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S5 Candidate Review - randalleatscheese

6/21 BSRS - ~6 seeds, 1 race (weekly)

What I Like:

Mostly the same things I liked in BS and RS, while I'm not as happy with BSRS combined these things are still positive to me

- Open warps. Much wider scope in what you can do and is an interesting challenge on how to best navigate the level and clears, especially early
- Happy with keeping the Green/Red slam and Snide rewards from RS. Also reducing it to 8 rewards in pool fixed the weird Snide 9-16 hinting deal, which I view as a plus

What I Dislike:

- Cutting 1.9 shopkeepers, shockwave, and camera makes the early game such a slog. The amount of seeds where you boot in then go to the Level 1 entrance item since there's nothing to do is too high for my taste. Also makes the GB curve too exaggerated, where we'll generally go 3-4 levels at single digit GB blockers then all of a sudden we actually have the Kongs and moves to farm so the game thinks we're going in at >20 GBs. Not to mention how slow it is to actually clear early levels, when you're just traversing the entirety of every level (worse yet if it's a Climbing heavy level) and unable to do any of the checks you're peeking
- I was interested in higher "full" medal amounts heading into BSRS. Not feeling it anymore. Problem is the best time to take advantage of it is at the beginning of a seed, where extra GBs are that much more important for level entry and your GB curve, but at that point there's far too few moves for you to actually get that many CBs. Looks like the devs made it possible to run custom spots rather than specifically half, so could 35-55 or 40-60 be on the menu? Also wouldn't mind 40-50 and factor the 50 CB check into the GB curve
- Furthermore, I still want to rename half medals in hints, it's not even like the "full" medal is a real check anyways. Can we just hint the actual check as a medal and either give the super CB farm item a different name or just not call it the "medal?"
- Helm stars still suck. Pulling the Helm minigames also just makes the entirety of the Helm trip feel really unrewarding. I can't believe I'm saying this (I never got good at this), but I miss lining up for the Helm cutscene skips from actually completing Helm rooms.
- Still not a fan of the Japes random warp being a 50/50 on locking out half the level. The coconut/peanut gate switches are also weird, but when it comes to Grape, if we want it to become a real move, why neuter it half the time? Crazy as it sounds I kinda want to run S5 on vanilla level spawns, even if for Castle in particular it is absolute hell without climbing for the center hub

How I'd Minmax This Preset:

- Replace Helm stars with 1 Helm room with 2 minigames. Brings back the cutscene skip without (necessarily) reintroducing the 2 instruments to key 8 problem of cluttering hints
- Run 2 shopkeeper starts again, don't entirely mind Shockwave and Camera pulled but would prefer getting 1 of them as well. Especially with Jetpac pulled we can get away with pulling Cranky from time to time

Conclusion:

Combining BS and RS just didn't feel good in all honesty. I'm still more leaning towards BS, but frankly would rather run S5 with single BS or single RS than combined BSRS. Not sure what really went wrong in combining the 2 presets since they're honestly both S4-adjacent. As it stands right now, I would be happy to play BSRS as shipped if we roll with this as S5, flaws and all. Personal opinion, what I would consider ideal for S5 would probably be BS with Dos Doors and Snide rewards. Worst case we roll with GVM2, and I end up just going back to Scrubs 2 and/or PSR. Been a pretty long (year+?) break from Let's Go at this point anyways lol

6/14 GVM2 - didn't have time so I skipped this and focused on RS this week

Conclusion (super brief, trying to keep up with hearsay since I didn't actually play this):

Sounds like a lot of GVM1's problems actually got mitigated with this version. Still don't want this as a seasonal preset but I at least feel somewhat vindicated in saying I think GVM can stick as a different style of preset.

6/14 RS - ~6 seeds, all offline (no races or asyncs)

What I Like:

- Personal hot take, I like the low CB medals. Still have to decide whether to farm for bosses, but for the most part it's back to you mostly don't want to check bosses or farm CBs. Especially in current RS, that goes a long way due to the sheer amount of checks you go through (more on that below)
- I mostly don't mind the extra starting Kong and extra starting moves. Better chance at immediately useful moves, and frankly, any amount of help goes a long way in this preset. My one concern with it is you get 1 fewer "Free Kongs" endpoint for hints, which kills quite a bit of positive and negative information, especially if any Kongs are actually Sphere 0 (which happens a lot in these settings!)
- L5 green slam, L6 red slam. Slam either ors are dumb and a waste of time. Haven't fully wrapped my head around how much more often you actually have to pick up slams yet, but frankly that beats an either or where nothing locks both slams, or even worse, if 1 item locks both items but through really deep paths that I can't piece together
- Snide rewards. Makes blueprint turn ins really interesting, also the one time I rolled a Kong and shopkeeper in Snide was really weird in the hints. Okay that might not actually be a positive experience but that's still fine to me

What I Dislike:

- Even hotter take on medals than above, I think it's tacky to call everything "Half Medals" in hints. Considering a lot of this whole rainbow coins on medals gimmick is designed to be extremely ignorable, I'd rather just call the actual check the medal then call it a rainbow coin instead of a medal check or something.
- Feels weird to have a seed gimmick that is so ignorable in rainbow coins on 55 CB "medals." I understand raising shop prices introduces a whole lot of problems with logically requiring getting medals for money and seed lockouts, but without that, why would anyone do the whole gimmick of this preset?
- So much junk. Feels very unrewarding to farm when there's so many checks, and therefore so many useless items. While I don't mind getting more Kongs and moves to start with, that seems like a temporary stopgap, and you still have the same problems with needing to send it on so many checks.
- A possible solution to the junk problem is to pull holdables back out of the item pool. Didn't think we needed to give Chunky/Barrels even more power anyways. Likely need to pull a starting move or Kong if we do fix the junk problem, which would be fine with me
- Barrier closure changes. I get trying to turn Grape into a real move but similar to BS with Japes, feel like locking shipyard outskirts behind it might be overdoing it a bit. Bringing a complaint back from GVM1, I don't like random spawns and the Sax pad in Aztec. Either consistently lock the level or consistently unlocked. My main issue with Caves punch walls is hint accessibility but I think I can warm up to those walls coming back since I'm pretty sure that's common between all the presets. Forest Funky being immediately accessible is a weird thing I'm not 100% onboard with for whatever it's worth
- Helm stars. Making Grab a real move feels weird, but I'm kinda okay with that. (No microhint for it kinda sucks though.) My problem with it is just that the Helm stars pop up in random spots that are incredibly unintuitive. I get that's part of the deal with randomized puzzles, but then, motorboat stars aren't random, what does that do to be in fixed locations?
- Climbing/shopkeeper shuffle 1. Just not a fan of climbing shuffle at all (see GVM1 thoughts below), but what I'll point out here is Climbing is hintable as a starting item, but not the shopkeepers. Maybe they shouldn't be in the same shuffle restriction in that case?

How I'd Minmax this Preset:

My main minmax is a bit radical, and also kills what makes RS RS. Unlike with GVM, I do think there is something to work with for a seasonal preset here, and changing RS to something else entirely may actually be worth a shot.

- Just an overall overhaul of the medals and rainbow coins. Reduce the number of rainbow coins to lower than whatever they normally are in presets and shuffle them back into the actual item pool, do 1 set of medal checks (preferably low CB like the current RS half medals but I completely understand 45/50/55/etc CB medals). Kinda helps mitigate the heavy junk problem, rainbow coins still feel like junk past like 3 of them, but at least they let you do something with them
- Keep Snide rewards but rework it so the hints actually cover them instead of a 1-8 set and a 9-16 set that's effectively 9-10. I'd be fine with reducing the pool to 1-8 (2 fewer junk options!) or increasing the hint coverage to 1-10. Weirder option is reducing hint coverage to 1-5 and 6-10, for whatever it's worth I'm pretty sure we do have hint regions that small right? (Forest center and beanstalk, Mush ex come to mind)
- Saying this yet again, please let us have Climbing. Please please please don't put Climbing shuffle in S5. (If we get BS, I'll begrudgingly accept it though)
- Either turn Helm stars into motorboat stars or pull it. Dumb quality of life downgrade we have done without, and can do without once more

Conclusion:

This mostly feels like S4 to me, which for all of its many faults, I'd be okay with. Still prefer BS more, but I would be okay with RS as a S5 preset, ideally with less junk to deal with. Sounds like the plan is to merge BSRS for V2, which I'll be keeping an eye on. Curious what makes it from both presets outside of warps on...

6/1 BS - ~8 seeds, mostly offline (1 race, 1 async)

What I Like:

- Opening all warps. Significantly opens the map and forces many new routing decisions. Also makes Climbing shuffle kinda work for once without just giga locking the seed
- 2026 cops. Most of them are still impactful enough that I'd want to kill them (been punished a few times by no jumping, forced onto a single Kong, etc) but I don't have that sense of dread that I just giga threw when I get caught
- Diving start. Feels like we're getting a lot more of early Galleon levels, and with warps on, that actually feels playable now... In all honesty I think Diving may need rebalancing (shuffle it back in or at least 50/50 it with like Shockwave or something) with how much I would like to open levels up further (or at least make them more consistent) below but that's a tradeoff I think I'd be willing to make
- Hint screen lockout. Kinda wouldn't mind a longer lockout but I was never a screenshotter and I was always pretty slow with hints. Also good that later hint batches don't have a lockout since you're looking for more particular information (and many times... not getting it... more on that below)

What I Dislike:

- I never liked Jetpac, but it feels so excessive at 10 medals. I understand wanting to make it absolutely out of the way, but it just makes it unfun to track and grind for. Random platforms in the minigame are also disgusting, but I guess that's just part of having Jetpac in the first place...
- Progressive hints with the current crown setup are incredibly hit or miss on getting you the information you need at the right time. I don't like the current hint spread, which makes the crown grind feel unrewarding and if I'm missing a Kong (already had a Kong on a Helm medal), it feels worse since I might not be able to even grind my way to the hints I can actually use.
- Similarly, with 5.1 hinting a lot of info is just barely registering. I've had a PTT to 4 hint where I luckily first locationed Madjack, Shockwave to 4 & 7 hint I was never gonna solve because it locked all branches of Key 7 on a medal. There's a lot of poorly hinted or casino checks right now, and opening warps, despite all the good, also magnifies that problem since so much more of the game is open at all times
- Keys 5&6 start. Kinda liked digging for the multi level access keys, which to be fair we still have in Key 2. Also introduces the weird situation of ~28% of the time only having 2 levels to logically access. Generally would rather it consistently be 2 lobbies early or 3, which S4 admittedly also didn't do. Something like S4's 2&6 or a 3&4 situation makes sense to me as a suggestion
- I'm kinda over 50 CB medals. Yes, opening warps spices medals up a bit compared to S4, but frankly it still feels tired and particularly unfun to decide on getting the medal or skipping (castle dk and tiny medals in particular, burn minutes of your time on sightseeing or get demolished over sphere 0?). I would like it lowered to 40 or 45, but if half medals will continue to be in the pool, I kinda wouldn't mind raising the medal thresholds. 55 is the main number I see the community raising, but may I raise a meme number in 64?
- Not sure if I'm actually against this, but I haven't really warmed up to half medals yet. At least for BS the actual medal checks are full on medals so we don't get tacky half medal hints like in RS
- Not particularly big on Japes coconut doors, especially since they're no longer on coconut at all. I can understand trying to balance Grape into an actual move (which RS also tries) but it just feels like bad practice to lock half the level behind 1 move (admittedly one of many Coconut problems in S4). Already had a disgusting seed where I needed peanut to go to Hive Tunnel then basically reverse clear to get barrels (which was a deep lock for Grape to circle back for Hunky on an unhinted free diddy) on the Kasplats by walking through the hive tunnel 1-way door. Similar to my thoughts on Aztec in GVM, I also don't like how this combos with random spawn points to sometimes lock half of the level and sometimes be a mere inconvenience on clearing the painting hill Kasplat. Don't know the odds but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even close to 50% unlike the Aztec lock, but still not a fan either way

How I'd Minmax this Preset:

- Lower Jetpac to 8 or pull it. Also pull it from the bonus barrel pool
- Go back to 5.0 scouring hints and/or go back to dos doors. Information is already hard enough to come by in seasonal presets (see S4), so I'd want hints to be more accessible or at least more informative. Easiest option is dos doors since we know it mostly works from S4, and open warps also smooths over some of last season's worst locked hints, especially owl tree
- Unlock Tiny Temple. Diving start admittedly would trivialize simplify all the checks past the water, but I don't like locking the checks more (slam, peanut, guitar, also just a really finicky tightrope to walk) in a preset based on making checks more accessible.
- Unlock the Japes coconut doors again. Personally I'd rather leave Japes as a mostly open level than have Galleon takes its place in that spot

Conclusion:

Overall a great concept to open all warps, solid execution too (treasure room door stands out but it's already been acknowledged as a design mistake and it's easily fixable). My main gripe with this preset, similar to RS later on, has to do with 5.1 hinting, but that's a problem all 3 candidates share. When it comes to preset-specific thoughts I have, I think I'd just like to open levels up further or at least be more consistent on what is open and what is not.

While we're all over the place when it comes to jets and casinos, I do think BS would probably be the base I'd use if I were to craft a S5 preset out of the 3 candidates. I think the devs are really trying to force climbing shuffle into S5, and while I can understand that sounding interesting, after playing it for the first time in these 3 candidates, I can only see myself begrudgingly accepting/playing that if packaged with BS's all warps open since that greatly softens the blow.

5/20 GVM - 2.333 offline seeds (genned a 3rd seed and quit about 40 min in since late and lack of progression)

What I Like:

- Open lobbies are cool. Radically changes how to approach routing which level to go to.
- Shuffling Helm into the level pool is really interesting, personally I didn't gen a seed that entered Helm early but it's cool to have it as potentially crucial early for Kongs and/or items.
- I'm glad we're trying some really experimental formats for candidates. This is the time to be throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, and all in all this is a really cool change of pace from traditional DK64R. It sounds like I'm grasping at straws for something nice to say with this comment, but I genuinely do appreciate the effort at a radically different way to play DK64R, and GVM is a genuinely interesting end product of this offseason activity.

What I Dislike:

My main issue with GVM is that it feels like I'm playing the spoiler log rather than solving the seed logic. Multiple people have voiced that there's minimal value, if any at all, in getting the hints that the DK64R community have refined over years, as it is better to just brute force checks for vials than brute force checks for hints that are likely already accounted for. And in my experience, I haven't truly solved a GVM seed's logic yet as in the complex pathing, just rather brute forced levels until I can reasonably say there's nothing WOTH left in that level.

Something that isn't even personal to me, the closest thing to a guide on how to play GVM in the community right now has nothing to do with gameplay, but rather a 500 word essay on how to read the spoiler log without opening the seed. Is this DK64R, or is this DK64R: The Spoiler Log we're playing and trying to improve at?

Ultimately I do not think it is rewarding to finish a seed, since these settings are so grindy and reward brute forcing and full clearing more than actually piecing together logical bread crumbs from the slowest hint system we've ever gotten.

- These settings are really slow. Progression is few and far between in the early game, and spoiler points only go so far in the early game since often times I can't get anything in the levels (notably climbing levels, bad Aztec spawns, Galleon, etc.). Just feel like it's a slog grinding GBs and casino checks until you somehow luck into an item or just grind your way to do the exact same thing in another level. And frankly it doesn't feel rewarding by the time I've picked anything up or finished the seed, since I just spent an hour+ just brute forcing the few checks I have.
- This is my first time playing settings that shuffle Climbing into the move pool. It's genuinely horrible. My 3 seeds have had the following hints: Climbing->124568F, Jetpac->135678F, Hive Tunnel->AllF. I posted a no context screenshot of the Jetpac hint in particular and immediately, another person in the community correctly guessed Climbing with no other context. For all the memes about S4 Coconut, this is so much worse. It locks so freaking much of the game that starting without it immediately destroys the playability of a third of GVM seeds from the start, and it's even more doomed if you don't/can't start in the level Climbing is in. Also, the hints I listed below felt like negative info rather than positive info regarding climbing; instead of piecing Kongs or keys together, I immediately wrote the missing keys as Sphere 0 keys.
- Krusha is not a good Kong to pilot. In fact, Krusha is not even a Kong. Krusha sucks and does not need to be a playable character, let alone a randomized playable character.
- These settings are really difficult on top of slow. I don't mind harder seasonal presets, but I will not participate in races, especially not a beta bracket, thinking my chances at winning just boil down to if I can brute force my checks faster than my opponents.

How I'd Minmax This Preset:

Going to be honest, I don't think any amount of minmaxing GVM will interest me enough to play this as a seasonal preset, as it is fundamentally a slow preset that plays in the spoiler log more than in game. Taking the power out of the spoiler log and bringing it back to the hints would strip GVM of its identity, and at that point that's not worth changing GVM. That being said, here are some ideas I have on minmaxing GVM.

- Take Climbing out of the random pool, remove a sphere nobody asked for in their hints. In place, 2 of Climbing/Shockwave/Camera can just be 1 of Shockwave/Camera, it's simpler and frankly, the 2 moves sorta balance each other out unlike Climbing.
- Remove Krusha, let Kongs be Kongs.
- Put Blocker barrier numbers in the spoiler log and remove the early game inconvenience of having to take the long journey to some lobbies just to not be able to enter the level.
- Personal preference and probably a hot take in the DK64R community, I don't mind closing as much of the game as GVM does (notably Aztec), but I would want it to be consistently closed by getting rid of random spawns and using vanilla spawns.

Conclusion:

I think GVM is a cool challenge mode preset, and for all that it's worth, I actually can see myself playing this as a one off - provided I set aside 3+ hours and mentally prepare myself for an insane challenge. There is a very real chance I will never learn how to truly solve GVM seeds and whenever I play, I'll just be brute forcing checks until I basically 100% the seed.

Judging from community opinion, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't see any chance that GVM will make it as the S5 preset. I do genuinely hope GVM sticks as a radically different style of DK64R, a challenge mode of sorts. That being said, I am ready for the next S5 candidate.