Nice stuff, the art design and music elevate it quite a bit, the 1st level is still pretty beautiful to this day imo. The later stages don't have quite the same impact except until maybe the last level. The bosses are pretty good, liked the 4th stage boss a lot but the 5th stage boss was kind of annoying, died on it quite a few times until I learned zooming in the camera gives you a better view on his projectiles. Sometimes feels like things move a little too fast to be reasonably reacted to at this frame rate but it's manageable.
Awesome game, gameplay feels a lot smoother than the first game with the better frame rate and analogue aiming. the balance between the regular shot and the lock on feels better cause of the regular shot building metre for the berserk attack.The multiple routes through stages was also a cool addition and the boss fights are pretty sick. The final one was pretty awesome, really felt like a dragon on dragon dogfight.
Great stuff, really enjoyed the cast and it's definitely up there with the Persona games in that regard. I liked how the game handled a lot of the political questions. Some of it felt a little cartoonish but it did pose some interesting questions. Like with Bardon's follower story where his good intention to keep people safe leads to him overstepping and restricting peoples freedom and then learning to reel back.
The combat is quite good. The way the archetype system works gives you a decent amount of flexibility in how you build your party and I felt most skills and archetypes came in handy at certain points. Biggest problems I had were with the final stretch of the calendar and the final boss. Once you've wrapped up all of the follower storylines and finished most of the sidequests (which I did when there was 14 days left on the calendar) It feels like there's little to do other than beat your head against the Dragon towers.The final boss just has way too much health imo. It would've been nice to have a mana refill on the second stage cause I ran out for the protag and had to slowly chip away at the boss for what felt like half an hour.
This game has a pretty perfect sense of pace, seems like it knows almost exactly when what you're currently doing is getting stale and how to change it up. The seamless co-op is also a cool feature, it's not huge but having another person there at the big moments just makes it a little more memorable.
Pushes things even further compared to Zwei. Boss fights feel harder and more complex with the boost/break system adding more depth to the fights. It starts off good but the second half is awesome. A bunch of really cool locations and bosses.
Kind of a shame I couldn't get into this cause the game has a lot of charm but the gameplay is just a little too slow and kind of dull, there's no reticule for targeting so it's hard to tell if you're actually gonna hit something when shooting. The game is honestly at it's best in the last stage where you don't have to worry about collecting a bunch of energy and searching the stage for people to rescue and you can just speed through it. It's at least very impressive as a 3D showcase for the Saturn, the lighting and fire effects look really great for the system and the environments also look pretty good most of the time.
I think I like these more than the main single player campaign, feels a lot tighter and more like the first game.Sometimes the puzzles feel less like co-op and more like "you solve the puzzle then your partner solves them" though.
If you thought Stormy ascent was too easy this is the game for you. got to the 3rd boss and tapped out. might have one of the worst cameras I've ever experienced in a 3D platformer, game will have you running into the camera while doing insanely precise platforming while being chased so you can't take your time at all.
Definitely an improvement on 64 and Sunshine IMO. I can forgive the somewhat nerfed movement since the game is just way more consistent than those games ever were with way less annoying stars and levels. The larger stage count with there being less stars per stage I think is a better approach.
I like the storybook sections, good way to add some extra story to a Mario game that isn't intrusive on the gameplay and I like Rosalina and the Lumas so a little background on them isn't unwelcome.
my only real major issue with the game is the spin being mapped to a waggle, it's just way too imprecise an input for something the game asks you to do all the time and often with some degree of timing. I don't mind or even like most of the other uses of motion controls in the game, using the pointer for the star bits is way better than using a stick and the other motion based stars like the ray surfing or running on the ball are fine.
Yeah as people have mentioned at this point this is based off of Sigma and not OG 2 albeit with a few changes to bring it closer to the original like restored gore and bringing the upgrade system more in line with original. I still do think it's a good game but it's unfortunately not the definitive version of NG2 and it loses points for that.
This is just a paste job of the posts I've made on twitter gaming thread and Backloggd, I think the plan in the future is to halt the gaming thread and just post on here and backloggd in future. I need to figure out navigation though