2D Platformers / Metroidvanias

Finished: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, and Shantae Half-Genie Hero. Now I intended to wait for the next Steam sale, but surely I can't be expected to wait for over 4 days? What am I, some superhero with superhuman patience or something? So I bought them on CDkeys for €7 and €9 respectively.


Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

The third and by many accounts the best Shantae game, so I was really looking forward to it, but I must say I was a little disappointed. I found it only marginally better than the much less popular predecessor Risky's Revenge, and even that is mainly because Pirate's Curse is actually a full-size game, not because I had more fun playing it.

Some say this is a real metroidvania compared to the other games. This is true in the case of your abilities, as the trademark dances and animal transformations are entirely replaced with typical metroidvania upgrades like speed boost and double jump, and you even have a pistol. It's not true in terms of world structure, as it introduces separate islands (each consisting of a mini-overworld and a dungeon) accessed by a level select screen--in this regard it's even less of a metroidvania than its predecessors, which had somewhat linear but still fully interconnected overworlds.

First the good. Graphics and style are the same as in Risky's Revenge, which is to say they're great. While I don't care much about story, I still found it the most interesting in the series. I think the overall size of the game is just right, as opposed to Risky's Revenge which was barely half the size, and to the original game which was actually smaller than Pirate's Curse but horribly stretched out for what it was.

An annoying thing in both those games was the frequent stop-and-go when you had to transform a lot, which slowed the game down to a halt much too often. Removing transformations entirely eliminated that issue, resulting in a refreshingly brisker overall pace. Another thing that helps the pace is that you get the speed boost early in the game, which makes traversing/backtracking through some of the levels a lot faster. Not all of them, not even most of them, but still it's welcome where it works.

Now the middling. Combat also feels pretty much the same as in Risky's Revenge, which means it's very basic. Most enemies are "fought" by standing next to them and whipping away until they're dead. Well, some of them require ducking, which is as far as strategy goes for most of them, only a few involve any meaningful dodging. Most of the island overworlds are very linear and the dungeons felt a little empty. Overall, just like Risky's Revenge, I never felt like the gameplay was great, just alright.

I'm also undecided if I actually prefer the no-transformations ability style. On one hand I appreciate the increase in speed and quality of life, on the other hand it feels like there's something missing, like some core part of the series' identity is removed and replaced with some identikit metroidvania stuff.

The bad: quite a few sections in the game are pretty tedious. There's a section carrying another character which I found just pointless and endlessly stretched out, there's one of those awful prison escape sections where you go all the way back to your cell if you're spotted, and there's two other island overworlds that I found just a chore. Risky's Revenge had some tedious parts too, but there was much less of it in my opinion.

There's a lot of backtracking again, and that tends to be tedious too. Very linear levels and boring combat don't help this, and in fact I think the increased size of the game backfires here. Risky's Revenge also made you backtrack a lot, but the world was much smaller and even so it had a lot of warp points so you never had to go that far, resulting in considerably less tedium.

And finally, in most of the Shantae games a different game mode is unlocked once you finish it. In the case of Risky's Revenge one that makes you take twice damage but use half magic, essentially some sort of challenge mode that encourages you to play differently and is interesting enough for another playthrough. Sadly, Pirate's Curse only has Pirate mode which just gives you all abilities from the start, which means you get a cheat mode instead of a challenge mode. I played through anyway but still I'm not sure what the point is and it left me disappointed because it's a step back even from Risky's Revenge.

So as I said, overall I found this just minimally better than Risky's Revenge, having more positives but also more negatives. It ends up with the same official score, but think of it as something like 6.4 and 6.6, respectively. Playthrough time (completionist): 8:30 hours.

6.5/10


Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Ultimate Edition

The least metroidvany of the Shantae games, ditching any open world structure in favour of linear levels. There is some exploration to be done within the levels as there's a ton of stuff to find using your ever-growing arsenal of transformations, but generally every level consists of three successive sections mostly from left to right, a boss fight and that's it. No dungeons here, just six semi-exploratory classic action platformer levels that are revisited a lot.

Which is frankly pretty minimalist, and I suspect the reason is the move to 2.5D-style graphics with 3D backgrounds which was probably far more costly than the full 2D style of the other games. I believe that's why the successor Seven Sirens had 2D backgrounds again, not by artistic choice but by necessity because that game is pretty huge. Anyway, Half-Genie Hero tries to squeeze as much as it can out of those six levels and does a fairly good job at it in my opinion. It's not 100% satisfactory but it could be worse.

What really helps is that A) the levels are more condensed with less of the filler that plagued other Shantae games, and B) the action is a good step up from Pirate's Curse, with more engaging platforming and combat. That makes at least partially up for the constant revisiting of the same few places. A warp dance that lets you jump around between the sections of any previously finished level is another nice quality of life feature that reduces backtracking ache.

Animal transformations are back, but this time the most important forms are accessed in a fraction of a second, which makes the whole thing much less of a hassle. A very good change, now the series has back this core part of its identity but it's much more enjoyable to use than it used to be.

There are still a few sections that I don't like, notably two chute slide sections, a vertical escape section and some jumping around on magic carpets. Oh, and mouse form can go to hell. But still, there's less tedium than in most of the other games if you ask me.

Thanks to the more condensed fun there's more replay value, especially thanks to different modes. One is a challenge mode that makes enemies more aggressive, it's still not that hard but can get frantic, and would you believe it, can even get some adrenaline flowing in places.

The other is the Risky Boots DLC, which retains the game structure with revisiting and exploring levels, finding upgrades and so on, but you're playing as Risky who instead of transformations mostly uses the abilities from Pirate's Curse. The game starts a little harder, but as you get more and more upgrades you can get pretty overpowered later. Still it was fun and worth a playthrough even if you're going repeatedly through the same few stages again.

Sadly the other DLCs aren't good, ranging from underwhelming (ninja mode) to godawful (beach mode). Ninja mode is the only one I found just barely worth a playthrough and that took just one hour, because all of these modes are purely linear without even revisiting any previous level.

In the end, after the main game I'd have given it 7/10 but challenge and Risky modes elevated that to 7.5. The other DLCs are so poor that they almost led to point deduction again, but I think I'll just ignore them here and rate what good there is. Playthrough time (base game, normal mode, completionist): 6:30 hours.

7.5/10


With all Shantae games completed, here's my final ranking:

1. Seven Sirens - 8/10*
2. Half-Genie Hero - 7.5/10
3. Pirate's Curse - 6.5/10
4. Risky's Revenge - 6.5/10
5. Shantae - 4/10

*score adjusted by +0.5 after second playthrough

Wonder Boy 4 was always my favourite. I enjoyed the remake of Dragon’s Trap but it feels weird have 8 bit controls on the modern cartoon graphics since it doesn’t behave the way a modern platformer would.


Nice Contra type affair here

simple Prison City has a demo on Steam, and tbh I found it so-so. One thing I found pretty annoying is how big and bold your projectiles are, which meant whenever I was firing at an enemy I couldn't see if and when they fired at me.

Finished: Mega Man Zero series

The Zero/ZX Legacy Collection was on Steam sale for 10 euros (and still is until 28/11), so I decided to dive in. These are Game Boy Advance games made by Inti Creates (who'd later make games like Mega Man 9, Blaster Master Zero and the Gunvolt series) following the lightsaber-wielding Zero known from the Mega Man X series, set 100 years after the events of that series.

Zero is great to control, fast and very responsive, to the point that he almost makes X feel a little slow. These games are meant to be played fast and aggressively--as opposed to the slow and methodical Classic MM; MMX feels like it's exactly in the middle--and they give you the tools to do so. He also dual-wields, letting you use two different weapons at any time without using any menu, which I love. I recommend to change the control type in the pause menu, by default the second button acts as a selector of sorts, the one that just turns it into a second fire button is best, not least because it allows you to charge both weapons simultaneously.

What's also great is that you can mix & match weapons, simply assigning two out of four weapons to the two buttons. I like the default of primary buster and secondary saber, but you can play differently e.g. by using primary saber and secondary shield. Speaking of which, each game gives you the buster, the saber, the shield, and a fourth weapon that changes in each game and is also used for utility (except in the first one). However I don't really understand why they kept the shield in every game because I generally found it the least useful and ended up almost never using it.

Don't expect a myriad of radically different weapons though like in Classic/X, the buster remains just the buster, the only modification is that you can give your charged attacks elemental damage of fire, ice, or thunder. I'm perfectly fine with this, but if that's one of the main draws of the other series, one might be disappointed here.

This series has a reputation for being incredibly difficult, to which I say... yes and no. I'd rather call it uneven, with very easy parts being right next to some nasty difficulty spikes. Generally, most of the difficulty comes from boss fights, most of the stages actually tend to be relatively easy compared to the other series. Also, you can get incredibly strong with permanent upgrades, but without using any (which you get a higher "score" for) it's nightmare mode.

Upgrades are mostly done using "Cyber-Elves" and I strongly recommend to look up how they (and other mechanics) work on the internet before playing each game. It's very important to understand and not explained in the games, and much of it not even in the original manuals.

On the negative side, inevitably the games suffer from screen crunch due to the paltry 240x160 resolution. Some games are better adjusted than others with their level and enemy design, but it's always an issue. Going back to the SNES' MMX (256x224) is a relief especially thanks to the increase in vertical screen space, and it's always something I wish for in the Zero games, I believe every game would have got a full point more from me.

There's also a lot of story, and I mean a LOT. Many seem to think it's amazing, but frankly, personally I don't give a shit. I find the whole story part of the X series among the most uninteresting in all of gaming, and that extends to the Zero games, only there's a lot more of it here.

And finally, Inti Creates has a habit of having a million ideas for mechanics and changes, and cramming as many of them into their games as they can, often without rhyme or reason. Just see what sticks, if it turns out shit we'll just fix it in the next game. This leads to many poor design choices and mistakes of the sort that can be avoided if you just think for 5 seconds about what you're doing. There certainly are good ideas, but also a lot of baffling bad ones, and especially the first one suffers from this.


Mega Man Zero

As described above, the core gameplay is good and some boss fights can be pretty fun.

But oh my God, all the bad ideas here. First, there are no continues. You have to juggle save games instead. It's such a pointless change that just makes everything more cumbersome, even encouraging you to reload savegames after finishing a level because you lost two lives. Another mechanic is that you can give up on a mission, which means it's failed and you can't revisit it or get the mission reward, like a new weapon or an element upgrade. For what reason, I don't know.

You can learn new weapon techniques by using those weapons a lot, if you want to get them early you'll have to grind. It's not that bad but also somewhat pointless. What's worse is that you need a fuckton of money to buy permanent upgrades, and if you want a lot of them you'll have to grind for literally hours. It takes longer than the rest of actually playing! Why?? Oh, and the best spot for grinding money and weapons XP becomes inaccessible halfway through the game. Have fun grinding even longer, and have fun listening to the same 4-second loop of "soundtrack" for hours.

Thanks to the reputation of difficulty, I did try to get and use as many upgrades as I could find, which actually turned me into an unstoppable tank towards the end. The first boss is a nasty difficulty spike, and playing this way he's actually the hardest boss in the game.

Upgrade descriptions can be pretty cryptic, e.g. one says "I help you in the danger zone" or something like that. Turns out it covers all death spikes in the game with walkable blocks, turning levels into baby mode which I wouldn't have used if I had known what it does. I tried to avoid them anyway just so that it plays a little more normal.

Levels are very short, very basic and are even reused. It feels like Inti went for the minimum they could get away with and so the levels tend to feel like a bit of filler between boss fights. Many missions involve time limits, which I don't like at all. One mission has you escort a wounded limping soldier back to base. It's not even hard as there's hardly anything happening in the stage, it's just extremely slow and pointless. That's exactly what I mean with the baffling ideas put in without thought, why design a game to be as fast-paced as Sonic and then slow it down like that for no reason whatsoever?

Also, unskippable dialogue after checkpoints. And the soundtrack is mostly bad imo. Little is done to make up for screen crunch, quite a few leaps of faith actually.

All in all, it's a shame. It's promising, it gets so much right in terms of core gameplay, but it has so many fundamental flaws that I honestly think the negative outweighs the positive. It's a start, but it's also a mess.

5/10


Mega Man Zero 2

They listened and fixed a lot of the first game's mistakes. Continues are back, grinding has been reduced significantly, no more stupid escort missions, no more failing missions, dialogue isn't repeated after checkpoints, and so on. There are more levels, they are longer, mostly better designed and aren't revisited all the time. They're uneven, some levels are great and some are shit--but even the bad ones feel like they actually tried to make good levels instead of just filler.

The new weapon is a bionic arm/whip type which can be used to access previously unreachable places. On one hand this is an improvement over the triple rod in the first game which was hardly more than an alternative melee weapon, on the other hand it's clunky and unreliable to use for the utility part, nowhere near as good as e.g. the whip in Castlevania 4. Thankfully, this is rarely really required.

Difficulty is kind of messy again, with insane bosses alternating with ones that are pathetic pushovers. And there's a bit of an over-reliance on multi-screen boss arenas with lots of off-screen attacks. Soundtrack is a little bit better, but still kind of sucks imo.

This time I went for fewer upgrades and actually used up a continue in the last stage (the obligatory gauntlet). Thankfully the last boss wasn't much of a problem, so I didn't have to redo the gauntlet after beating it the first time.

Overall, still far from perfect but a massive improvement. Basically the game that Zero 1 should have been.

7/10


Mega Man Zero 3

The fan favourite, and I absolutely agree, again it improves on almost everything. Better levels, better soundtrack, better boss fights (if still uneven in terms of difficulty). The new weapon is great, as you can charge it up and slam the ground (or even on top of enemies) to bounce up in the air. Many new upgrades are available, even a double jump. No more weapon XP grinding either, you just get all the techniques right from the start! And it's just better for it.

The cyber-elf system has been redesigned, it's a little convoluted but it works fine. Just make sure to look up on the internet how everything works and what the letters and symbols mean, it's very important. Again I tried to find and use as many upgrades as I could, probably too much because I became insanely powerful. I only found one E-tank but I was so powerful that I never even used it, and even so I didn't lose a life in the second half of the game (the beginning was much more difficult). I'll use fewer next time, and frankly this is probably the only Zero game I may revisit at some point.

There are more new mechanics and I don't even know what they all do. Like, there's some sort of cyberspace or whatever, an alternate route through levels that acts as an easy mode if I got that right, whatever I didn't use it and didn't miss it.

As for story... I thought the first two games were verbose, but holy crap this is on a whole other level. I usually don't skip anything on my first playthrough of a game, but it's so insanely much that I just started skipping it. If I wanted this much text, I'd play Final Fantasy and not Mega Man. Fans seem to love the story, but I find none of it interesting and the dialogue just makes me cringe, so whatever.

It's still not perfect, but now it's at a point where I think it's up there with good Classic MM/MMX games. Screen crunch isn't as big a problem as in the previous games but sadly still somewhat lets it down, I really wish I could play this game on the SNES.

8/10


Mega Man Zero 4

This was meant to be a trilogy and Zero 3 was the climax and conclusion. Well, and then it was decided to make another one, and imo it shows that this wasn't even planned to exist. It's a major step down after Zero 3, the levels are boring, grinding is back with a vengeance, and everything feels so half-hearted to me, as if the devs didn't actually feel like making another one. The increasing passion behind the first 3 games just seems to be gone.

There's crafting now, but from all the times I went to the same people over and over again to get recipes, I only ever got two--one of which I hadn't found a required part for until the end of the game. So I looked recipes up on the internet and used just two of them, a walk speed increase and a quicker weapon charge. There was no way I'd grinding for parts, that'd just be extremely tedious.

The simplified cyber-elf system means that you can only have three upgrades active at any time, and getting better ones through upgrades costs an insane amount of money again, so I didn't grind for that either. I didn't even find any E-tanks, so beating the game was quite a bit more challenging this time, but I managed to kill the final boss after 15 attempts or so.

There's another new mechanic that allows you to change the weather of the robot master stages to make them easier--but not the inter-missions and final stages which are the hardest part. Using the easy mode means you won't get upgrades from bosses that help a lot in those harder stages. So in short, using easy mode makes the hardest parts of the game harder. I don't know what to say. We're back to the thoughtless design that plagued the first game.

All in all, it's mostly a solid game, but just a bit lacklustre and a stark contrast to Zero 3. The levels are just kind of there, and the whole game is just kind of there. Skippable and forgettable.

6.5/10

Oh if you are playing ZX, I highly recommend finding a fan map online for the overworld. It's not even remotely intuitive and will save you a lot of time and frustration from getting lost and trying to find where you're suppose to go for a mission. They've kind of gone for a metroidvania design but it's terribly laid out with all area names being A-1, A-2, B-1, etc and A does not necessarily lead to B

I'd possibly also recommend seeing if you can find something that tells you which of the NPC quests are actually worth doing in ZX as most aren't worth it for the rewards you get. Now and again you get something really useful though

I don't think I'm generally as sensitive to input lag as some. They did feel a bit sluggish after Zero but I put that down to the games themselves

Have you played the Gunvolt games? I suppose they're the next era of Mega Man after the Zero series (at least in terms of gameplay) but they're a bit weird

You can get rid of the majority of the chatter by switching the language to Japanese for the first game but it still has other problems

I did finish at least the first one but it is such a strange evolution of Mega Man. You don't actually attack enemies, you 'tag' them with your gun and then kill them with another attack. Also, when you lose all your health, sometimes instead of dying, you activate some kind of super powered up mode for the rest of the level. There's also a dating sim element between missions

edit: rewrote this review because it was far too rambly.

Finished: Cyber Shadow

Another cyber-ninja action platformer, this time in 8-bit style--similarly to Shovel Knight, it goes for NES aesthetics but takes some liberties like parallax scrolling and widescreen resolution. This time more reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden and particularly Shadow of the Ninja, with a sword as your main weapon and (later) shurikens and fireballs as secondary weapons. The game is purely linear, not even a level select here.

Gameplay is reminiscent of those NES games, but much better, much more refined, and it's much longer. You start with nothing but a jump and a sword, but over the course of the game you'll get upgrades like the aforementioned subweapons, a downward strike that allows you to pogo-stick over enemies, parrying projectiles, and more. Once you get the ability to run, the game is transformed because now you also have a dash attack that can be chained even in the air, allowing you to zoom through enemies like a maniac.

It's a very challenging game, it starts simple enough, but begins to tighten the screws very soon. The gameplay loop is that difficulty is increased until you hit a wall, you try again and get better each time until you overcome the challenge, then difficulty is increased again, rinse and repeat. If you want to make a section a bit easier, you can spend money to upgrade a checkpoint so that it'll always give you full health, full mana, and/or a temporary helper item like an autocannon or a shield.

You'll die a lot, but the game is really fair in giving you the tools to make retrying and improving smoother and less punishing: you have unlimited lives and don't lose anything on death, not even money. If you've collected a permanent item or killed a (mini)boss before dying, they'll stay dead, so you don't have to worry about any of that either. The only punishment is that you're sent back to the checkpoint. The distance between checkpoints may seem a little long, but honestly I find them very well spaced so that they're neither too frustrating nor too easy. There's also a checkpoint right before every boss fight.

It feels a bit like a darker/more serious cousin of The Messenger at first, but where that game leans more towards modern obstacle course-style gameplay similar to games like Celeste, with enemies mostly being used as an opportunity for cloud jumps, Cyber Shadow is a much more traditional action platformer with enemies that are simply there to kill you (and they're pretty good at it). And whereas The Messenger becomes a backtracky and puzzly nonlinear game less than halfway through, Cyber Shadow remains a linear action platformer until the end. If you want 100% items, you will have to revisit earlier stages, but it's entirely optional.

I'm amazed how well-designed and refined this game is. Nothing ever feels random, everything is made with purpose and care. I find the base gameplay and controls great, the difficulty progression and checkpoint mechanics ideal, the challenge hard but fair, the style and soundtrack and graphics excellent, and everything I usually complain about in other games is absent here. It's as if they made this game for me. My only bigger gripe is that there's no hard mode or anything of the sort after finishing the game, despite savegames stating "mode: normal" for some reason.

But anyway, this is the best new game I've played in quite a while. It's amazing.

9/10

So what next? Well, I only ever finished the first X game, so I'll finally go through all of them. Surely Capcom will treat this prestigious series with great care and respect. I'm looking forward to having a great time from start to finish!

RadicalRex

I don't disagree with any of your complaints but I still really enjoyed them. I think some of the your issues with ZX would be alleviated by enabling the checkpoint system added with the collection and using an online map

The best part of the boss forms in Advent was using them to find secrets, which I enjoyed doing for the sake of it

The first 4 X games are pretty consistent

Yeah definitely.

I would recommend it, they're amazing. Well at least the good ones are, like Symphony of the Night.

Just one word of caution if you're coming from classic CV games. I initially disliked SotN because it wasn't what I expected from a CV game. No whip and almost no platforming challenge at all, despite that being a core part of the classic games. I later learned to love the metroidvanias, after accepting that they're not really a continuation, but a spin-off series that's really a different type of game. Just saying it's probably best to check your expectations before going into them.

Mega Man X4 (PS1)

A fan favourite, I was really looking forward to it but was underwhelmed tbh. I'm not a fan of art style (especially X's look is a massive step down imo) and sound design and there's too much talking, but I already knew that from footage, so that's fine.

What's not fine is the delayed dash. X/Zero now waits for a fraction of a second before actually dashing and that makes him feel slower and clunkier. Jumping skips the delay so you can move faster by dash-jumping--which is ok--but that's no help when you're trying to dodge a boss jumping onto you, or similar situations that require you to stay on the ground. Sometimes he also waits before dash-jumping from a wall, sometimes he doesn't and I couldn't figure out what causes him to behave differently. When he waits and I didn't expect it, as soon as I press the d-pad away from the wall right after the jump input (as you'd normally do), he just falls down instead of jumping, which has caused a lot of hurt and death over time.

It wasn't bugged as it was in X3, but apparently clunkier by design. At least I was fighting the controls more than in the first two games. I shouldn't be fighting the controls in a Mega Man game!

Otherwise the game was mostly alright, although not as great as I'd hoped. There wasn't really a moment when I was thinking "This is fun!", it was just ok. Not always though, because the stairs stage, the hoverboat stage and that cyberspace thing were imo some of the worst stages yet.

But of course you can also play the game as Zero, I loved the idea but was underwhelmed again. Balance is completely busted, as he is much stronger in stages but much weaker against bosses (against some bosses, his sabre does as little damage as X's uncharged lemons. Come on!). He also suffers from the slow dash and wall jumps, and he can't strike while running. He just controls far better in the Zero games and I wished I was playing Zero 2 or 3 instead--likewise, as X, I wished I was playing X1 or X2 instead.

It's definitely not a bad game, I still had some fun overall, but yeah.

7.5/10


I already started playing X5, and... I need a break. I've been playing countless Mega Man games over the last few weeks, some of which already strained my patience and willpower, but halfway through X5 it's clear that it's getting ugly now. Maybe I'll try again after a week or two, we'll see.

I might be imagining it but your profile picture's face gets more sad with each post about MMX

Blasphemous 2 (Steam)

I'm in two minds about this--just as I was about the first game, for different but related reasons. In short, I'd say it's a very streamlined sequel, for better or worse. I'm equally satisfied and disappointed with the changes. B1 was pretty rough around the edges but made up for it with amazing style and unique personality, B2 improves on it with a lot of polish but loses some of the personality on the way.

My favourite change is the polish applied to movement, controls and combat. I've just started another playthrough of B1 for direct comparison, and the differences become apparent quickly. It's so janky it's not even funny, and B2 fixes all of it, to a degree that I had no complaint whatsoever. Notably, hit detection is all over the place in B1 and it's annoying as hell, but in B2 I can't recall ever having any issue with it. It's a big gameplay improvement and I'm delighted about it.

At first I wasn't sure about having different weapons, but they're really distinct, well made and complement each other nicely. Something can be said for being restricted to just one weapon, B1 felt more like you're weak and alone partially because you didn't carry an entire arsenal of weapons. But whether I like this change or not, I'm happy to say what they did they did very competently.

Also, Blasphemous is a metroidvania now. Whether you count the first game as one probably depends on how narrowly you define the term, but it completely lacks the genre-defining core feature of unlocking new paths through movement or weapon upgrades, so imho B1 is not a "true" metroidvania. B2 on the other hand is definitely a full-on metroidvania because it has those things. Again I wasn't sure if double jump and air dash would be a fit for this game, but I appreciated how it opened up/sped up the game in the latter stages, thankfully so because this game is fucking huge and some of the time just dragged on for too long.

However, before it finally opened up I had a strong feeling of "more of the same" that soon turned into... "less of the same"? Even though it's more polished and (unless you pick the sword) your starting weapon is very different, combat feels just as heavy and drawn out as ever, enemies feel pretty much the same, the environment is mostly the same, the in-game graphics are literally the same.

But something was missing. It didn't have quite the same atmosphere and feel, it's similar but toned down. A lot of this has to do with the soundtrack, which again is similar to B1's in style but is less intense, less varied, more subdued, more in the background. That became immediately apparent when I started playing B1 again--music and atmosphere are just more exciting. I delayed leaving an area just because I wanted to listen to the music a little more, I never felt like that in B2.

Talking of less varied, the different areas also feel less distinct. B1 areas tended to be gimmicky, but that contributed to each having its own character, greatly supported by their very distinct soundtracks. Throughout most of B2, it felt like wherever I was could be anywhere else in the game, being mostly the same rooms with the same enemies and the same platform puzzles, with competent but samey soundtrack. Often it felt like little more than a tileset swap. Too streamlined?

I called B1 "not a metroidvania", I guess it is metroidvania-adjacent--similar enough to appeal to a similar audience and compete on the same market, but it's a different take that defies genre norms, an oddball that boldly stands out from the crowd. Despite the upsides of B2's movement upgrades, by going full metroidvania I think it lost a little of its unique personality. This isn't helped by the fact that with wall jump, double jump and air dash it went for the most obvious metroidvania tropes. Those are tried and tested mechanics, but "tried and tested" is kind of the opposite of what I expect from Blasphemous, it feels like it's playing it very safe and as a result blends into the crowd a little more than I'd like.

I have to mention instadeath spikes and pits here, a feature of B1 that apparently frustrated some metroidvania players who aren't used to them in that genre. And they actually removed them in B2, if you have enough health you're just respawned next to them like in Hollow Knight. I don't think that was a good change, of course it's frustrating to be knocked back into death a long way after the last checkpoint, but that was an important part of the nature of Blasphemous. It is not a nice place, it's supposed to be grim and dangerous with a gruesome death waiting for you at every turn. You take a wrong step, you die.

But the metroidvania-standardisation still doesn't end here. The first boss I encountered was some sword duelist or something, her first move was to do a tell before dashing across the ground, then she threw three fireballs from the upper corner of the screen, and so on, you know the drill. Or at least I do, because I've fought this boss 30 times in 10 different games. This is so bog standard and forgettable it's disappointing, and most of the other bosses weren't much different. Compare that to the bosses of B1 which could be janky but were spectacular and sometimes downright disturbing like the infamous infant boss. Talk about toned down. I really missed those guys in B2.

The new cutscene style is weird too, B1 had that rugged animation style that was in line with the game's aesthetics, for some reason B2 ditches that for a sleek modern cartoon style that imo clashes with the style of the rest of the game. Those timed platform puzzles with the mirrors and bells and stuff don't do it for me either, they're not terrible but they're a bit meh and also feel a little out of place, not really what I expect from a Blasphemous game.

I'm rambling on forever again, ain't I. All in all, some great gameplay improvements, some changes I have mixed feelings about, and sadly a loss of atmosphere and personality. I'm not sure which is better, B2 is mechanically more accomplished, but B1 is more intense and unique. My ideal game would be B1 with the polish of B2.

7/10