MINUS'S PROFILE

Most of what you describe is well warranted and justified, but I wouldn't disregard the entire thing as flat-out bullshit. I wouldn't quite call the game itself excellent either - there were a few frustrating bits that I thought were the terrible sort of difficulty (and indeed, a lot of them are as you mentioned), but I also feel that there was a lot of stuff they got right, especially compared to the earlier Super RMN Bros. expeditions. A lot of the levels I did actually find enjoyable, and a lot of the time I did manage to overcome some pretty harrowing challenges the first time through, so I actually do think a good amount of the game is legitimately fair, if demanding. And I do believe there were a lot of levels that were really enjoyable as well (such as the aforementioned Megaman levels, which were absolutely brilliant), and although a fair amount of the levels were, as mentioned, very "standard", I did think that a lot of these standard levels exhibited some elegant, Mario-like level design, and even though they don't have the bells and whistles of some other SMBX levels, I wouldn't necessarily consider their vanilla-ness to be a fault against them. In fact, many of those levels ended up being some of my favorites.

The problem, of course, is that, as you discovered, it's really hard. And I won't argue that there was a fair amount that was very tedious to overcome, and there were a few levels that I had just wanted to end because they were getting far too frustrating for my liking, so I would definitely argue that it really isn't that accessible to those who haven't played a lot with SMBX. But for those who are able to tackle the challenge, and although I have my fair share of contentions, I still don't think the game is as terrible as this review makes it out to be, especially comparing this to the first three Super RMN Bros. games.