This review contains spoilers
so, i played this pretty much back to back with hero hours contract, the first game. the base gameplay loop is both fun and simple, and was addictive enough for me to blitz game 1 in two days.
to be honest, i like the gameplay in this one a lot less. in game one, each character had their own independent movement and could move a set distance, like in advance wars. in this game, it's one turn for the entire team and you have free movement and a limited number of actions, where a step or an attack is one action. however, this means that a LOT of actions are wasted on just. travelling to enemies as most random layouts will have a lot of random single enemies scattered about, and your party is randomly scattered too. this gets even worse with the monkey missions as the monkeys randomly move each time you do, resulting in a high chance of failing one because the last one keeps moving as you try to get to it, and the enemies have less personality here too (though the enemy dialogue popups in game 1 dragged encounters out tbh so they're not missed here)
the thing is, is that this game has more modes of play than the first game, and yet it...doesn't add that much? there are three new realtime types of play (the dungeon, the virtual mission and the monkey mission) but it's pretty hit or miss. the virtual mission is an endless survival game a little like vampire survivors and it's really fun?? but after a while you find yourself wondering if you can end the mission as you get bored. the monkey missions are pure rng which is EXTREMELY frustrating; they're framed as challenge missions akin to the melon missions from the first game, but there's no presets, just a random distribution of monkeys as your party is randomly scattered. hope they aren't too spread apart, hope your party gets good positioning and hope they don't randomly move to bad positions, and good luck! it doesn't feel like a test of skill at all, just. a game of luck. even worse is how the game makes you DO THEM AGAIN IN THE DARK once you clear them all. i didn't have the will to do this, and was a contributor to me dropping the game.
to reiterate, it isn't all bad. before i got disillusioned i had great fun with this game. the character art is gorgeous as ever, the characters are really cute. the music really holds its own as something meant to be heard for a LONG time on loop, and the aesthetic is also cute, of course.
that being said...there isn't nearly enough dialogue or characterisation?? :( i really missed the chatter and small sidequests between everyone. the only dialogue seems to be part of the main story, and otherwise you don't get much opportunities to talk to people. maybe it ties in with bea focusing too hard on her work, but i missed it.
the biggest contributor for me dropping the game was the dungeon. so, the game includes a new dungeon crawling game mode that some would call a roguelike. you get everyone to run the dungeon, it runs on hunger, the rooms and corridors are randomly or pseudo-randomly generated, and the aim is to get to the end. it's fun at first, but in bullet point form, here are my issues:
-you need to do this to finish the story. it's the main story in fact - it's the temple of the ocean king of hero hours contract 2
-the section chief moves two spaces. remember pokemon gen 2's ice path puzzle? you have to do this at least once per floor to get to where you want. kinda like a certain necrodancer character
-checkpoints get further and further apart, increasing repetition the closer you get to the end, and starts to instil a feeling that it just goes on and on without end. if you don't know where the checkpoints are, it feels like you're expected to just keep going till you hit something
-enemy hp scales with your party's strength. i don't know if this is increased either by characters' power or by how many of the random missions from the cafe you do, but it means EVERYONE has to be strong or a single enemy blocking a corridor means the end for a weak character, and the melon enemies are just not worth killing. there is no overlevelling bc everything seems to scale from the get-go???
-it's in the dark. hm. there is a circle of light but. still
-INSANELY small hunger meters per character. if you're unlucky you can lose several people on one floor
-food barely restores any hunger. not only that, but you can go some floors without finding ANY food
-here is the kicker, and was what got me to quit: finishing the story requires getting to floor 101. the 101st floor. not even the pokemon mystery dungeon series, a series all about dungeon crawling, makes you do this for the main story. the only dungeons in pmd that are 100 floors are considered postgame challenge dungeons. sure, that didn't have fast travel to checkpoints, but that's not the point. 100 floors, and the last checkpoint is at floor 71. all you can do is hope you get lucky enough for each of your 8 characters to average 3-4 floors. this was when i realised the repetition of this, the fake nft missions and the realtime survival was getting to me
hero hours contract 2, you were cute and i love all your characters and your gameplay concept is super fun, but i'm not doing 100 floors. i may revisit to relax every now and again but i probably won't finish the story
to be honest, i like the gameplay in this one a lot less. in game one, each character had their own independent movement and could move a set distance, like in advance wars. in this game, it's one turn for the entire team and you have free movement and a limited number of actions, where a step or an attack is one action. however, this means that a LOT of actions are wasted on just. travelling to enemies as most random layouts will have a lot of random single enemies scattered about, and your party is randomly scattered too. this gets even worse with the monkey missions as the monkeys randomly move each time you do, resulting in a high chance of failing one because the last one keeps moving as you try to get to it, and the enemies have less personality here too (though the enemy dialogue popups in game 1 dragged encounters out tbh so they're not missed here)
the thing is, is that this game has more modes of play than the first game, and yet it...doesn't add that much? there are three new realtime types of play (the dungeon, the virtual mission and the monkey mission) but it's pretty hit or miss. the virtual mission is an endless survival game a little like vampire survivors and it's really fun?? but after a while you find yourself wondering if you can end the mission as you get bored. the monkey missions are pure rng which is EXTREMELY frustrating; they're framed as challenge missions akin to the melon missions from the first game, but there's no presets, just a random distribution of monkeys as your party is randomly scattered. hope they aren't too spread apart, hope your party gets good positioning and hope they don't randomly move to bad positions, and good luck! it doesn't feel like a test of skill at all, just. a game of luck. even worse is how the game makes you DO THEM AGAIN IN THE DARK once you clear them all. i didn't have the will to do this, and was a contributor to me dropping the game.
to reiterate, it isn't all bad. before i got disillusioned i had great fun with this game. the character art is gorgeous as ever, the characters are really cute. the music really holds its own as something meant to be heard for a LONG time on loop, and the aesthetic is also cute, of course.
that being said...there isn't nearly enough dialogue or characterisation?? :( i really missed the chatter and small sidequests between everyone. the only dialogue seems to be part of the main story, and otherwise you don't get much opportunities to talk to people. maybe it ties in with bea focusing too hard on her work, but i missed it.
the biggest contributor for me dropping the game was the dungeon. so, the game includes a new dungeon crawling game mode that some would call a roguelike. you get everyone to run the dungeon, it runs on hunger, the rooms and corridors are randomly or pseudo-randomly generated, and the aim is to get to the end. it's fun at first, but in bullet point form, here are my issues:
-you need to do this to finish the story. it's the main story in fact - it's the temple of the ocean king of hero hours contract 2
-the section chief moves two spaces. remember pokemon gen 2's ice path puzzle? you have to do this at least once per floor to get to where you want. kinda like a certain necrodancer character
-checkpoints get further and further apart, increasing repetition the closer you get to the end, and starts to instil a feeling that it just goes on and on without end. if you don't know where the checkpoints are, it feels like you're expected to just keep going till you hit something
-enemy hp scales with your party's strength. i don't know if this is increased either by characters' power or by how many of the random missions from the cafe you do, but it means EVERYONE has to be strong or a single enemy blocking a corridor means the end for a weak character, and the melon enemies are just not worth killing. there is no overlevelling bc everything seems to scale from the get-go???
-it's in the dark. hm. there is a circle of light but. still
-INSANELY small hunger meters per character. if you're unlucky you can lose several people on one floor
-food barely restores any hunger. not only that, but you can go some floors without finding ANY food
-here is the kicker, and was what got me to quit: finishing the story requires getting to floor 101. the 101st floor. not even the pokemon mystery dungeon series, a series all about dungeon crawling, makes you do this for the main story. the only dungeons in pmd that are 100 floors are considered postgame challenge dungeons. sure, that didn't have fast travel to checkpoints, but that's not the point. 100 floors, and the last checkpoint is at floor 71. all you can do is hope you get lucky enough for each of your 8 characters to average 3-4 floors. this was when i realised the repetition of this, the fake nft missions and the realtime survival was getting to me
hero hours contract 2, you were cute and i love all your characters and your gameplay concept is super fun, but i'm not doing 100 floors. i may revisit to relax every now and again but i probably won't finish the story