When printing out covers for my Sega Saturn collection at the local UPS office, I had to take great caution with Keio Flying Squadron 2. The cover, which at the time of this writing is accurately depicted on Backloggd, is the sort of thing that you should get the cops called on you for if found in your possession, so I hastily photoshopped a label over her crotch that read "PAL REGION CD." I got away with Cho Aniki, but I wasn't going to push my luck with Keio 2. The manual for Keio Flying Squadron tries to handwave any discomfort with Rami's character design by saying she's 20, but good luck making that excuse in the UPS Store while waiting for law enforcement to arrive.

The original Keio Flying Squadron was a decent little shoot-em-up, but it didn't do anything particularly unique. Not the sort of game I'd expect would get a translated and fully voiced follow up for the English speaking market, but hey, here it is. Keio 2 all but ditches the gameplay style of its predecessor in favor of being a comedy-platformer, and it largely benefits from this shift in genre. It definitely allows it to have a stronger identity, in any case.

Being dropped into a subterranean rat kingdom and riding a rat train over pools of lava, picking up a gigantic hand to push a button in what amounts to nothing more than a button-mashing minigame, or going toe-to-toe with the Flatwoods Monster as it abducts cows and processes them into slabs of beef that it shoots at you are all stand out moments that are going to stick with me. "Beef is on sale every Tuesday," the flatwoods monster says before I deal enough damage to send it into phase 2, where it grows the legs of a cabaret dancer in what I'm sure is a nod to Parodius. Rami's idle pose, which has her standing with her mouth agape in a big dumb smile while staring into space, leaves her looking positively vapid as she stands under signs that read "MENSA POWER." There's some good, fun, and downright weird stuff in Keio 2, and it's all conveyed through some fantastic sprite art that makes good use of the Saturn's strength for 2D graphics.

Gameplay feels pretty good, generally speaking. Rami has a weird momentum and weight to her that at times makes platforming feel unwieldy, but I only found this to be a problem in a couple of stages where enemies were placed too close together, making you prone to jump into one after bouncing off another. So long as Rami is holding a weapon she's immune from death, a system that's not too dissimilar to the rings from Sonic the Hedgehog, and each of the three weapons Rami is able to use allows her to slightly augment her moveset. The umbrella lets her protect herself from falling objects or glide, for example. Levels of pure platforming are often broken up by other gameplay types, like Donkey Kong style minecart or underwater levels, or shoot-em-up stages that evoke the original Keio Flying Squadron. The game autosaves after each world (which typically consists of 3-4 levels), which provides a firm enough punishment for getting a game over while not being frustrating. But overall I found Keio 2 to be remarkably easy, and at about an hour to an hour-and-a-half, it's a great game to sit down with on a weekend afternoon.

Keio 2 is one of the better games on the Sega Saturn that I've played (so far), which I know isn't exactly a high bar to pass. Not on the same level as Astal, but certainly better than Clockwork Knight, which I suppose means it's pretty solid as far as Saturn platformers go.