

Personally, I think it is for the better that AX2 is so different from its predecessor. The soundtrack is filled with earworms, I can't get Procession of the Anunna out of my head, but tastes in music are relative. And yes, I'm a sucker for everything related to Mesopotamia. I will admit that AV2 feels more linear and while the environment is nowhere near the weirdness of AV1 it is very beautiful. The feeling of being in a totally alien environment is stronger in that game than in Super. If anything, I would say that it is more accurate to compare the first Axiom Verge to the first Metroid. So, no fair to compare anything to Super anymore. Originally posted by WarToad:Axiom Verge owed A LOT to Super Metroid.You know that Super Metroid isn't the HOLY GRAIL OF JESUS, right? I mean: good game, but by today's standards (specially the ones set by the GBA titles) it is really outdated. Dev needs to recruit others to offer perspective on their design ideas, and especially to help with writing. And I think many people who liked the first won't like the 2nd, because it looks, feels, and plays like a completely different game. Some of my dislike is down to my personal taste, but plenty of it is just poor game design. Among other things there is no challenge, aside from wandering around wondering what to do. In doing that, he made it a game that few will actually enjoy. Although some are due to trying to make the game accessible for all. Much of the issues are just poor design choices from an inexperienced dev. The spelling errors are on purpose? OK, but the actual story is silly nonsense and feels like a teenager wrote it. There are two sort of normal bosses, but you have infinite respawn right next to them. Enemies are best just avoided, which is easy since you can walk right through them.Ī big enemy floating around a level that you can walk right by is not a boss in this genre. I liked all the guns in AV1, and 2 has none. Castlevania had dozens, and they felt great to use. Basically two weapons, both feel terrible to use.

Poor writing - they're written like that on purpose.ĭunno about the last 2 haven't completed it yet No bosses - the fact that you can skip them doesn't mean they're not bosses. Originally posted by LetsPlayNintendoITA:no guns - it's a castlevania type instead of metroid this time It's a bummer, and might partially explain why the dev took the upfront cash for the Epic exclusivity deal as opposed to rolling the dice on solid Steam sales. I bought on Switch, so no refund possible, but after far less than that I knew the game wasn't for me. My conclusion is that without the foundation of Super Metroid to base the game on, the dev struggled to come up with new, interesting ideas.Īll of which is to say, wait until you can demo it for 2 hours first. Axiom Verge 2 tries to be more its own thing, but the new, non-Super Metroid-esque elements simply don't work. I haven't played any other metroidvanias that cribbed so heavily from the godfather of the genre itself. It had a few fun new ideas, but was so heavily inspired by it, it felt a bit like a ripoff to be honest. But it speaks to the fact that the dev was either rushed and forgot, or didn't even know it was something that they should have done, or just didn't care.Īxiom Verge owed A LOT to Super Metroid. Trust me, it's a big issue, especially playing docked. I just don't get how such a basic, easy to do step like that could be ignored/skipped. Load all the effects up, click 'normalize', export, done. The complex program Wwise was used for this game (I believe) but even a simple program like Audacity can do it. You want to make sure everything is in the same dynamic range, and balanced with other sounds. It's baffling, because normalizing audio is a basic step in making a game, or movie, or lots of things. And even is they weren't loud, they still sound very grating. Certain sound effects are very, very loud. On a very basic, technically objective level, one thing really sticks out: unbalanced audio. No guns, no bosses, generic graphics, abysmal melee combat, weak upgrades, poor writing (spellcheck anyone?), grating music, playing as a drone 1/2 the time, and on and on. But nearly everything I liked about it is absent from the sequel. First one wasn't perfect, but still really good.
