Now this is more like it! With Ludosity having proven themselves to Nickelodeon, the restrictions were loosened and the budget was expanded quite a bit from the previous title. Making the campaign a roguelike was an inspired move, since it's a pretty budget-friendly way of adding a lot more variety to proceedings than we saw in the original game. There still isn't a ton of content, but what content exists is well-used.

Voice acting and character interactions, for example. In the campaign, character banter is limited to either conversations between characters of the same series or generic statements that could slot in anywhere. I wish there were more crossover moments - SpongeBob talking to Clockwork and the cast reacting to Gary are exceptions rather than the rule - but it's at least nice to have stuff like Raphael worrying about his brothers with Splinter, or Plasmius and Ember sniping at each other, or Plankton and Mrs. Puff being weirdly polite.

I also think the picks for enemy encounters give the game a lot of personality! Unsurprisingly, there's a huge SpongeBob bias, and while I wish SpongeBob didn't get TWO bosses, I'll admit that common enemies like the Bomb Pie pirates are fun pulls. Plus, you have very fun picks from other series like Garfield's food hallucinations, the Girl-Eating Plant, and... those guys from El Tigre (never saw it as a kid).

A common complaint about this game is how much of the last game's roster was cycled out. And yeah, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't miss playable Helga or CatDog, but I sorta think it's a statement on how much of an improvement this game is that the roster gets to be the focus of criticism. I appreciate as well anyway that a lot of the non-returning cast still feature in some way - either as a boss or as friendly NPCs. I would've been devastated if the #HughNation's efforts were a one-and-done matter, but still having Hugh Neutron as a highlighted extra is a worthy consolation prize.

(Speaking of rosters, I'm at a point in my life where I'm more curious to see others' roster picks in these crossover fighters than insist upon my own, but gun-to-head, if I had to pick a character I wanted to see for DLC or a theoretical sequel? Miko from Glitch Techs would be a fun pull. I also saw a fan roster that suggested Cynthia as a second Rugrats rep, which I think is absolutely brilliant)

It must also be said how much of an improvement there is to animation this time around. There's more to it than sheer aesthetics; looking at characters like Danny Phantom or Ren & Stimpy, you can really feel the team getting more comfortable with these guys and figuring out what animation principles existed in the original works, and how best to relay those principles into 3D. Occasionally you run into a weird camera angle that exposes a trick - how much characters' bodies are "cheated" out to the camera, in a way that makes a 3D render look off when viewed from the wrong angle - but I'd rather take that than have characters rigidly adhere to their models or key poses with improper use of tweening.

I've been sitting on doing a review for a bit because I've been going back and forth on achievement hunting in this game, and I wanted to hold back commentary in case I had more to say. I don't think I'm going to go for it, but I don't think that's a comment on the quality of the game itself or anything. With the first Nick All-Stars, I respected the game because, given the bare minimum budget Ludosity and Fair Play Labs had to work with, the team laser-focused on nailing the fundamentals. Those fundamentals are still here in the sequel, only now bundled in a package to properly highlight them. Very happy that the team was able to do so, and very eager to see what the DLC cycle holds for this game.

Played the campaign while I waited for any of my friends to pick this game up, and I gotta say, it was amazing. The mechanics are so amazing and the videos I've seen of pro FG players make me happy to imagine this game's future. THIS is labor of love. I've always been a fan of crossover titles, and this one is laying a lot of groundwork to be on Smash Bros Ultimate's level if they ever decide to rework the characters that got left out from the first game and implement even more Nickelodeon All Stars. (P.S., when I booted up the game, I totally thought I'd be an El Tigre main, but I grew to love Korra's moveset so much, so I stuck with her for the whole campaign)

Improvement in every way when compared to its predecessor. However, to cut half of the first games roster out was a sacrifice too costly. There's no way to justify cutting half of the roster. In my eyes, brawlers are most enjoyable with massive character rosters. In fact, I'd go as far as to say its the main selling point of a game like this. While the game mechanics and animations have been refined and the offline content has been massively expanded upon, the appeal is still in the franchises and in the characters. Maybe Brawl 3 can fix this major downsight, should it ever see the light of day.

I don't know why I bought this. This has got to be the stupidest purchase of the year for me. I knew I wasn't going to want to play it, yet I bought it anyways. It's totally fine, and it's definitely better than the first attempt. After 5 hours, I realized I didn't want to play it at all anymore. It's one of the better attempts at a Smash clone. Probably second only to PlayStation All Stars, so far. I think it just annoyed me immediately that everyone online was trying to emulate Melee gameplay. Seeing people wavedash around pissed me off LOL. I feel like everyone playing this game was coming directly from playing Melee and it rubbed me the wrong way. I have no desire to play any more of it. The single player portion didn't intrigue me, either.

The thing is, I don't care about almost any of these characters. That's kinda the main reason Smash is so beloved. It's also why I loved PSASBR so much. These attempts at a Smash clone have to consist of video game-centric characters, or I'm probably not going to care.

If this game was only being judged off its multiplayer content it would have a much higher rating- slime is such a good addition to the platform fighter genre and these characters are pretty well designed with some in-jokes for both smash fans and nickelodeon fans.

The singleplayer campaign is cool, I guess? Honestly I need to talk about the bugs on this game because holy hell it took me almost an hour and a half to get my controller working on this, and another twenty minutes with a bug on the menu that made all my buttons not work

As Smash clones goes this is probably the closest you will get to something like Ultimate. I can see huge potential in the slime mechanic though my monkey brain can't comprehend the nitty gritty. But even if you focus the more simple aspects of the slime meter you can still enjoy the game without feeling like you are missing out too much.


I still have to settle with a 7.
I encountered too many weird bugs and hiccups to give it anything higher.

If it just had a wee bit extra polish I could see myself pushing it to an 8.

I personally prefer Multiversus for its IP's and what that game introduced. But this is still not a bad option, not at all.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 fixes nearly every issue I've heard of with the first installment, and provides a great roster and great gameplay for some casual fun fighting.

I give Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 an 8!

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 was a huge surprise for me. The roster is deep, striking almost every key character in Nick's lineup (except for Cat Dog, Timmy Turner, and the other two turtles). I was super happy with the arrangement, and am a proud El Tigre main.

The combat was surprisingly awesome, with it being similar to Smash Ultimate, but carrying its own unique charm. It kind of reminds me of Multiversus.

I really love this game, and as a fighter, it's shockingly deep and has a solid foundation to learn upon.

Characters/Roster: 9
Story: -
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8

As it turns out something happened whilst playing this game that flipped a switch in my head, causing me to think I was a tall PMS-333 octopus man named "Squidward" who had distinct tastes in clarinets and all forms of art and LOATHED cashier jobs.

I saw a therapist about it and he just laughed REALLY hard at me, thinking I was delusional. They then threw a yellow block of cheese with holes in it and that pissed me off so hard that I began furiously eating it, shouting Spongebob's name.

Remember Big, the movie with Tom Hanks about a kid who ends up becoming a man from a carnival attraction? It's like that except I became Squidward from playing this game. And unlike that movie, there's no way for me to turn back.

It's not that bad. Sometimes I'm invited to put my art up at art exhibitions, and VERY RARELY do I get invited to perform gigs at concerts. I'm also very well-known at socialite parties.

Good game though.

I didn’t play a ton of the first game but I can tell this is a big step up. The presentation is a whole lot better with the addition of the voices, and I really enjoy the roster (though of course we can all name tons more characters we would want added). I’m not a fighting game expert by any stretch, but the character platform fighter is a genre I enjoy dabbling with quite a bit in at least a surface level way, and there is a lot to enjoy for people like me. There is the usual ladder campaign for each fighter, as well as a campaign mode which is where I spent most of my time. This is a rogue like mode but very light on those elements, it has upgrades in the runs as well as some that transfer between. It is a little repetitive, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th runs out of the 5 required are exactly the same which is lame, but it does feel satisfying to play after you get a few permanent upgrades. I haven’t played online much (I know I would get destroyed) but I found this to be a solid game I would gladly put on when I have friends over just to mess around in.

In a lot of ways it's the best non-Smash platform fighter; I'd even go as far as saying the single player is better here than in Ultimate. Full voice-acting and heaps of content at launch really show how well the first game would've done with a little more confidence.

It does need a bit more polish, especially as the latest update at the time of writing has seemingly removed the ability for CPUs to get up from ledge hangs, but for the most part it works quite well. Just don't play on the Switch.

The star of the show here is the campaign, a roguelite story mode with a surprising amount of dialogue. Character-specific conversations are abundant and bring a ton of charm, especially if you're nostalgic for any of these toons. The roguelite elements do lack depth and the boss fights can be very anticlimactic, but I really enjoyed my time with it more than I expected.

Pick up NASB2 if you're a Nick fan or you're just looking for a good platform fighter after years of Nintendo spoiling you, it's a great time when the bugs are ironed out.

It pains me to see games like this come out, since I know they will be fantastic, and this one definitely is. It's probably the closest I've seen to my dream fighting game, a unification of Smash's movement and the mechanical complexity of trad fighters like Street Fighter or Guilty Gear. It's got meter, supers, fuckin' Roman Cancels, the works. The production quality is far better than the first entry, which, while good, had a permeating stench of shovelware to it. Now all it needs is a functional training mode and a combo counter (seriously, why the everloving hell do platform fighters never have combo counters in normal play, that shit is fighting game 101)

The problem is that people just seem to refuse to give a shit about non-Smash platform fighters, regardless of how much they improve upon Smash's gameplay or how strong their character lineup is. Whether that's a testament to the closemindedness of the Smash community or Smash's sheer quality is up to you, but, with what seems to be the end of the Smash series, or at least a very long hiatus that will likely never see the series return to its former glory, new platformer fighters like this, Fraymakers, and the upcoming Rivals 2 can finally break their way out into popularity.