I'm in a weird spot with this game, on one hand, the gameplay is almost 100% better than the first game... but for some reason the the level design and actual core of the game aside from the combat is worse.
its also important to compare it to the king of metroidvania games; Super Metroid. In Super Metroid its quite easy to back track, as your abilities help you backtrack, either unlocking shortcuts or just making you go really fast. In Guacamelee 2, you get shortcut opening abilities and movement abilities... but the movement abilities are limited to a flat wall, which would be fine, but there are almost none in the game and they aren't in good places to use for movement. Even Guacamelee 1 had good places for mobility's sake.
Kinda spoilers past here? kinda?
This last point is more of a nitpick, but the side areas are awful, its like they needed a dumping ground for the worst of their writing and gameplay. The whole point of these side areas is to make little parodies of other games or genres, which is fine, but they did this in the worst possible way.
The Timeline of Doors: simple, makes fun of mobile games and microtransactions, there's a door and you need to wait 10 seconds, whatever. And then there's another door, 1 minute. and then a chest, 2 hours. and then another chest..... 24 hours. The whole point of this one is that you can spend some in game currency to skip it, but thats just poor design since its using actual functional currency in the game. If you're like me and had none due to using it for what its meant for, you'll need to take 20 minutes to grind money to use on this stupid side area. Your payoff is 1 gold.
The JRPG one (the name doesn't matter): JRPG parody, which is fine, but I don't think they've actually played a JRPG before. Everything is tedious and way longer than any JRPG i've played, and I've played NES JRPGs. Nothing is skippable, it uses the animations from the actual gameplay, which are slow and are meant to be cancelled out of from every other move. So it takes forever, and then the victory animation after a fight is full of useless unskippable dialogue. At least you actually get a reward for this one.
The Heart of Dankness: If you've played/watched Guacamelee 1, you probably noticed all the game references and meme references. Personally I never minded them but I know a lot of people hated them. And what better way to "own the haters" but to put them in your game, username and all. Its one thing to bring up the fact that people hated it, its another to try and make yourself seem better by making fun of people who didn't like a part of your game. Bad show.
its also important to compare it to the king of metroidvania games; Super Metroid. In Super Metroid its quite easy to back track, as your abilities help you backtrack, either unlocking shortcuts or just making you go really fast. In Guacamelee 2, you get shortcut opening abilities and movement abilities... but the movement abilities are limited to a flat wall, which would be fine, but there are almost none in the game and they aren't in good places to use for movement. Even Guacamelee 1 had good places for mobility's sake.
Kinda spoilers past here? kinda?
This last point is more of a nitpick, but the side areas are awful, its like they needed a dumping ground for the worst of their writing and gameplay. The whole point of these side areas is to make little parodies of other games or genres, which is fine, but they did this in the worst possible way.
The Timeline of Doors: simple, makes fun of mobile games and microtransactions, there's a door and you need to wait 10 seconds, whatever. And then there's another door, 1 minute. and then a chest, 2 hours. and then another chest..... 24 hours. The whole point of this one is that you can spend some in game currency to skip it, but thats just poor design since its using actual functional currency in the game. If you're like me and had none due to using it for what its meant for, you'll need to take 20 minutes to grind money to use on this stupid side area. Your payoff is 1 gold.
The JRPG one (the name doesn't matter): JRPG parody, which is fine, but I don't think they've actually played a JRPG before. Everything is tedious and way longer than any JRPG i've played, and I've played NES JRPGs. Nothing is skippable, it uses the animations from the actual gameplay, which are slow and are meant to be cancelled out of from every other move. So it takes forever, and then the victory animation after a fight is full of useless unskippable dialogue. At least you actually get a reward for this one.
The Heart of Dankness: If you've played/watched Guacamelee 1, you probably noticed all the game references and meme references. Personally I never minded them but I know a lot of people hated them. And what better way to "own the haters" but to put them in your game, username and all. Its one thing to bring up the fact that people hated it, its another to try and make yourself seem better by making fun of people who didn't like a part of your game. Bad show.