Julianarchy
It's good, but I really have to admit that the last 3 Behemoth games, including this one, feel like one-and-done kind of games. I don't know what makes the original Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers so replayable to me. Nostalgia maybe, but I do feel like those games were so simple and charming. I love the music in those games too. The music in this game is fun, but idk it doesn't have much soul. I guess that's what's missing for me and it's not even that quantifiable: soul. Idk I still liked this. It might be more fun to play with friends, but I think I'd rather just play Castle Crasher or the OG Alien Hominid honestly.
2023
Sublevel 10 of the Dream Den is total bullshit. I still enjoy this game, but the nostalgia can't save it from some really weird and sloppy design choices. I'm just going to list them as I think of them. Purple Pikmin make combat feel pointless as they can just stun and kill enemies so easily. There's also really no reason for them to be able to carry the weight of 10 other Pikmin because there's rarely a situation where you actually need them to carry stuff. There was one item that required 100 Purple Pikmin which was kind of hilarious, but that just means you have to watch the slowest Pikmin carry the heaviest treasure all the way to your ship. It's not even far, but it takes a whole quarter of a day. It's honestly faster to let other Pikmin carry things most of the time anyway because the Purple Pikmin are so much slower than the others. Why do the Pikmin have different speeds at all? It's a nightmare having to wait for leaf purples to catch up with any other Pikmin. Why do the White Pikmin have the ability to find treasure underground when you just get a device that tells you where everything is anyway? Why is there a cave where you HAVE to bring only Blue Pikmin, only for you to need Purple Pikmin to fight the boss? Some of the caves don't give you any warning before enemies just start attacking you right away. Seriously, sometimes it feels unavoidable. You don't get a second to breath when you enter some of the sublevels. The randomly generated cave levels are also just kind of poorly laid out at times too. Sometimes there'll just be walls to break down that lead to absolutely nothing. Sometimes the treasure will be right next to you. Sometimes it'll be at the other side of the whole level. Towards the end of the game I just started solo fighting enemies because it was so much faster than dividing my Pikmin up just to do one obstacle, then again to get through another obstacle, and so on. The difficulty in this game is so all over the place. I didn't lose a single Pikmin one of the final cave bosses in the game and I only lost 1 on the final boss. Some of the other bosses earlier in the game however I lost nearly 30 Pikmin to in one battle. There's a cave where that's just a gauntlet where you fight almost every single boss you've encountered to that point on each sublevel, but then the final boss in that cave is so easy. The later levels also just start throwing so many mixes of elemental obstacles your way with no sensible way to approach them. Going back to my first sentence of this entry, Sublevel 10 of the Dream Den is one where you 100% NEED Blue Pikmin to get the treasure because the Pikmin have to carry it across water. You also need to fight every other enemy in that level with the Blue Pikmin and it throws so many at you at once to the point where you're inevitably going to lose some of them. But of course you need at least 15 of them to carry the treasure at all. It's also the only area of the game in the later stages that I can think of where you absolutely NEED a certain type of Pikmin and a certain NUMBER of the type of Pikmin to get the treasure. If you're even 1 short, you need to either restart that level, or go back to the surface to get more blue Pikmin. It's so frustrating, especially when it's so close to the end. It's honestly hilarious that I avoided the first game for so long because I didn't want to feel stressed out having a time limit only for this game to stress me out WAY more than the first game. I'm honestly not sure if I like Pikmin 2 as much as the first game. I think the first game is at least the better-designed game. Pikmin 2 is ambitious and tries a lot, but a lot of it really doesn't work as well as it should. I still enjoyed it and I honestly got a bit teary-eyed having finally collected every treasure in this game and closing the book on this super nostalgic game for me. Having played everything in this game though (aside from the Challenge Mode, fuck that), I really don't think it holds up quite so well now. I'm honestly really excited to finally play 3 and then 4, because I can see a lot they can improve on.
2023
I lost 276 Pikmin to Emperor Bulblax fml
This review contains spoilers
Pretty easily one of the best stories in a video game even if that's not saying too much. The performances are great, the character animations and environments are great, and the writing itself is great, but I do think there are a few minor things that hold it back for me and I'm definitely willing to admit that they might be "me" problems.
First off, there's a weird thing in this game where if a character is directly behind you, no matter how close they are, you won't hear their dialogue. I think it has something to do with dynamic range or something? I get that it's supposed to feel immersive, but it was more distracting than anything because I wanted to hear the dialogue. I tried changing a bunch of settings but nothing really fixed it.
Spoilers I don't know how I feel about the boss fight with David. I like the idea and the intensity, but I found it pretty frustrating. I liked how most of the game let you either use stealth or go in guns blazing at the cost of supplies, whereas this boss fight required all stealth and it's the hardest area to be stealthy because there's broken glass all over the damn place. It was also hard to be stealthy when you couldn't tell where the hell he was when you respawned after dying, especially in the 3rd part of the fight. At one point, the game spawns you right in front of him and you basically have no choice but to run.
Speaking of spawning, there was one point where I killed a bunch of infected, backtracked a bit to get supplies, went back to where I was to finish off the rest of the infected, died, and the game respawned me to where I backtracked, with all the infected I killed back alive. Wtf?
My final complaint is with the pacing. Sometimes I felt this game would just not let a moment breathe. On paper, I think a lot of the story is great, but the direction is lacking in some moments. I think this game needed to develop the characters a little stronger for some of its key moments to really have as much impact as this story, quite frankly, deserves. I'm quite curious to see if the tv show can actually improve the story.
I haven't played this since it came out in 2013 and I have to say that a lot of it holds up exceptionally well. Even with the complaints I have with the story, I still do think it's quite great. The final 2 acts are what really stand out to me. The ending is what cements this in my mind as one of the best stories in a game. It's still haunting after 10 years.
First off, there's a weird thing in this game where if a character is directly behind you, no matter how close they are, you won't hear their dialogue. I think it has something to do with dynamic range or something? I get that it's supposed to feel immersive, but it was more distracting than anything because I wanted to hear the dialogue. I tried changing a bunch of settings but nothing really fixed it.
Spoilers I don't know how I feel about the boss fight with David. I like the idea and the intensity, but I found it pretty frustrating. I liked how most of the game let you either use stealth or go in guns blazing at the cost of supplies, whereas this boss fight required all stealth and it's the hardest area to be stealthy because there's broken glass all over the damn place. It was also hard to be stealthy when you couldn't tell where the hell he was when you respawned after dying, especially in the 3rd part of the fight. At one point, the game spawns you right in front of him and you basically have no choice but to run.
Speaking of spawning, there was one point where I killed a bunch of infected, backtracked a bit to get supplies, went back to where I was to finish off the rest of the infected, died, and the game respawned me to where I backtracked, with all the infected I killed back alive. Wtf?
My final complaint is with the pacing. Sometimes I felt this game would just not let a moment breathe. On paper, I think a lot of the story is great, but the direction is lacking in some moments. I think this game needed to develop the characters a little stronger for some of its key moments to really have as much impact as this story, quite frankly, deserves. I'm quite curious to see if the tv show can actually improve the story.
I haven't played this since it came out in 2013 and I have to say that a lot of it holds up exceptionally well. Even with the complaints I have with the story, I still do think it's quite great. The final 2 acts are what really stand out to me. The ending is what cements this in my mind as one of the best stories in a game. It's still haunting after 10 years.