A slightly more SPOILER-rich opinion of the revamp

[some guy]

I got inclined to post my own thoughts on the update after looking at shark's post and decided to put everything on a post instead of yap and dump in the replies.

As the title suggests, I will be a slight bit more liberal with the spoilers, so please don't make me responsible if you read something you didnt wanna.

I'm probably gonna be a glazer here cause I really did enjoy everything after playing though the main game on a new save. Some things more than others but theres barely anything I would call "bad" per se.

Levels

Prelude probably had the biggest facelift along side Gluttony, and it probably has some of the best additions for details and such. I also was joyed to see 0-S was overhauled too, and is probably one of my favorite reworks out of both the layer and the update.

Limbo was quite good, I really liked 1-2 and 1-3's skyboxes (especially the sunset ones) and I liked the nice little QoL done in 1-3 to make it easier to go from red path to blue path.

Lust was quite good also, but I think most of the spotlight was on 2-1's cities, which looked fantastic. I also liked the cool additions in 2-2 and 2-3 too.

As I said earlier Gluttony got a drastic update and I think it needed it badly, given how flat it looked originally. All the extra gore and such really makes it cool and much more atmospheric. I didnt do P-1 but I also heard that got a good makeover.

Greed was alright. I noticed that the Heat Wave effects were a bit dividing for people but I think they were fine, and it didnt personally give any sort of impairment or anything. A tune down to make it a bit more subtle might be more beneficial though.

Wrath got a pretty good makeover as well. 5-2 especially looked great and I was also really surprised to see the rework for the Leviathan. Still kind of sucked to fight but I really liked the second phase, it definitely made it a bit more interesting

6-1 of Heresy is hand down one of my favorite revamps. The part where Altars of Apostasy starts playing made my jaw drop personally. I loved the upside down city. It was already a good looking level but that definitely made the outside sections even more lovely, and definitely makes it feel much more like a hell level. I also liked some of the changes in 6-2. I didnt play P-2 but I heard there was barely and change there.

Despite Violence being the standard for the graphics in this update, I definitely loved the changes they still added to some of the levels. The "Feed Them" text in 7-3 made it way more atmospheric and how you can now get literal blood rain in 7-4 after killing the Earthmover was metal as ♥♥♥♥ and also made sense given how much of a beast it was.

0-E, the first of the two new Encore levels, was pretty okay. It was definitely quite maze-y (something brought up in Shark's post) but the encounters were alright. I personally liked the Revamped Cerberus fight. Though I didn't like the Heat meter mechanic. Rubbed me the wrong way to have a constant count down for something like that, especially when you are dealing with a handful of Radiants and also some of the Cooling closets are a little badly placed IMO. Especailly with the one in the staircase room with the Mindflayer, since I was already low on Heat resistance or whatever and needed to get there fast. I effectively just had to do the Mindflayer instakill (Thank god I was only on Standard where that is possible) so that way she wouldnt catch up immediately and try to pummel me as I try to get breathing room.

1-E was definitely my preferred of the two Encores. There was a whole lot more interesting stuff going on and a whole lot more interesting ideas for encounters. I already assumed there was gonna be some "behind the scenes" stuff like in the Limbo Reprise mod, but a lot of the rooms in the second half of the level were really cool. On top of that, the two OST's were extremely banging, and I think the second one is now one of my favorite tracks. The only encounter I had a lot more trouble with was the lava room with the Guttermen. But even then I think it would be okay if only the added a bit more room to land while frantically bouncing from position to position. I still liked all of the encounters, even if they were technically a bit more grindy than 0-E, especially since they had a lot more interesting ideas and puzzles. Definitely became one of my favorite levels out of the whole game now.

In general I still feel very welcome to the two new levels. But that's probably since I've been hungry for content for a while. I was also happy to finally see radiance start to be used in the game outside of cybergrind. Definitely an underrated mechanic for replayability IMO.

Extras

I definitely also liked a bunch of the extra changes to things such as UI. For some reason the "SmileOS" thing for all of the terminals is very splitting but I definitely really liked it, even if I was also a fan of the old, more minimalistic UI from before. Im a big fan of the whole "Chicago Windows/ Windows 9x" style and it still gives that "retro" touch to Ultrakill. I also really liked the new menu and death screen, even if, again, I was used and loved the old UI from before. I especially liked the detail where V1 gets more arms depending on how far you are on your save file.

I also am just fine with the new Feedbacker model. A lot more detailed but I think it just stands out a lot more since the other arms still have original models. But I only think that the Knuckleblaster (My Beloved) is in need of such an update though.

The new environmental effects are cool. I didn't need them but I would be a liar if I said I didnt like the new particles and sounds. Its all sorta just there.

I think the only real problem I had was with the new arm fatigue. Probably fine for the Feedbacker but the new fatigue also makes the Knuckleblaster (My Beloved) suffer, and its already an item that people consider to be less than satisfactory. Hopefully that gets buffed back up soon for just the KB.

All in all, I was really happy about this update. Even if it strays a bit further away from the "lo-fi" aesthetic, the new graphics updates are amazing and help UK establish essentially its own cool style IMO, making a mix of both lo and hi fidelity art styles. All the new content was super fun too, even if there were some lows. This Update definitely marks the endstages of development in my head, and only makes me excited to see what comes next now that they're finally working on Fraud. May or may not edit this post if I end up going into some other things like the P-Sanctums and the rest of the secret levels but this is all I gotta say for now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[<#76428a>Sharkbilby]

I really appreciate how you go more in depth on the encores, smileOS, etc. I may not agree with everything, but having so many perspectives makes the good easier to find in the bad.

[some guy]

Originally posted by Sharkbilby:

I really appreciate how you go more in depth on the encores, smileOS, etc. I may not agree with everything, but having so many perspectives makes the good easier to find in the bad.

Glad to see youre open to others opinions. I think its a all around great update even if theres things that the community is sort of split on.