https://www.bopimo.com/levels/3588

Leave your thoughts, likes and dislikes, about the level "The Vault Of Secrets"
I would like yall to not post annoying ragebait and post actual feedback

Btw, Yes the level is meant to be big

So the level is really nice-looking (I don't have time in my day to beat it) but it is a little confusing at points. But again, this is one of the prettiest bopimo levels ever, i like the little fellas you put around the map, very cute!

Very ambitious level but the deco does some really heavy lifting unfortunately.

I'll try to follow the order of what I've played in this review to showcase my experience.

So, as soon as you get into the level, reading the first sign clearly says you have to collect 4 stars before getting into one final area where the level will end. Good, gives an idea on what to expect. As you move around the starter island, you can clearly see that there are 4 mains paths you can go into, so seeing this, my expectation is that I'll have to collect 1 star in each of these.

The first path I decide to take is the east, going into a second cannon leads me to a seemingly useless island on which I'm stuck.

I decide to reset and try the west path instead. Moving around in the cannon maze quickly leads me to the kingdom of deceit, landing on a checkpoint. Afterwards I longjump on the spring towards the island in front, on which there is another spring, a cannon leading back to spawn and a fake checkpoint, cute.

This is the first spot I got seriously stuck on.

I try longjumping on that second spring and reach an island with a house which... I'm stuck on. I do notice a cannon midair which I try to reach to no avail, I try again but with the second spring but barely fail aswell. After a few attempts I give up on this cannon since it seemed to have an unhelpful trajectory anyway.

My next thought is to try longjumping from the top on the second island towards the cannon located on the wall of the island with the blue tower which seems to lead on top of it. Which also barely fails.

And now I truly don't know what to do, after a few minutes of trying stuff over and over, one of them involving going across the rampart and longjumping towards a cannon but getting hit by an invisible wall instead, I notice Isaiah longjumping on the second spring, with a weird angle, towards the top of the island with the blue tower. Really? This really FEELS unintended, but I do the same and reach it aswell.

Climbing the tower makes me reach another fake checkpoint, it's not that far anyway I guess. Longjumping in the back leads me to an island with a black soldier. I clearly see something at the top but can't seem to reach it. After thinking a little, I kill the soldier which respawns higher. This allows me to jump on it and get a slight boost, helping me reach the top. Weird but okay.

Entering the cannon leads me to an island with a clearly fake star, I'm kinda curious what would happen if I touch it, and get sent into the shadow realm as soon as I do. I guess that's fair, there was a sign at the entrance of this area warning me about fake stuff.

After respawning and heading back there, I explore the island further and discover a spring on the wall at the edge. It is indicated by a lampost with a crown which is enough imo.

Before jumping on it, I consider where I would go and notice that the nearest island has an interactable NPC on it, however I could clearly not leave if I went there. I question its existence and decide to go to another island that is farther but has a cannon on top.

Jumping on the spring sends me so high that I notice a star on the top of the highest pillar, but also too far to reach it, so I still follow my original plan. (Be mindful that I'm at least at my 20th minute of gameplay and still 0/5 stars)

Entering the cannon and then another makes me reach the castle and lands me... On top of another fake checkpoint. Really?

The castle is composed of 3 rooms filled with enemies you have to break out of by punching walls, the last one having an enemy which one-hits you half of the time.

As I made my way in for the first time, I noticed that the walls only have 2 HP, hurray! The enemy in the last room being quite dangerous, I press my forward key as I break the wall, and as soon as it does, I walk into lava which instakills me, cool...

I now have to redo a whole 2 minutes of gameplay to get back there since all of the checkpoints I met on the way were fake, and the cherry on top? All of the walls in the castle now have 15-30 HP!

This turned my so far, confused experience into a very tedious one since I had to beat the castle multiple times, I'll explain why later.

Reaching the end of this section, I'm met with a cannon leading to a boss, "The king" aswell as a checkpoint! Finally!

The arena is composed of the boss and two pillars: One you spawn on and one containing 4 lava spinners rotating across the floor of the arena.

And... that's all I could find? Didn't know how to move forward from there. I tried a lot of stuff for a good 10 minutes really, jumping on top of the boss, groundpounding on him, diving into every side of the pillars, groundpounding that one snowy spot on the floor of the arena.
Nothing seemed to work.

I did find that you could drop to the side of the arena revealing 3 unhelpful NPCs.

So? Well I just gave up and restarted the entire level. This looked like a softlock to me.

So what's next? Well, after restarting the entire thing. I tried the Southern path.

This path was pretty straightforward, following the cannons leads you to a pretty easy maze you can shortcut through by breaking a few walls.

I don't have much to say about this section, it's fine. However, this does make me collect my very first star!!!

Next, I retried the East section. Taking a different order of cannons than my first attempt takes me down the correct path, a few longjumps later and we reach a checkpoint and another boss, "the jester".

I really like the arena, the boss itself was... Fine I guess? It just seemed like lava spinner spam and once you reach the missiles section, you can't really fail. In fact there is so much lava spinner spam that you can get hit by one of them mid-jump and be launched towards the missile section... If only there wasn't an invisible wall blocking the way.

Like the previous one, I find this star kinda meh, the path itself with the cannon maze is pretty boring and the boss itself could be improved a lot I feel.

So after getting that second star, I remembered that I would still have to beat the king, somehow, if I wanted to beat the level. So I went there, AGAIN, hoping that I had missed a missile that could damage the boss, since that was how the jester could be beaten.

Another few slogish attempts at going through the castle later, I reach the boss once again and... Still find nothing. So? Well I gave up and restarted the whole level again.

While I was trying to defeat this boss, Isaiah informed me that they had discovered a way to skip the boss entirely. After showing the trick to me, I managed to get the star and re-obtain the two that I had gotten previously.

At this point I'm way past 1h30m of playthrough and at 3/5 stars. So I'm still missing 1 before going to the final area.

The last path I hadn't tried was the north.

Let's just say that this is where my assumption that each star would be at the end of each path fell apart since the northern one just seemed to lead to other paths.

I figured out where the 4th star was since koopa was backseating in chat without being asked to and mentionned that there was one at spawn.

So searching spawn for a few minutes, I did find some kind of white bridge going progressively invisible.

My assumption was that there would be an invisible path if I walked forward on it, however it has no collisions, you just have to drop straight down. I think this is indicated pretty poorly for that reason.

Getting the 4th star, I can finally go to the end. I didn't mention it but I did find the last path while searching for the 4th star. There's clearly a sign indicating that this is it and to turn back if you don't have them all, this is well indicated.

What isn't however is where the bop do you have to go from there? The only island that looked like a way forward to me was the one with a blue lampost on it, but it was slightly too far to reach with a longjump.

I realized later that the correct path was the one to its right with a cannon on it, it really looked like an island from the west path to me originally.

Following the path leads you to an island where you find another crown, indicating another spring on the wall, good.

Where you have to go, using this spring, is truly awful in my opinion.

My first instinct was to use it to go onto one of the islands near the end. However doing this gets you stuck on it, having no way to reach the next one since it is slightly too high/far.

What I actually ended up having to do was diving into the small white cannon that's located midair and which really blends with the background/trees.

This directly leads to the last platform. This is a straight line to the end from there, nothing much else to say about it.



IN CONCLUSION:
While technically 3/5 stars are fairly straightforward, I find the other 2 much more time consuming due to their unclear pathing. The lack of checkpoints in the kingdom of deceit only added frustration and tediousness to the overall experience.

I still do not know how to beat the king to this day.

I mentionned at the very beginning that a very basic assumption to make is that each path would lead to a star. In my opinion, it is a design flaw that this isn't the case OR that one of the path is completely useless.

You could argue that I didn't explore the spawn enough, but I probably would have if only 3 paths were present, rendering this assumption impossible to make.

I see true potential in this level, it's really unfortunate.