Dev/Publisher: Image & Form Games
Gameplay Stats: 13 hours, game completed, 31/34 achievements
I had an itch for a Metroidvania, imagine that! I don't own any that I am particularly looking forward to at the moment, so I decided to check this one out that I'd been gifted a while ago. I played the first game a few years ago and walked away with slightly positive feelings, let's check out this one and see if I feel the same!
Graphics: This game looks very similar to the previous one. Some hand drawn sprites over a grid based game world is what it feels like. The characters and the civilizations do look pretty cool, but I think the large underground areas where you spend the most time look very plain. I suppose that's to communicate to the player well? But it doesn't really seem like there's much to communicate. The enemies also get very same-y. I think there's about 6 maybe in the game. I think the graphics/style are pretty serviceable here but I was not blown away nor impressed by pretty much anything that I saw. The game straddles old west and steampunk themes in a way that doesn't do favors to either style in my opinion. Some game areas have a temple theme and they do look pretty neat though.
Audio: The music here is just fine. I kinda liked it the first few times I heard each track repeat and then pretty quickly switched to podcasts. I think the real issue here is the sound effects. They are super repetitive and a little grating. I get that swinging a pickaxe probably doesn't produce a satisfying sound in real life, but I'd like for the sound to be a bit nicer in a game. The same-y enemies remain same-y here as well. I really wasn't impressed with the sounds/sound design here and switched to podcasts.
Plot: This game picks up pretty quickly on the heels of the first game. You are Rusty's (former protagonist) niece(?) Dot and you set off into some mines to try and find him. You meet a weird cast of characters in the town that don't seem to have much going on apart from encouraging you to go into the mine. When you arrive in the town they seem to be in the middle of some kind of crises but that plot line is very quickly dropped when you get access to the mine. The final plot of the game ends up around a robot doomsday cult and some fanatical humans which is pretty fun, but I really felt like I walked into a situation ready to boil over, there wasn't much raising of stakes or anything.
Game play: The meat of any metroidvania! Does this game play well? I think the platforming is pretty good to be honest. One of the late game feats is to go through a temple of challenges, each highlighting a particular aspect of the game's mechanics. I thought it was really fun! And some of them were especially difficult. I was honestly impressed with the depths of the movement mechanics which matched with how disappointed I was feeling with the movement in the main game. Many of the tools you need to finish the challenges aren't explained or even touched on in the main game. I kind of hope the devs here make a pure platforming game. I think the digging part of the game was pretty lackluster, but this end game challenge worked well.
Overall I wasn't too impressed with this game. It's a weird incremental game and I think those games just aren't for me. I don't seem to get the same satisfaction from watching numbers go up slightly that many people do when they aren't anchored to a gameplay loop that I find satisfying. I was really impressed with the depth of the movement in the challenge temple thing at the end, but I don't think the rest of the game really spoke to any of that in the other dozen hours I spent with the game.
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