Chronicles of 2 Heroes: Amaterasu's Wrath is an action platformer. It's almost a blend of shinobi with Ninja Gaiden. It's a pretty linear path from start to finish however there are some branching paths here and there that are locked by some abilities and or gold and you can warp back and forth to area's you have been. I wouldn't say it's open or a metroidvania as it still has a set level pattern and path.
2 Heroes at it's core is all about it's two character swapping mechanic. You can switch characters instantly at the tap of a button at anytime, even in the middle of an action. You have one character you specializes in attack and defense, the samurai and one character that excells at mobility and ranged attacks, the ninja. Both have several weakness's and strenghts that you constantly have to be switching back and forth to progress. Like for example the samurai character can not jump at all but the Ninja can double jump. The samurai has a fast dash attack and is a boss killer. The ninja will be your main character for moving around. You have to solve rather complex platforming puzzles by combining the two quite often. Like for example jumping as the ninja only to swap to the samurai in mid air to dash across the screen to make a jump.
2 Heroes's biggest strength is how well done the platforming puzzles utilize the character swapping mechanic. They do a lot with a minimal basic moveset and really make you think and switch on your feet. Do you know how long it took me to not get frustrated as the samurai to not be able to jump in a platform game? The other thing that really sticks out about 2 Heroes is the games difficulty. The game is tough. Real tough. Like one of the hardest platformers i've played in some time. We are talking like 9/10 on the difficulty scale. However the developers did grant us mercy. As a standard there are unlimited continues and check points are spaced out evenly enough. That and there is a built in "assist" mechanic. At anytime during the game you can hold a button and a little animal assisant will follow your character and grant you some buffs to your character to help with permant buffs while they are activated. For example the samurai is a little beefier, the ninja has an unlimited double jump and your health regenerates several health points every 30 secs. Trust me when I say this that if you are a casual platformer fan you are gonna wanna have these on. You are not punished by any means by using these and let me tell you unlimited jumps is a god send in this game.
There are some other things of note. This game is quite beefy. It's length plus the difficulty you could easily rack up some hours here. A perfect playthrough with assists on might take you 3-4 hours but a normal regular playthrough could take about 10-12 hours i'd imagine. Which is quite a lot for platformer. Wether this is a good thing or bad thing is up to you. For me it was more of a negative thing because it is coupled with the next thing I wanna talk about.
2 Heroes is very repititve game. It has a lot of smart platforming and tricky puzzles with quick reflexes but my god do you see the same brainless enemies and puzzle scenario's over and over again. Enemies are nothing more than walking obsticles that really don't pose much threat but more to block your path or add to the complexity of the room. Nearly the entire game is a set of rooms where the goal is to hit several lantern "markers" to open the locked door in the room. Or kill every enemy in the room to unlock the door. Or do the above 4 times to open a path a few rooms back and so forth. It really overstayed it's welcome fast. That and coupled with a really lackluster artstyle and dull music combo didn't really light my world on fire. Levels just seem to go on forever and lose their limited appeal quick. Bosses are few and far inbetween and range from brainless to quite tough. Especially the last few.
The whole time playing 2 Heroes I kept thinking in my head that this is a perfect example of a game with an excellent gameplay idea with above average execution when it comes to the raw gameplay puzzles but every other thing in the game boggs it down to being rather bland and tedius. So when someone asks you "If a game has good fundemental gameplay does it need anything else?" While I would usually so most of the time no and one could argue if it becomes so repitive and tedius did it really have good gameplay to begin with? In a vaccum I wanna say it does but at the same time I just can't bring myself to want to try to 100% this game or give it the multiple plathroughs it wants me do on new game plus. Honestly after going back and forth with it I'm giving a 5/10 because the scales just didn't tip it in an any direction more me but I could easily see other thinking much higher of the gameplay.
2 Heroes at it's core is all about it's two character swapping mechanic. You can switch characters instantly at the tap of a button at anytime, even in the middle of an action. You have one character you specializes in attack and defense, the samurai and one character that excells at mobility and ranged attacks, the ninja. Both have several weakness's and strenghts that you constantly have to be switching back and forth to progress. Like for example the samurai character can not jump at all but the Ninja can double jump. The samurai has a fast dash attack and is a boss killer. The ninja will be your main character for moving around. You have to solve rather complex platforming puzzles by combining the two quite often. Like for example jumping as the ninja only to swap to the samurai in mid air to dash across the screen to make a jump.
2 Heroes's biggest strength is how well done the platforming puzzles utilize the character swapping mechanic. They do a lot with a minimal basic moveset and really make you think and switch on your feet. Do you know how long it took me to not get frustrated as the samurai to not be able to jump in a platform game? The other thing that really sticks out about 2 Heroes is the games difficulty. The game is tough. Real tough. Like one of the hardest platformers i've played in some time. We are talking like 9/10 on the difficulty scale. However the developers did grant us mercy. As a standard there are unlimited continues and check points are spaced out evenly enough. That and there is a built in "assist" mechanic. At anytime during the game you can hold a button and a little animal assisant will follow your character and grant you some buffs to your character to help with permant buffs while they are activated. For example the samurai is a little beefier, the ninja has an unlimited double jump and your health regenerates several health points every 30 secs. Trust me when I say this that if you are a casual platformer fan you are gonna wanna have these on. You are not punished by any means by using these and let me tell you unlimited jumps is a god send in this game.
There are some other things of note. This game is quite beefy. It's length plus the difficulty you could easily rack up some hours here. A perfect playthrough with assists on might take you 3-4 hours but a normal regular playthrough could take about 10-12 hours i'd imagine. Which is quite a lot for platformer. Wether this is a good thing or bad thing is up to you. For me it was more of a negative thing because it is coupled with the next thing I wanna talk about.
2 Heroes is very repititve game. It has a lot of smart platforming and tricky puzzles with quick reflexes but my god do you see the same brainless enemies and puzzle scenario's over and over again. Enemies are nothing more than walking obsticles that really don't pose much threat but more to block your path or add to the complexity of the room. Nearly the entire game is a set of rooms where the goal is to hit several lantern "markers" to open the locked door in the room. Or kill every enemy in the room to unlock the door. Or do the above 4 times to open a path a few rooms back and so forth. It really overstayed it's welcome fast. That and coupled with a really lackluster artstyle and dull music combo didn't really light my world on fire. Levels just seem to go on forever and lose their limited appeal quick. Bosses are few and far inbetween and range from brainless to quite tough. Especially the last few.
The whole time playing 2 Heroes I kept thinking in my head that this is a perfect example of a game with an excellent gameplay idea with above average execution when it comes to the raw gameplay puzzles but every other thing in the game boggs it down to being rather bland and tedius. So when someone asks you "If a game has good fundemental gameplay does it need anything else?" While I would usually so most of the time no and one could argue if it becomes so repitive and tedius did it really have good gameplay to begin with? In a vaccum I wanna say it does but at the same time I just can't bring myself to want to try to 100% this game or give it the multiple plathroughs it wants me do on new game plus. Honestly after going back and forth with it I'm giving a 5/10 because the scales just didn't tip it in an any direction more me but I could easily see other thinking much higher of the gameplay.