Axiom Verge 2 Playthrough pt2
0Review -
This is the second amazing game made by one man. It’s not surprisingly another Metroidvania, but it does play very differently to the last game. The graphics still utilise the basic 8-bit pixel art style, but it differs in a few other ways.
The story is completely unrelated. I won’t mention what it because I won’t do it justice but it is very unique and I don’t quite get it properly.
This game is not as combat focused as the last game or indeed any other Metroidvania I can think of. The last game had lots of awesome weapons to unlock but this keeps it very simple with a melee attack and a boomerang. Both are pretty weak and weapon upgrades don’t seem to add much. But it doesn’t make the game difficult as you can cheese most of the bosses by using the explosion special move. I honestly didn’t have to try or learn any boss patterns as I could just spam this OP move. You even get the ability to hack parts of enemies to disable them, but this costs special energy, which you need to spam the special move, so it’s not worth using.
I really don’t mind the easiness of the bosses though as I am more interested in the exploration. This was actually quite welcome after I played the new Prince of Persia which was an amazing Metroidvania but the bosses were hardcore.
There is a parallel world mechanic that you can swap between the normal world and the other world which gives some really tough puzzles at times. You also control a spider like creature in the other world which is a drag at first but it gets much better and later in the game you can swap between your 2 characters on the fly which makes traversal and combat a lot more fun.
The exploration is excellent in this game, but there are times where you can get really stuck as there are no proper clues. There are some markers on the map, but you don’t know which direction will get you there. I completely missed some parts thinking that I wasn’t able to get past a room so I didn’t persist in solving the puzzle. Usually, to do with the parallel worlds.
I loved exploring and trying to find everything but this game suffers from something that I don’t know why these small indie developers think they have to put in – impossible for one person to figure out puzzles. I would have liked to 100% the game myself but it’s just not possible due to some places where you have to enter a random button combination to open a passageway. There is no clue for the combination, you just have to guess. But there is no cluse that the area needs a button combination either. So, it really is a community effort where someone accidently found the way through so had to share it on the internet. A bit cheesy really.
There are lots of upgrades to buy but a lot of these are useless. It’s strange that the last game was all about upgrading weapons, but this is so lacklustre. But I really don’t mind. The game is pretty easy anyway and I’m way more about the exploration.
The music is excellent. Very Metroidy vibe. And one thing that makes this game stand out to other Metroidvania, is the based decision to give you full health at every save point and also make every save point a fast travel point. This needs to be standard in all games! I hate separate fast travel points that force you to travel the same sections dozens of times. Also, when you die, you respawn at the last save point, but you keep what you have collected. These decisions are so user friendly and I applaud the decision, which should really have been common sense for all games in the past 20 years.
Although there is one issue with this, that I think is a bug, maybe only on the PS5 version too, but if I press the PS button on the controller and then go the home menu (just to pause the game because the normal PS button press lets the game keep running); when I would return to the game, it would take me back to the last save point, so I would lose all progress after the last save. I’m sure this is not by design.
But, to cap it off. This game is ace. It’s even better than the first one and a top tier Metroidvania.
Rating - 9/10
Difficulty – 4/10
Played on PS5
No Cheats used
Some deaths cut out
More like this:-
PS5 games - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnIZkuKAW4PFSUZjqr_C5ZY0QxsDuTKi
PS4 games - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TiRquElPG4&list=PLXnIZkuKAW4OIbFMRNXpshbfsfM1TiMV
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