I must say. I’m very impressed how good you are at such an early stage, keep it up! I also really like the way you do stats and the way you formatted this whole project with the first link up post, it’s very neat. I can tell you put a lot of work into this, and it certainly paid off! Good job. Brostulip.