zeusdeegoose
2003
I have gone on record saying that I firmly believe that Zero 1 is better than 2. I first tried playing the DS version of Zero 2 on the Mega Man Zero Collection, and this time I tried the Switch version, which has the save state checkpoints, because some of my issues with Zero II came with its rather obnoxious difficulty. Unfortunately however, my opinion on Zero II hasn't changed much from the last time I played it. I find Zero 2 to be a downgrade in several ways, first being the level design. I have very mixed opinions on Zero 2’s level design. On one hand, Zero 2 eliminates most of the cheap stuff about Zero 1’s level design, but it's bogged down by some really finicky gimmicks. Zero 1’s level design didn't have many gimmicks from what I remember, but Zero 2 really dives into this concept a whole lot more, to mediocre results. The level concepts are mostly fine, but in execution they're more tedious than fun. For example, the factory has you hitting bombs to explode areas of a wall, but more often than not, the bombs don't travel where you want them to go, which gets annoying pretty fast. Occasionally, the level design does actually take good advantage of the gimmicks, however. For example, in the Arctic stage, the ice is used in the intro to build up momentum so you can get a Cyber Elf, which is a nice test of skills. But examples of this are few and far between, unfortunately. The level design also occasionally uses the Chain Rod, a hook shot that just feels so god awful to use. It transfers your momentum awfully, and it just feels forced whenever used. You also have to use it in a lot of do-or-die scenarios, and combined with the poor momentum translation, it gets annoying really fast. This is kind of a nitpick and doesn't make sense with Zero 2’s levels, but something I really liked about Zero 1 is the interconnected world. Not only did this encourage exploration outside of levels so you could memorize the layout before heading into the mission, but it gave Zero 1 a great sense of worldbuilding. It made all the stages feel like they mattered, but this is all but gone in Zero 2. Once again, since you teleport to stages in Zero 2, it wouldn't make sense, but then again, Mega Man X did this, even though each area wasn't interconnected. Once again, a nitpick, but still. My mixed opinions of the stage design also translates into the bosses, unfortunately. They're not awful, but some of these fights get super fucking annoying. Jesus christ, actually ASS FUCK the Phoenix boss, and I hope it never rises from the ashes of hell ever again.
Occasionally, Zero 2 can be an improvement over its predecessor. For one, the level up system from Zero 1 is much, much faster, cutting down on the grinding in the game. A much needed improvement overall. I also like the forms and EX Skills, as well as the fact that the Sword now ignores i-frames, which kind of made it harder to go back to Zero 1 TBH. But in my humble opinion, Zero 2 is a bit of a step back from Zero 1. It's not awful, but once I beat it the first time, it felt like a lot could've been done better.
Occasionally, Zero 2 can be an improvement over its predecessor. For one, the level up system from Zero 1 is much, much faster, cutting down on the grinding in the game. A much needed improvement overall. I also like the forms and EX Skills, as well as the fact that the Sword now ignores i-frames, which kind of made it harder to go back to Zero 1 TBH. But in my humble opinion, Zero 2 is a bit of a step back from Zero 1. It's not awful, but once I beat it the first time, it felt like a lot could've been done better.
2024
The controls made me epileptic
2005
My opinion on the Zero games have been somewhat contrarian. Zero 1 was my second favorite game in the Zero series, 2 was a (somewhat small) step back for me, and 3 is the only one in which I hold the majority opinion, in that it's the best Mega Man game. From what I can gather, I'm in the minority when I say that Zero 4 is the absolute worst of the Zero games. There's just so much wrong with Zero 4. Just, good god. This game is the definition of “If it isn't broken, don't fix it”, and its new and reworked mechanics leaves me frustrated, longing for the mechanics from Zero 3. First off, probably the least offensive change here. The Cyber Elves from Zero 3 are now just one Cyber Elf, and you level it up, which allows you to choose different cyber elves (although you get one at a time). As someone who barely used the cyber elves in all of the Zero games, due to ranking requirements (which I'll get to later with this game), this personally didn't phase me too much. It wasn't a big hassle to get used to, and I actually found it a little easier to follow than the Satellite Elves from Zero 3. Not to say that I necessarily prefer Zero 4’s system, but this is one of the few somewhat positive changes I found to Zero 4. Almost everything from here on out is downhill. Zero 4 introduces the crafting system, and is how you get your body parts in this game. By defeating enemies, you get a random part from them, which is used in the crafting. However, there's almost no indication on how to craft anything of use. 99% of the time, you'll just get a junk part, so I said “Fuck it” and went to the StrategyWiki. Just do this, it'll make your life so much easier. What Zero 4 also changed is how you get access to the elements, and on paper it's not a terrible idea. Zero 4 gives you 8 bosses to select at the start, so it wouldn't make sense to just have 3 randomly placed elements out of the 8 bosses. But at the same time, the way you use the elements is so impractical. The elements are now infused with the EX skills, which isn’t a great idea because the EX skills were to simply add to your overall moveset and combat capabilities, and relying on them for weaknesses is just a really, really terrible idea. Mega Man Zero 2 and 3 NEVER forced you to go for the EX skills if you didn’t want to, or couldn’t. You still had the charged Buster and Saber shots if you needed to use an element. Zero 4 however, essentially requires you to get it if you want to be taking down these bosses, lest it takes decades just to kill a single fucking boss. And somehow, someway, it gets even worse. First off, how you get the skills is dumb to begin with. One of the silliest gameplay mechanics I've seen in gaming is the FUCKING WEATHER SYSTEM. I AM NOT SHITTING YOU, the fucking Weather of a stage impacts if you can even go through the weakness chain to begin with. Each stage has 2 weather settings, one in which the weather is favorable, the other is better for the enemy. You have to play on the unfavorable stage to get the skill, but that’s not all. The weather changes the stage itself too. It's not just cosmetic. And 99% of the time, the level is just designed to piss you off. Doing an all EX Skills is a fucking nightmare and a half for this game. You’re practically forced into it either way, so I ended up suffering and doing every mission with unfavorable weather. It sucked, needless to say. It’s just so perplexing on why they chose weather of all things. I could imagine some people going in blind and finding an inconsistent difficulty curve thanks to the randomized weather. The weather system also means that your rank is essentially useless now, and lowers the skill ceiling from literally every other Zero game. A replacement wouldn’t been nice, but oh well. That also brings me to the stage design, which is absolutely garbage. I don’t know if the original level designers were affiliated with Zero 4 at all, but this is more irritating than fucking Mega Man 1. Compounded with the level design issues of the weather system, is the lact of a solid third weapon. For context, Zero 1 had the Triple Rod, which was a great addition to the combat. Zero 2 had the Chain Rod, a decently useful platforming that was a little bit finicky to use. Zero 3 had the Recoil Rod, which took the best parts of the Triple Rod and Chain Rod, being a great addition to combat and exploration. Zero 4 attempts to continue this tradition with the Zero Knuckle, rest in peace Shield Boomerang, which fails at both the things that the Recoil Rod exceeds at. It’s almost entirely optional, too. I only used it a grand total of two times in my entire playthrough; once to get an actually well hidden subtank, and once in the final set of levels. And it sucks in combat, as it allows you to steal the weapons of other enemies, but it’s pathetic. It does pitiful damage, and overall you’re just better off sticking with the Ol’ Reliable, the Z Saber and Buster combo. Back on the topic of level design, Zero 4’s levels are filled with gimmicks that don’t even enhance the quality of the stage, once again just to piss you off. The sun overheating you, dealing almost half your health bar? Sure! Insta-kill crushing blocks that are near pixel perfect to dodge over and over again? Why not? Long strands of vines which block your path that constantly respawn? Goddamn, they’re pulling out all the stops with this game! The level design in Zero 4 is a major downgrade from any Zero game preceding it, and it’s actually infuriating how hard this game drops the ball when it shouldn’t. Zero 3 was nearly PERFECT in gameplay, with few falters in game balance and challenge. Zero 4 just feels like scrapped mechanics from Zero 3, and I really want to love this game. I’ve loved (or at least respect) all of the games in the Zero series, but Zero 4 just doesn’t do anything right to be worth a playthrough. Zero 4 is a disappointing conclusion to the Red Bomber’s legacy, with poorly thought out mechanics holding it back constantly, and poor level design to boot. I would’ve personally suggested skipping it, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s the conclusion to Zero’s saga, so idk. Do whatever you want. I got all of the Steam achievements, and I will never touch Zero 4 for the foreseeable future. Have a good night.
2019
Was browsing through my 3DS when I remembered this little game. The title is surprisingly accurate!
This review was originally posted on The Legend of Dark With Wiki, prior to it's closure and my retirement from said wiki, and is now fully archived on Backloggd. I do not condone NAN-A nor Inside System's actions. They have participated in morally grey actions within the community and inside the franchise itself. As such, these reviews can no longer be considered recommendations, and do not have any formal scores to them. I stress that you do not take these reviews at face value. Any content within this review is subject to being broken, questionable, outdated, low quality, or at times, unreadable. Additionally, these were made from a different point of view compared to my writings of today, so I please ask that you disregard any positive statements about NAN-A or Inside System. All of these articles may be found, in their original, intended form here, alongside their numerous revisions. Additionally, these reviews are liscensed under CC-BY SA 4.0, under wiki policy. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the review.
DISCLAIMER: This entire review is based off of the Early Access beta. However, we felt the game had matured enough to warrant a review. Regardless, any changes made between the review and the current Early Access state will also be reviewed when they release. If you have any issues with that, read the whole review to understand all our points first, and then send your remarks. You can also ignore us and send your death threats to Blad#2469 just because someone is hating on a game. Try your best.
Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice. Need I say more.
Brave Dungeon 2 is easily one of the most controversial games in the series, right next to good ol' 3, however, for different reasons. 3's changes to the gameplay made it one of the more love-it-or-hate-it games in the franchise, but The Meaning of Justice has been all over the place. From its development, reception, and release. Online civil wars were started over this game. I only thought that happened to Sonic, but no. This happens all the time in other communities, like Gunvolt for example. This game was just a spiral of disappointment, at least for me. I just got into the community when I found out Brave Dungeon 2 existed. I didn't even know Brave Dungeon existed, so I beat that, hated it, and then just waited for it's sequel. I kept waiting until an anonymous person (who I'll reveal later) gave me a code for the demo. I played it and really enjoyed it. So when the Early Access released, I was pretty psyched. Of course, I didn't get it until recently, and then those next 9 months of my life waiting for this game happened. And it made me rethink my entire opinion of the game, and basically anything remotely related to Dark Witch. I still love this series, but waiting for this game was a pain. I'm going to come clean right off the bat and say that this review won't be very positive. The easiest way to put it is that Brave Dungeon 2, while not a complete faliure, is a disaster. It's not terrible, but I wouldn't think twice about calling it the worst in the series. And I'm gonna lay it all out on the battlefield. But before we begin, I've got a couple of guests here. For the first, and probably last time in this series' history, we have not one, but 2 guests here! First, we have the other bureaucrat on this wiki, Mali!
I guess I'll add a little bit of info: As you probably know (or don't know), I'm Mali, and like blad said, I'm the other bureaucrat of this wiki. I have some feelings to say about Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice. It's a game that I originally thought of it as being the best game next to Dark Witch 2. With all of the hype given when the game was first teasered, new pixel art, recurring characters to help join your sides, and a brand-new environment that has paths that feel familiar, while some are new to the table. I honestly liked this game, and for what the Early Access had to offer, it offered a different side of things. yeah, it had everything that the teasers and the demo (only available to those who purchased the BD Physical pack), but from what I've seen more, I've wished that INSIDE_SYSTEM had done a better job with this game. Can't wait to go over the things I've found.
Second up is a notorious game modder, who gave me the demo code, and who was also responsible for adding Yamcha into this game. Here's Oersted!
While I don't understand this wiki stuff, I guess I'm here. Blad is adding the text for me since I dont do stuff with wikis like these. I did the thing with Yamcha in BD2, and I'm a fan of the game, I think. Stuff's complicated, with everything that goes on with it.
Finally, if this review is too long for you, I've included a TL;DR at the end. With that said, it's about time we reviewed this game, so let's get into the best part, the development!
Development
Yeah, I say the development, because how this game's development went is straight up comedy gold. Brave Dungeon 2 was revealed in 2018, to no fanfare. Like, I'm serious. All we got was Klinsy walking around a forest, fighting monsters, and using her revenge magic, RED FLAME PHOENIX! It looked interesting, though, and fans got excited. Brave Dungeon 2 was slated for a 2019 release, before being... delayed. Yeah, for the first time in Dark Witch history, a game has been delayed! It was jarring, to say the least. The first game might've technically been delayed by 4 months, but who the hell knew what a Legend of Dark Witch was at that time? The game wasn't even revealed at that point. So we waited, and come 2019... delayed... again. 2020... the game was delayed again, this time, indefinitely. But 2021 would thankfully give us news, for better, and for worse. NAN-A announced an early access, which would come out at an unspecified date. And I was pretty excited, but also a bit scared. Early Access games have a poor reception for being crappy and unfinished, but I wanted Brave Dungeon 2 as soon as possible, so I cut my losses and waited for the early access. I couldn't contain my excitement when in February 2022, the Early Access released, initially to positive reviews. And that's where Oersted comes in. Oersted already introduced himself, so I'll keep it brief. Oersted is a notorious Nintendo modder. His work ranges from RPG Maker Fes to Miitopia, Fire Emblem, and more. Lots of RPGs, to say the least. He also made/translated some PC RPG Maker games, so he has a lot of work under his belt. If you want a bigger description, see here. He dropped a multi-paragraph bomb on Steam, explaining his disdain of the game. And overnight, Oersted turned the 'Very Positive' reviews into 'Mixed'. Words are powerful, what can I say? Mali and I also published extremely long reviews, but nothing topped Oersted's review. Oersted also called out several poor positive reviews (ex. "yea."), which did get him (and me, although on a lesser scale) blasted a bit from Crippe, but this made the score drop even more. Unfortunately, this was counteracted with many other positive reviews, and now the game sits at a 50%. On the topic of reviews, what are our thoughts on the early access?
Early Access
The Early access of Brave Dungeon 2 is an even bigger joke than it's development history. We've got incredible amounts of reused assets, bugs that went over 80 updates without being fixed, borderline porn of Stoj being added, and all sorts of questionable stuff.
This early access was announced a while back, don't remember exactly when, but I went out of my way to buy it as soon as possible. What I got was a worse experience than the switch demo. This demo was originally released as a bonus for players who purchased Brave Dungeon 1's physical release for the Switch, and it's actually pretty impressive how much better this demo is compared to the entirety of early access.
As development progressed, NAN-A lied more and more about the developement, and the game progressively got worse and worse. It's impressive how NAN-A made the game worse nearly every update, adding new overpowered features, introducing new bugs, and such.
There isn't much else I can say here. It's a mess, and most Dark Witch fans are starting to realize this, which is great. The more people that vocalize their disdain for this game, the more likely NAN-A is to make the game ACTUALLY GOOD.
I can't agree more with Oersted here. Personally, I haven't invested into much Early Access games, but even then, I could tell this was ass. Don't buy Brave Dungeon 2 in it's current state, because you are ripping yourself off at $20. Wait for a price drop, don't even bother. Oh wait, the game will cost $30 AT LAUNCH. $30. I'm not convinced. Not only are we on version 0.93, there are still a crap ton of bugs, and on top of that, there are a lot of issues with it, bugs not withstanding. Brave Dungeon 2 is simply not worth it at this point in the game. But if there's one good thing about Brave Dungeon 2, it has to be the soundtrack.
Music
This is really one of the only unambiguously positive things we have to say about this game. This OST is awesome. Seriously, I did an entire gamerip just to listen to it outside of the game. I'll make it public one day, but it needs some fixing. I can't think of any bad tracks to it's name. I'd go more in-depth, but I don't know all of the tracks yet, and I don't play with headphones on. So for now, I'll just leave it at that. The only negative I have to say is that Nightmare re-uses themes from Brave Dungeon. A remix would've been nice.
In my opinion, this is the only redeeming factor of the game. Every soundtrack in this game is almost as great as Dark Witch 3's and 2s. I know Raito is only the only composer yet again, which can be noticeable with how many instruments he reuses in the soundtrack, but I have to say that this game will have an exception. My only issue is the battle theme, the intro, and the title screen. I wished that Raito had done a better job with this. especially the title screen. it's LITERALLY just the Brave Dungeon title screen and Dark Witch 3's title screen, but with different instruments to give it a different feeling. While that may be a bit of a change in pace, it's noticeable for a huge fan like me, and I could've expected something else. I give the music s solid 8/10 for this game.
Story
The overall story of the game is soulless and uninteresting. I can sum up all 3 main stories in one sentence.
Al's Story - Get through big mazelike forest to make a path to Hampden Tower. Klinsy's Story - Get through 3 mazelike archives to get books that can break the seal to Hampden Tower. Papelne's Story - Build a town and bridge, completely unrelated to Hampden Tower for some reason.
That's it. There's no more to the initial stories, no real character development. Things are pulled out of nowhere like Mari suddenly having the ability to sense danger near bosses in Al's story. This is never brought up again, and is only used in two cutscenes. Why even introduce something like this?
When it comes to the fourth and final chapter, there is borderline no story. When done right, this can be really good! It's not good. Each character, after unsealing Hampden Tower, was defeated by the spirity within it, and was thrown about the land, similar to Live-A-Live's final chapter. HOWEVER, each character simply just... Retreated. They weren't defeated or anything. They simply fled because every character suddenly became a coward.
When you find everyone, they all suddenly become "Brave Heroes" and stop the spirit of Hampden Tower. In the end, they all go their seperate ways, with some being paid. No development, no dificulty.
As a +12 hour RPG, this was one of the most disappointing parts of Brave Dungeon 2, and unlike Brave Dungeon 1, there's a lot of dialogue in this game. At random points, more notably in Al's story, a cutscene will just... begin. No fanfare or anything, the screen just goes to black and shows the heroes slowly walking. It was really jarring when I got to a campsite and then... nothing. It just takes me out of the experience and is really distracting. Thankfully, you can skip the cutscenes, because the actual dialogue is nothing. Don't even bother with the story here. It's not that good. I should also note that this game has literally no official translation. Yeah. Everything comes from internet translators, so the dialogue is... well... Typos flood your screen, and everyone sounds like a robot. I'm going to cut NAN-A some slack here, he barely knows English, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be willing to translate the game for NAN-A; why not get Circle/FHW to do it? Say what you will about the other games' translation, but anything is better than fucking Google Translate. NAN-A even opened a channel in the Early Access server where you can improve the translation, which ultimately proves redundant as the official translation is coming later. So what's the point? NAN-A didn't even commit to the FULL MACHINE TRANSLATION. This is absolutely laughable, and when my screen fills with Japanese text, I just burst out laughing. If you're going to be lazy, at least commit to it. I think it'd be less of a blow if the game was in full Japanese.
EDIT 1/28/23: I think that last part is now false? I’m not 100% sure, but Google Translate is now used for the entire game. Hooray. Why it couldn’t have been like this 80 updates ago is beyond me, but at least I can read the text now. Also, fun fact: they use impact in the team talk menu. Yeah, I’m not kidding.
EDIT 2/23/23: This is no longer true, and now the entire game is translated by an anonymous third-party. It took way too long, though.
Gameplay
Overall
The gameplay style is mostly overhauled, and I think it was for better and for worse.
Brave Dungeon 2 is structured like this; you have 3 stories to play as, each sporting different gameplay styles. Because of this, some stories are better than others. Why we couldn't stick to one playstyle for the entire game is questionable, but I'll entertain the idea. The battle system is the same across playthroughs, so lets get the redundant stuff out of the way, before we get to the 3 stories.
Dungeons
The dungeons in this game are so much better in this game. First of all, the game takes a sort of open-world approach, at least for Al and Papelne. Al has one big dungeon, and you collect keys along the way to progress. Believe it or not, this system is actually pretty fun. The main problem with it is that there's no fast travel. So often you'll have to bash your head against the wall just to get to the next map. It's not terribly annoying, but I should still point it out regardless. Papelne's dungeon is an open world game, which is kinda cool. You craft materials, but you tire out pretty quickly, meaning you have to go back home and rest up. Klinsy's playthrough is more akin to the original Brave Dungeon. The level up system is also different. You have 10 stars to fill, and once you complete 5, you get the level 2 stars. Fill the Level 1 and 2 stars and you get a class change. Then you have 3 more levels to unlock and then you get Rank X. Throughout filling the stars, you get buffs depending on how much star is filled. You can switch around stars, giving a large margin of player choice, which is always a plus in my book. Overall, I liked the dungeons more in Brave Dungeon 2. They're a solid improvement over the first Brave Dungeon, for the most part. But we'll get to that later.
Battles
The battles in this game are not fun at all. The main issue is the insultingly easy difficulty. I played on Lunatic mode, the hardest difficulty you can play from the start. And while the game is insultingly easy, battles take forever. I suspect the only thing that changes with difficulty is the amount of HP enemies have. I switched from Lunatic to Very, Very Easy, and I noticed enemies died within 2-3 hits, but on Lunatic, it took several hits before they died, leading to a much more tedious experience. Yeah, the other Dark Witch games did this, but if you knew what you were doing, this was a non-issue. They made you experiment with the game's mechanics, and that made you a better player. Even the original Brave Dungeon did this. Brave Dungeon is also debatably an easy game, but it did difficulty well. Enemies were slightly buffed, but they also took the same amount of damage to kill. So what's the point of playing on Lunatic? More EXP, but in this game, EXP is heavily skewed in your favor, Lunatic or not. You get so much exp, and at one point I was 8 levels above the enemies in a new floor. What's even worse is the godawful bosses. I deeply apologize to Litty, because these bosses are a drag. And worse yet, they re-use bosses left and right. Jesus Christ, I never want to see the ghost boss in my life ever again. And this Shady boss fight can kiss my ass. The Flubber one also sucked as well. Let's go every single one, shall we? The ghost boss is so tedious. He makes it so some opponents can't attack, and this fight nearly broke me on Lunatic. It's just not fun, and it doesn't matter on lower difficulties as you can easily 3-shot this guy. Shady's fight is easy if you break one of her rules. If you use Hyper Freeze, Shady's clones attack your entire party. But this fuels your revenge meter. So if you use Mari or Al, just spam their revenge magics, and then use Seama to attack the real Shady. It's so easy to do, and if you're at a high level, you can just tank the fight until you win. Good game design, ladies and gentlemen. Breaking the rules makes you win the fight effortlessly. Finally, Flubber. He'll grow big at some points, and you can't attack him. But just... don't attack him when he's big. He literally will not even attempt to attack you. God, I thought the Syega Machines in 3 were bad, but this... it SUCKS. Enough said. To make matters even worse, these run into the same issue as Brave Dungeon in that the battles get repetitive. There's barely any variety in the battles, and when there is (the boss battles), it sucks. I don't know what else to say, the battles in this game just aren't good. Overall, the battle system in Brave Dungeon 2 is decent, but the battles themselves are terrible, and this pretty much killed the game for me.
Al
Al is a big improvement over the dungeon crawling from Brave Dungeon. First off, the dungeon design was really good in this game. Aside from the fact that you can force open everything, this was easily one of the best parts of Brave Dungeon 2, for as much as that's worth. But other than that, I have no real complaints here. The enemies also chase you here, and that means you can actually run away from encounters now. Battles are really easy, but it's nice that NAN-A allowed us to do this. Even he knew the battles sucked in this game. You also fight bosses, but if I remember correctly, there's no real reason to do it, unless it's a scripted boss (which is necessary for progression). You can also craft Seama items, but they aren't all that good, save for the speed ups. A glitch is in the game that allows you to have infinite keys though, so go wild. Overall, this gets a 6/10 from me. Not bad on it's own, but with the issue of combat, it went from good to just bland.
Klinsy
Okay, so I haven't really played enough of Brave Dungeon 2 to know about Klinsy's side to the story, but from what I've seen and can tell is that the gameplay takes more of like the original Brave Dungeon. The enemies are static, most of the stages have a 1 block gap in between, and during the story, you find Stoj to play as. There are also some seals that are more like a puzzle game. You have four different types of blocks, and you have to find where on the board does it match the blocks you can have. You can choose to brute force it, but you have to wait a bit until doing it again, or you can escape the battle(?) I don't remember.
Going back to Stoj, oh my gosh, they have OVERHAULED her design! I know it's the same pixel artist that worked on the first Dark Witch, but jeesus! Stoj looks nothing like her original counterpart! I can say the same for Neville, too. Her new look is pretty on the spot and an overhaul, too. The eyes on her pixel art don't look as weird as what they've looked like in the original and Dark Witch 3. (I'm bringing 3 up because she looks nothing different than her BD look) However, they reverted back to the original pixel art for her second-class change, which can be a bit tacky, but instead we get her smiling. That's the first time she is smiling! Not a big detail to point out, but once you look at her revenge artwork, it's sick.
I think Klinsy's stage is the worst playthrough in Brave Dungeon 2. Not only does it revert all of the good changes from Al's playthrough, the bosses are absolutely the worst part of the game. It singlehandedly ruined my entire experience. The dungeon design is like the original Brave Dungeon, flat and boring, and even though there are gimmicks in the stage, they all fucking suck. The playthrough also has puzzles that interrupt the flow of the game, and are PISS easy. They also nerfed Stoj so hard, it's not even funny. In Brave Dungeon, admittedly she was a bit overpowered. She did decent damage, and had some really good healing skills. But you took a lot of damage in Brave Dungeon, and we can't have any difficulty here! In Brave Dungeon 2, she won't be doing damage anytime soon. This was a bullheaded move. So the only time you can do damage with Stoj is with her Revenge Magic, which isn't that good. Sure, it hits all enemies, but it does zero-to-no damage. Ultimately, Stoj went from one of the best party members to straight up useless. Klinsy's playthrough introduces weaknesses, and while that sounds cool, there are only, 2-3 elements, which is LAME. I thought this was Brave Dungeon, not Mega Man Zero. Hitting a weakness doesn't do much anyways, it only does 10 more damage. But back to the bosses, FUCK ALL OF THESE WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BODY. Once I got to the Lava Library, I genuinely thought my playthrough was over at this point. I died over 5 times before I beat him on VERY VERY EASY. The other bosses are piss easy. For the love of god, DON'T PLAY ON LUNATIC, or these bosses will take FOREVER. I give this a 3/10. It was a complete drag, and it was just plain unfun. Plus, the Stoj nerf was just insult to injury.
Papelne
Papelne's story was the only story I liked in this game. Yeah, in my opinion, it was actually pretty fun. And you know why? The godawful battle system is almost entirely optional here! You can avoid pretty much any battle here. From what I remember, the only time combat is required is to get white pearls from the seals, which is a bit of a grind. Papelne's story is a semi-open world game, where you travel around a map. You have a stamina meter that doesn't automatically replenish, but thankfully you can upgrade it, and the map is pretty small. You also move decently fast, to travel is a non-issue. Outside of traveling, it's basically a town simulator. You get materials to craft stuff, and then you use those materials to level up the town. Most stuff is optional, but the buildings are needed to beat the game. The town simulator is quite relaxing, and for the first time, I didn't want to stop playing the game. I completed it in one long session, and it was a blast. If this was a bit longer and the grinding was cut to a minimum, I'd buy it as its own game. I give it an 8/10.
Papelne's Story is as empty as GM_Flatgrass from Garry's Mod. Charl has hired you to build a city on an insland unrelated to Hampden Tower, which is somehow "right next to it". You then Build a tent, crafting station, inn, warehouse, staff building, and bridge. That's it. That's the entire story. Patty joins after you make the Inn, and Rudy can join if you visit an optional "Lost City" which is home to some Dog like Fae, along with two other more humanoid Fae when you have Patty in the Party. You can't access the town without having Patty, so it's pointless going before you have her. You then have to go to a beach on the other side of the map. WHY? After you build the bridge, you fight some bigass bird. You kill it, bridge is repaired, and nothing of note happens. Cue the final chapter of the game.
Final story
The final story in Brave Dungeon is unlocked after you beat all the stories on one file. You start off with Blad and Stoj. Yeah, yikes. Blad is really weak when you get her. Sure, she levels up very fast, but why even make her this weak to begin with? Oh right, because they want you to get the other characters, which are actually good because you spent one-third of the game with all of them. Yeah, this is stupid. They did Blad dirty, even though she won the popularity poll. A shame. Also, is it just me, but why does her idle animation look so cute? My final party was Blad, Stoj, Al, and Mari. Turns out that was a good choice because Al and Stoj have a skill that gives everyone BARRIER AND GUARD. Yeah, that made leveling up Blad easier. And if you have a capacity meter accessory, you can just break the game in two, like a Zero boss. To add insult to injury, Lovely Heels is an Al healing skill that's just way too overpowered. I don't know what else to say, this game is really easy. And that's coming from a Dark Witch 2 mega-fan (and spoiler alert, that's my favorite game). At least Dark Witch 2 had Lunatic Mode, which was amazing. Anyways, at Hampden Tower, you have 4 dungeons. You don't need to do them, and they really only exist for grinding purposes. Intentionally making the player grind is not good game design, game! But go on, I guess. The worst part is that you CAN'T LEAVE HAMPDEN TOWER UNLESS YOU DIE TO A BOSS IN THE DUNGEONS. Needless to say, this leads to frustration, as if you barge straight into Hampden Tower with Blad and Stoj, like I did, you get BONED. And you'll be looking for a long time on how to actually escape this place. What happened to the anti-frustration features from 3, as poorly designed as that game is? But whenever you want, you can fight Charl.
Alright, time for a confession. I cheated on the final boss, and I'll explain why. I was right at the finish line, and I thought, "Will the final boss really make me change my mind?" Why should I waste hours grinding just to even try the final boss? So you know what? Fuck it. Typically I avoid cheating in games unless A. I beat the game, or B. I make it seperate from my main save. The only time I really violated those rules was with Terraria, but that was just to get silver bullets so I could actually fight the twins. So that's what I did. I got Oersted's files and fought the boss that way. This game was just completely unfun at this point, so I can't care less if I cheated. But if you want to call me out for cheating, that's fine. I don't really care. Just as a self imposed limitation, I used a Level 100, pre-new game plus save.
Alright, so Charl. His first phase is rather easy, unless you're underleveled. You fight his first form, which just stands there, occasionally using rather powerful moves. Well, powerful for Brave Dungeon 2 standards. This is the only time in the game where I saw someone take over 1000 damage in one move. Wow, how impressive! Can you make any attack remove over half someone's HP next? Next, after you kill Charl, you get into Charl's ultimate form. There are 5 targets on screen. I actually don't know if you're required to kill the other targets, but that doesn't matter, because Al + Blad = powerful attack that hits all enemies. This fight is so short that I don't have anything to say about it. Neat design, though.
Postgame
Fanart
A first for Dark Witch. A dedicated fanart section so you can see some of the art that is directly advertised by NAN-A to promote other people's artwork. However, most of it is directly related to the character Mari, and the main translator and the beta tester for Dark Witch: Crippe. I do not know why NAN-A chose to add a bunch of Mari art into the game, but that's nothing compared to the biggest issue of this section: The Lwed, NSFW images that have been featured directly by NAN-A. Adding lewd art into the game was easily one of the most boneheaded decisions NAN-A could've done here. I don't object to an art section entirely; nor do I object to T-rated games having mildly sexual content, take Skullgirls as a random example; but Brave Dungeon 2 is a family-friendly game on it's own. And the artworks here went way, WAY too far. And yes, I don't care that the first Brave Dungeon was rated T, this is fucking unacceptable. One has Papelne thinking about cake (not a dirty joke), one where Urken has half of her ass on screen (thankfully her panties are covered by her conveniently placed foot), and one where Stoj has a pretty revealing costume. And no, I don't care that she's 5000 years or whatever, nor do I care that it's fictional. Fuck that logic, and fuck you if you're defending this stuff. If I wanted almost-naked young anime girls, I'd play Gal-Gun, not Brave Dungeon 2.
Oh, and guess what NAN-A did? He retweeted NSFW of Seama as well to promote the game.[1] Are you kidding me?
Bajel
After you beat the game, you can unlock Bajel. Perhaps Oersted could make a write up below, because I couldn't care enough to get her.
Bajel is certainly a character that's unlockable. Her moves are generally a bit stronger than most other characters, but she's still weaker than Al, since Al is the obvious protagonist. Some of her passive skills used to be good, but they're pretty niche due to not having much room to grow at all, since the only challenge that remains is Nightmare, AND she joins at Level ONE. Like Stoj however, she can ignore damaging tiles on the floor due to the fact that she has wings. So as a party leader, She might be a better Stoj, but outside of that, she's nearly useless.
Nightmare
In this game, Nightmare has the same look and feel as the original. Hell, it even has the same music, and the retextured red and black eneimes as the original with all of the previous bosses coming in without any changes whatsoever, giving more of the fact that INSIDE_SYSTEM loves to reuse content in their games. However, the game has the original + new layouts with some provided by the fans who've worked with the Early Access program. The final boss was stated to be something completely different, but all it was is Zizou with her sister, Mati. This boss has even more HP than what she had in the original (She had 15 million but is currently unknown how much she has now), and they're extremely hard to beat offensively, and it requires additional setups in order to actually defeat the boss.
Zizou and Mati are certainly a fight. With a recent update making status ailments worse against enemies the higher the difficulty is (Version 0.93.3), the already nearly impossible fight has become even harder. Oh, and this fight was implemented before the two even reused "Was that meeting despair", so the fight was complete and utter silence outside sound effects! It took about 30 updates for music to be added here. Kind of pathetic, huh?
Guess what happens after you beat Nightmare? Spoilers for anyone who hasn't beaten Nightmare yet, but you don't even get to play as Zizou or Mati! What's probably going to happen is that Zizou and Mati are going to be added as DLC, and I have proof! Check out the Brave Dungeon 2 page, and you'll see why. This was the biggest insult when it comes to BD2. Instead of unlocking Zizou/Mati through... oh I don't know, BEATING THE GAME! Just make them paid DLC for everyone to buy for $2-10 dollars (that's my guess). DLC in RPGs is very hard to get right. Most often, it's done poorly. Look at Persona 5 Royal, for example. It had some nice costumes for purchase, which is nice. They also give you the original Persona 5 DLC for free, which is great. But the paid personas. Oh my god. Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro. Buy this and you win the game. So if this is really DLC, just make it good NAN-A. Don't make it a cakewalk (hell, some difficulty would be nice), make them actually worth a damn, and don't do this in the future.
The Good
The music is a banger.
Exploring is fun.
Nice character designs.
Great pixel art, with smooth animation. The whole game looks pretty good, and the art style is pretty consistent, compared to the original Brave Dungeon.
Decent character progression. The Mind
Some decent improvements to the gameplay.
The Bad
The battle system.
Bugs. We really couldn't find a place to put this, but yeah, this game has so many bugs, it's not funny. And people think Sonic 06 and Cyberpunk were bad with this. I already mentioned one of them, but Oersted can easily list many below.
Like hell I'm listing all of the bugs. Wait until the full release and I'll consider making a list.
Terrible boss fights, getting borderline unfair at points.
Poor story, which really sucks for an RPG.
Klinsy's playthrough.
Some parts are untranslated. (Note: This seems to be no longer true)
Some fps drops at points, particularly if you run the game above 60FPS. We noticed some short freezes, particularly if you're in a new area for the first time in one session.
Re-used assets.
I'm just gonna personally add my thoughts onto this part. This has when a common issue of ANY game INSIDE_SYSTEM has released. Yes, even spanning all of the way back to their Touhou games back in the 2010s. Touhou: Unorganised Heroes is i believe the first game he'd worked on, and it is baffling to see that the designs for the enemies came all of the way from this game, with some still acting the same way without any changes whatsoever. For Brave Dungeon though, some of the enemies have new attacks, which puts up the pace a little bit, but my issue is this: Ever sinee the first Dark Witch, they basically brought all of the enemies from that game and put them in here without any major changes to the design at all. It's like if Nintendo were to make the Goomba or any enemy from Super Mario 64 and use it in every subsequent Mario game after that. It would just look really werid to some, especially me. And the music? I know I've talked about this already, but while Raito's music are all bangers with some sounding a bit boring, most songs reuse the same instruments instead of finding new instruments to make music with. It just makes eveyrthing feel the same and such, and I řally REALLY hope that NAN-A will take a different direction with The Legend of Dark Witch as a whole.
Another thing we couldn't really mention. This game re-uses a crap ton of assets, and while the other games did this a bit, it never stopped being noticeable here. The attacks look goofy at points, like Patty's attack, which is annoyingly slow.
The Early Access program is a disaster.
Mindless difficulty, even on Lunatic.
Difficulty spikes are frequent, leading to lots of frustration throughout 15 hours.
Conclusion (all 3)
Overall, Brave Dungeon 2 is frustrating. Not because it's really all that bad. The core gameplay could be fun, but Brave Dungeon 2 is brought down by issues that bog down the whole experience, and as a result, Brave Dungeon 2 didn't do any justice for the original Brave Dungeon.
Our scores are as follows:
Scores
Reviewer Score
Average (rounded) 3/10 (5/10 with original scores)
Blad 3/10 (originally 6/10)
Mali 4.5/10 (originally 7/10)
Oersted 2/10
And that unfortunately ends the review series on a really sour note. This game has a bunch of promise, but it ended up half baked. No joke, this is one of my least favorite games of all time. Note I said "least favorite", not "worst". Objectively, the game is below average, but it doesn't feel like a below average game. What should've been a slam dunk crashed and burned. I must note that when I reviewed 3, I didn't TYPE IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS. That's because that game was so close to being great, but they dropped the ball. This game actively frustrated me. It fails to improve over Brave Dungeon, and just isn't a good game period. I also didn't mention this because it applies to all of the games I review, but this one in particular; if you like Brave Dungeon 2, great! As long as you acknowledge the flaws it has, that's totally fine, and that's not the point of this reviews. You can enjoy a game in spite of it's genuine flaws. But if you blatantly ignore the issues with a game, just hear us out for once. Ignoring the problems with a game doesn't make it go away; it just makes the series worse. NAN-A will see the positive reception of these games, and keep doing that, and improve it. Look at Episode 2, and, in some eyes, Episode 3. If NAN-A sees the mixed/negative reception, he'll fix the future games even more. So if you like Brave Dungeon 2, that's fine, just don't force everyone to like it. Also, some of you may be asking why we're reviewing the game now instead of waiting for the full release. After all, that's not fair, is it? I'm just going to say this: I don't care if it's in Early Access. NAN-A wants us to pay $20 (EDIT: 4/11/23: NOW 30$) for this. A game that's technically not finished yet. I can only name a few indie games that meet/exceed 20$, and when they are, they're well worth it. Celeste, Cuphead, OMORI, Skul, CrossCode, My Friend Pedro, and more. Or one of my personal favorites: Afterbirth. These are all worth 20$, and these are well acclaimed by critics and players alike, and in Isaac's case, it's worth 25$. If you want even more stuff with Isaac, it costs 50$. And it's worth every penny, at least from what I've seen. So when Brave Dungeon 2 comes along as a 20$ game that's not even finished, it's just pathetic. If you're seriously saying "Don't review the game as it isn't finished", you can't review Sonic 06. I'm less insulted by including a free demo with a physical edition, as it has a bunch of stuff with it, including a demo. That's awesome. But this game? What a fucking joke. Some of you may have noticed how long this review was, and that's because I wanted this game to be good. I wanted it to be up there with the likes of Dark Witch 2 and (arguably) 3 and 1. But it just didn't win me over, and there's no way in hell I can recommend this game. Not only is it worse than mediocre, unlike some of the other Dark Witch games, this game is just utter hell throughout this runtime, and even more insulting, this is coming from my favorite game franchise of all time! And to see NAN-A put out something so unambiguously revolting is baffling. I've ranted for a bit, so let's end this.
TL;DR: Brave Dungeon 2 is not worth it, and I'd heavily suggest avoiding it if you enjoy anything fun at all. It's barely worth it's asking price of 30$, let alone 10$. This is worth 3$ at most. While it has some good music and some decent fundamental gameplay, it fucks up what it got right before and is ultimately a terrible game, and the worst in the Dark Witch franchise. Yes, sorry Yuzrnaime, even worse than Break Rock Syega Crystal and 3. The only reason you should play it is to see yourself in the credits if you're there, and nothing more.
Anyways, my work here is done. I really appreciate your support throughout the entire journey, and I hope you all enjoyed the review series. If Mali or Oersted want to add stuff to the end of this, they can. Anyways, see you guys once Dark Witch 4 releases! And pray to god it's good. Because if it's not, I'm retiring from this series.
And thus ends the Dark Witch review series, not with a bang, but a whimper.
DISCLAIMER: This entire review is based off of the Early Access beta. However, we felt the game had matured enough to warrant a review. Regardless, any changes made between the review and the current Early Access state will also be reviewed when they release. If you have any issues with that, read the whole review to understand all our points first, and then send your remarks. You can also ignore us and send your death threats to Blad#2469 just because someone is hating on a game. Try your best.
Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice. Need I say more.
Brave Dungeon 2 is easily one of the most controversial games in the series, right next to good ol' 3, however, for different reasons. 3's changes to the gameplay made it one of the more love-it-or-hate-it games in the franchise, but The Meaning of Justice has been all over the place. From its development, reception, and release. Online civil wars were started over this game. I only thought that happened to Sonic, but no. This happens all the time in other communities, like Gunvolt for example. This game was just a spiral of disappointment, at least for me. I just got into the community when I found out Brave Dungeon 2 existed. I didn't even know Brave Dungeon existed, so I beat that, hated it, and then just waited for it's sequel. I kept waiting until an anonymous person (who I'll reveal later) gave me a code for the demo. I played it and really enjoyed it. So when the Early Access released, I was pretty psyched. Of course, I didn't get it until recently, and then those next 9 months of my life waiting for this game happened. And it made me rethink my entire opinion of the game, and basically anything remotely related to Dark Witch. I still love this series, but waiting for this game was a pain. I'm going to come clean right off the bat and say that this review won't be very positive. The easiest way to put it is that Brave Dungeon 2, while not a complete faliure, is a disaster. It's not terrible, but I wouldn't think twice about calling it the worst in the series. And I'm gonna lay it all out on the battlefield. But before we begin, I've got a couple of guests here. For the first, and probably last time in this series' history, we have not one, but 2 guests here! First, we have the other bureaucrat on this wiki, Mali!
I guess I'll add a little bit of info: As you probably know (or don't know), I'm Mali, and like blad said, I'm the other bureaucrat of this wiki. I have some feelings to say about Brave Dungeon: The Meaning of Justice. It's a game that I originally thought of it as being the best game next to Dark Witch 2. With all of the hype given when the game was first teasered, new pixel art, recurring characters to help join your sides, and a brand-new environment that has paths that feel familiar, while some are new to the table. I honestly liked this game, and for what the Early Access had to offer, it offered a different side of things. yeah, it had everything that the teasers and the demo (only available to those who purchased the BD Physical pack), but from what I've seen more, I've wished that INSIDE_SYSTEM had done a better job with this game. Can't wait to go over the things I've found.
Second up is a notorious game modder, who gave me the demo code, and who was also responsible for adding Yamcha into this game. Here's Oersted!
While I don't understand this wiki stuff, I guess I'm here. Blad is adding the text for me since I dont do stuff with wikis like these. I did the thing with Yamcha in BD2, and I'm a fan of the game, I think. Stuff's complicated, with everything that goes on with it.
Finally, if this review is too long for you, I've included a TL;DR at the end. With that said, it's about time we reviewed this game, so let's get into the best part, the development!
Development
Yeah, I say the development, because how this game's development went is straight up comedy gold. Brave Dungeon 2 was revealed in 2018, to no fanfare. Like, I'm serious. All we got was Klinsy walking around a forest, fighting monsters, and using her revenge magic, RED FLAME PHOENIX! It looked interesting, though, and fans got excited. Brave Dungeon 2 was slated for a 2019 release, before being... delayed. Yeah, for the first time in Dark Witch history, a game has been delayed! It was jarring, to say the least. The first game might've technically been delayed by 4 months, but who the hell knew what a Legend of Dark Witch was at that time? The game wasn't even revealed at that point. So we waited, and come 2019... delayed... again. 2020... the game was delayed again, this time, indefinitely. But 2021 would thankfully give us news, for better, and for worse. NAN-A announced an early access, which would come out at an unspecified date. And I was pretty excited, but also a bit scared. Early Access games have a poor reception for being crappy and unfinished, but I wanted Brave Dungeon 2 as soon as possible, so I cut my losses and waited for the early access. I couldn't contain my excitement when in February 2022, the Early Access released, initially to positive reviews. And that's where Oersted comes in. Oersted already introduced himself, so I'll keep it brief. Oersted is a notorious Nintendo modder. His work ranges from RPG Maker Fes to Miitopia, Fire Emblem, and more. Lots of RPGs, to say the least. He also made/translated some PC RPG Maker games, so he has a lot of work under his belt. If you want a bigger description, see here. He dropped a multi-paragraph bomb on Steam, explaining his disdain of the game. And overnight, Oersted turned the 'Very Positive' reviews into 'Mixed'. Words are powerful, what can I say? Mali and I also published extremely long reviews, but nothing topped Oersted's review. Oersted also called out several poor positive reviews (ex. "yea."), which did get him (and me, although on a lesser scale) blasted a bit from Crippe, but this made the score drop even more. Unfortunately, this was counteracted with many other positive reviews, and now the game sits at a 50%. On the topic of reviews, what are our thoughts on the early access?
Early Access
The Early access of Brave Dungeon 2 is an even bigger joke than it's development history. We've got incredible amounts of reused assets, bugs that went over 80 updates without being fixed, borderline porn of Stoj being added, and all sorts of questionable stuff.
This early access was announced a while back, don't remember exactly when, but I went out of my way to buy it as soon as possible. What I got was a worse experience than the switch demo. This demo was originally released as a bonus for players who purchased Brave Dungeon 1's physical release for the Switch, and it's actually pretty impressive how much better this demo is compared to the entirety of early access.
As development progressed, NAN-A lied more and more about the developement, and the game progressively got worse and worse. It's impressive how NAN-A made the game worse nearly every update, adding new overpowered features, introducing new bugs, and such.
There isn't much else I can say here. It's a mess, and most Dark Witch fans are starting to realize this, which is great. The more people that vocalize their disdain for this game, the more likely NAN-A is to make the game ACTUALLY GOOD.
I can't agree more with Oersted here. Personally, I haven't invested into much Early Access games, but even then, I could tell this was ass. Don't buy Brave Dungeon 2 in it's current state, because you are ripping yourself off at $20. Wait for a price drop, don't even bother. Oh wait, the game will cost $30 AT LAUNCH. $30. I'm not convinced. Not only are we on version 0.93, there are still a crap ton of bugs, and on top of that, there are a lot of issues with it, bugs not withstanding. Brave Dungeon 2 is simply not worth it at this point in the game. But if there's one good thing about Brave Dungeon 2, it has to be the soundtrack.
Music
This is really one of the only unambiguously positive things we have to say about this game. This OST is awesome. Seriously, I did an entire gamerip just to listen to it outside of the game. I'll make it public one day, but it needs some fixing. I can't think of any bad tracks to it's name. I'd go more in-depth, but I don't know all of the tracks yet, and I don't play with headphones on. So for now, I'll just leave it at that. The only negative I have to say is that Nightmare re-uses themes from Brave Dungeon. A remix would've been nice.
In my opinion, this is the only redeeming factor of the game. Every soundtrack in this game is almost as great as Dark Witch 3's and 2s. I know Raito is only the only composer yet again, which can be noticeable with how many instruments he reuses in the soundtrack, but I have to say that this game will have an exception. My only issue is the battle theme, the intro, and the title screen. I wished that Raito had done a better job with this. especially the title screen. it's LITERALLY just the Brave Dungeon title screen and Dark Witch 3's title screen, but with different instruments to give it a different feeling. While that may be a bit of a change in pace, it's noticeable for a huge fan like me, and I could've expected something else. I give the music s solid 8/10 for this game.
Story
The overall story of the game is soulless and uninteresting. I can sum up all 3 main stories in one sentence.
Al's Story - Get through big mazelike forest to make a path to Hampden Tower. Klinsy's Story - Get through 3 mazelike archives to get books that can break the seal to Hampden Tower. Papelne's Story - Build a town and bridge, completely unrelated to Hampden Tower for some reason.
That's it. There's no more to the initial stories, no real character development. Things are pulled out of nowhere like Mari suddenly having the ability to sense danger near bosses in Al's story. This is never brought up again, and is only used in two cutscenes. Why even introduce something like this?
When it comes to the fourth and final chapter, there is borderline no story. When done right, this can be really good! It's not good. Each character, after unsealing Hampden Tower, was defeated by the spirity within it, and was thrown about the land, similar to Live-A-Live's final chapter. HOWEVER, each character simply just... Retreated. They weren't defeated or anything. They simply fled because every character suddenly became a coward.
When you find everyone, they all suddenly become "Brave Heroes" and stop the spirit of Hampden Tower. In the end, they all go their seperate ways, with some being paid. No development, no dificulty.
As a +12 hour RPG, this was one of the most disappointing parts of Brave Dungeon 2, and unlike Brave Dungeon 1, there's a lot of dialogue in this game. At random points, more notably in Al's story, a cutscene will just... begin. No fanfare or anything, the screen just goes to black and shows the heroes slowly walking. It was really jarring when I got to a campsite and then... nothing. It just takes me out of the experience and is really distracting. Thankfully, you can skip the cutscenes, because the actual dialogue is nothing. Don't even bother with the story here. It's not that good. I should also note that this game has literally no official translation. Yeah. Everything comes from internet translators, so the dialogue is... well... Typos flood your screen, and everyone sounds like a robot. I'm going to cut NAN-A some slack here, he barely knows English, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be willing to translate the game for NAN-A; why not get Circle/FHW to do it? Say what you will about the other games' translation, but anything is better than fucking Google Translate. NAN-A even opened a channel in the Early Access server where you can improve the translation, which ultimately proves redundant as the official translation is coming later. So what's the point? NAN-A didn't even commit to the FULL MACHINE TRANSLATION. This is absolutely laughable, and when my screen fills with Japanese text, I just burst out laughing. If you're going to be lazy, at least commit to it. I think it'd be less of a blow if the game was in full Japanese.
EDIT 1/28/23: I think that last part is now false? I’m not 100% sure, but Google Translate is now used for the entire game. Hooray. Why it couldn’t have been like this 80 updates ago is beyond me, but at least I can read the text now. Also, fun fact: they use impact in the team talk menu. Yeah, I’m not kidding.
EDIT 2/23/23: This is no longer true, and now the entire game is translated by an anonymous third-party. It took way too long, though.
Gameplay
Overall
The gameplay style is mostly overhauled, and I think it was for better and for worse.
Brave Dungeon 2 is structured like this; you have 3 stories to play as, each sporting different gameplay styles. Because of this, some stories are better than others. Why we couldn't stick to one playstyle for the entire game is questionable, but I'll entertain the idea. The battle system is the same across playthroughs, so lets get the redundant stuff out of the way, before we get to the 3 stories.
Dungeons
The dungeons in this game are so much better in this game. First of all, the game takes a sort of open-world approach, at least for Al and Papelne. Al has one big dungeon, and you collect keys along the way to progress. Believe it or not, this system is actually pretty fun. The main problem with it is that there's no fast travel. So often you'll have to bash your head against the wall just to get to the next map. It's not terribly annoying, but I should still point it out regardless. Papelne's dungeon is an open world game, which is kinda cool. You craft materials, but you tire out pretty quickly, meaning you have to go back home and rest up. Klinsy's playthrough is more akin to the original Brave Dungeon. The level up system is also different. You have 10 stars to fill, and once you complete 5, you get the level 2 stars. Fill the Level 1 and 2 stars and you get a class change. Then you have 3 more levels to unlock and then you get Rank X. Throughout filling the stars, you get buffs depending on how much star is filled. You can switch around stars, giving a large margin of player choice, which is always a plus in my book. Overall, I liked the dungeons more in Brave Dungeon 2. They're a solid improvement over the first Brave Dungeon, for the most part. But we'll get to that later.
Battles
The battles in this game are not fun at all. The main issue is the insultingly easy difficulty. I played on Lunatic mode, the hardest difficulty you can play from the start. And while the game is insultingly easy, battles take forever. I suspect the only thing that changes with difficulty is the amount of HP enemies have. I switched from Lunatic to Very, Very Easy, and I noticed enemies died within 2-3 hits, but on Lunatic, it took several hits before they died, leading to a much more tedious experience. Yeah, the other Dark Witch games did this, but if you knew what you were doing, this was a non-issue. They made you experiment with the game's mechanics, and that made you a better player. Even the original Brave Dungeon did this. Brave Dungeon is also debatably an easy game, but it did difficulty well. Enemies were slightly buffed, but they also took the same amount of damage to kill. So what's the point of playing on Lunatic? More EXP, but in this game, EXP is heavily skewed in your favor, Lunatic or not. You get so much exp, and at one point I was 8 levels above the enemies in a new floor. What's even worse is the godawful bosses. I deeply apologize to Litty, because these bosses are a drag. And worse yet, they re-use bosses left and right. Jesus Christ, I never want to see the ghost boss in my life ever again. And this Shady boss fight can kiss my ass. The Flubber one also sucked as well. Let's go every single one, shall we? The ghost boss is so tedious. He makes it so some opponents can't attack, and this fight nearly broke me on Lunatic. It's just not fun, and it doesn't matter on lower difficulties as you can easily 3-shot this guy. Shady's fight is easy if you break one of her rules. If you use Hyper Freeze, Shady's clones attack your entire party. But this fuels your revenge meter. So if you use Mari or Al, just spam their revenge magics, and then use Seama to attack the real Shady. It's so easy to do, and if you're at a high level, you can just tank the fight until you win. Good game design, ladies and gentlemen. Breaking the rules makes you win the fight effortlessly. Finally, Flubber. He'll grow big at some points, and you can't attack him. But just... don't attack him when he's big. He literally will not even attempt to attack you. God, I thought the Syega Machines in 3 were bad, but this... it SUCKS. Enough said. To make matters even worse, these run into the same issue as Brave Dungeon in that the battles get repetitive. There's barely any variety in the battles, and when there is (the boss battles), it sucks. I don't know what else to say, the battles in this game just aren't good. Overall, the battle system in Brave Dungeon 2 is decent, but the battles themselves are terrible, and this pretty much killed the game for me.
Al
Al is a big improvement over the dungeon crawling from Brave Dungeon. First off, the dungeon design was really good in this game. Aside from the fact that you can force open everything, this was easily one of the best parts of Brave Dungeon 2, for as much as that's worth. But other than that, I have no real complaints here. The enemies also chase you here, and that means you can actually run away from encounters now. Battles are really easy, but it's nice that NAN-A allowed us to do this. Even he knew the battles sucked in this game. You also fight bosses, but if I remember correctly, there's no real reason to do it, unless it's a scripted boss (which is necessary for progression). You can also craft Seama items, but they aren't all that good, save for the speed ups. A glitch is in the game that allows you to have infinite keys though, so go wild. Overall, this gets a 6/10 from me. Not bad on it's own, but with the issue of combat, it went from good to just bland.
Klinsy
Okay, so I haven't really played enough of Brave Dungeon 2 to know about Klinsy's side to the story, but from what I've seen and can tell is that the gameplay takes more of like the original Brave Dungeon. The enemies are static, most of the stages have a 1 block gap in between, and during the story, you find Stoj to play as. There are also some seals that are more like a puzzle game. You have four different types of blocks, and you have to find where on the board does it match the blocks you can have. You can choose to brute force it, but you have to wait a bit until doing it again, or you can escape the battle(?) I don't remember.
Going back to Stoj, oh my gosh, they have OVERHAULED her design! I know it's the same pixel artist that worked on the first Dark Witch, but jeesus! Stoj looks nothing like her original counterpart! I can say the same for Neville, too. Her new look is pretty on the spot and an overhaul, too. The eyes on her pixel art don't look as weird as what they've looked like in the original and Dark Witch 3. (I'm bringing 3 up because she looks nothing different than her BD look) However, they reverted back to the original pixel art for her second-class change, which can be a bit tacky, but instead we get her smiling. That's the first time she is smiling! Not a big detail to point out, but once you look at her revenge artwork, it's sick.
I think Klinsy's stage is the worst playthrough in Brave Dungeon 2. Not only does it revert all of the good changes from Al's playthrough, the bosses are absolutely the worst part of the game. It singlehandedly ruined my entire experience. The dungeon design is like the original Brave Dungeon, flat and boring, and even though there are gimmicks in the stage, they all fucking suck. The playthrough also has puzzles that interrupt the flow of the game, and are PISS easy. They also nerfed Stoj so hard, it's not even funny. In Brave Dungeon, admittedly she was a bit overpowered. She did decent damage, and had some really good healing skills. But you took a lot of damage in Brave Dungeon, and we can't have any difficulty here! In Brave Dungeon 2, she won't be doing damage anytime soon. This was a bullheaded move. So the only time you can do damage with Stoj is with her Revenge Magic, which isn't that good. Sure, it hits all enemies, but it does zero-to-no damage. Ultimately, Stoj went from one of the best party members to straight up useless. Klinsy's playthrough introduces weaknesses, and while that sounds cool, there are only, 2-3 elements, which is LAME. I thought this was Brave Dungeon, not Mega Man Zero. Hitting a weakness doesn't do much anyways, it only does 10 more damage. But back to the bosses, FUCK ALL OF THESE WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BODY. Once I got to the Lava Library, I genuinely thought my playthrough was over at this point. I died over 5 times before I beat him on VERY VERY EASY. The other bosses are piss easy. For the love of god, DON'T PLAY ON LUNATIC, or these bosses will take FOREVER. I give this a 3/10. It was a complete drag, and it was just plain unfun. Plus, the Stoj nerf was just insult to injury.
Papelne
Papelne's story was the only story I liked in this game. Yeah, in my opinion, it was actually pretty fun. And you know why? The godawful battle system is almost entirely optional here! You can avoid pretty much any battle here. From what I remember, the only time combat is required is to get white pearls from the seals, which is a bit of a grind. Papelne's story is a semi-open world game, where you travel around a map. You have a stamina meter that doesn't automatically replenish, but thankfully you can upgrade it, and the map is pretty small. You also move decently fast, to travel is a non-issue. Outside of traveling, it's basically a town simulator. You get materials to craft stuff, and then you use those materials to level up the town. Most stuff is optional, but the buildings are needed to beat the game. The town simulator is quite relaxing, and for the first time, I didn't want to stop playing the game. I completed it in one long session, and it was a blast. If this was a bit longer and the grinding was cut to a minimum, I'd buy it as its own game. I give it an 8/10.
Papelne's Story is as empty as GM_Flatgrass from Garry's Mod. Charl has hired you to build a city on an insland unrelated to Hampden Tower, which is somehow "right next to it". You then Build a tent, crafting station, inn, warehouse, staff building, and bridge. That's it. That's the entire story. Patty joins after you make the Inn, and Rudy can join if you visit an optional "Lost City" which is home to some Dog like Fae, along with two other more humanoid Fae when you have Patty in the Party. You can't access the town without having Patty, so it's pointless going before you have her. You then have to go to a beach on the other side of the map. WHY? After you build the bridge, you fight some bigass bird. You kill it, bridge is repaired, and nothing of note happens. Cue the final chapter of the game.
Final story
The final story in Brave Dungeon is unlocked after you beat all the stories on one file. You start off with Blad and Stoj. Yeah, yikes. Blad is really weak when you get her. Sure, she levels up very fast, but why even make her this weak to begin with? Oh right, because they want you to get the other characters, which are actually good because you spent one-third of the game with all of them. Yeah, this is stupid. They did Blad dirty, even though she won the popularity poll. A shame. Also, is it just me, but why does her idle animation look so cute? My final party was Blad, Stoj, Al, and Mari. Turns out that was a good choice because Al and Stoj have a skill that gives everyone BARRIER AND GUARD. Yeah, that made leveling up Blad easier. And if you have a capacity meter accessory, you can just break the game in two, like a Zero boss. To add insult to injury, Lovely Heels is an Al healing skill that's just way too overpowered. I don't know what else to say, this game is really easy. And that's coming from a Dark Witch 2 mega-fan (and spoiler alert, that's my favorite game). At least Dark Witch 2 had Lunatic Mode, which was amazing. Anyways, at Hampden Tower, you have 4 dungeons. You don't need to do them, and they really only exist for grinding purposes. Intentionally making the player grind is not good game design, game! But go on, I guess. The worst part is that you CAN'T LEAVE HAMPDEN TOWER UNLESS YOU DIE TO A BOSS IN THE DUNGEONS. Needless to say, this leads to frustration, as if you barge straight into Hampden Tower with Blad and Stoj, like I did, you get BONED. And you'll be looking for a long time on how to actually escape this place. What happened to the anti-frustration features from 3, as poorly designed as that game is? But whenever you want, you can fight Charl.
Alright, time for a confession. I cheated on the final boss, and I'll explain why. I was right at the finish line, and I thought, "Will the final boss really make me change my mind?" Why should I waste hours grinding just to even try the final boss? So you know what? Fuck it. Typically I avoid cheating in games unless A. I beat the game, or B. I make it seperate from my main save. The only time I really violated those rules was with Terraria, but that was just to get silver bullets so I could actually fight the twins. So that's what I did. I got Oersted's files and fought the boss that way. This game was just completely unfun at this point, so I can't care less if I cheated. But if you want to call me out for cheating, that's fine. I don't really care. Just as a self imposed limitation, I used a Level 100, pre-new game plus save.
Alright, so Charl. His first phase is rather easy, unless you're underleveled. You fight his first form, which just stands there, occasionally using rather powerful moves. Well, powerful for Brave Dungeon 2 standards. This is the only time in the game where I saw someone take over 1000 damage in one move. Wow, how impressive! Can you make any attack remove over half someone's HP next? Next, after you kill Charl, you get into Charl's ultimate form. There are 5 targets on screen. I actually don't know if you're required to kill the other targets, but that doesn't matter, because Al + Blad = powerful attack that hits all enemies. This fight is so short that I don't have anything to say about it. Neat design, though.
Postgame
Fanart
A first for Dark Witch. A dedicated fanart section so you can see some of the art that is directly advertised by NAN-A to promote other people's artwork. However, most of it is directly related to the character Mari, and the main translator and the beta tester for Dark Witch: Crippe. I do not know why NAN-A chose to add a bunch of Mari art into the game, but that's nothing compared to the biggest issue of this section: The Lwed, NSFW images that have been featured directly by NAN-A. Adding lewd art into the game was easily one of the most boneheaded decisions NAN-A could've done here. I don't object to an art section entirely; nor do I object to T-rated games having mildly sexual content, take Skullgirls as a random example; but Brave Dungeon 2 is a family-friendly game on it's own. And the artworks here went way, WAY too far. And yes, I don't care that the first Brave Dungeon was rated T, this is fucking unacceptable. One has Papelne thinking about cake (not a dirty joke), one where Urken has half of her ass on screen (thankfully her panties are covered by her conveniently placed foot), and one where Stoj has a pretty revealing costume. And no, I don't care that she's 5000 years or whatever, nor do I care that it's fictional. Fuck that logic, and fuck you if you're defending this stuff. If I wanted almost-naked young anime girls, I'd play Gal-Gun, not Brave Dungeon 2.
Oh, and guess what NAN-A did? He retweeted NSFW of Seama as well to promote the game.[1] Are you kidding me?
Bajel
After you beat the game, you can unlock Bajel. Perhaps Oersted could make a write up below, because I couldn't care enough to get her.
Bajel is certainly a character that's unlockable. Her moves are generally a bit stronger than most other characters, but she's still weaker than Al, since Al is the obvious protagonist. Some of her passive skills used to be good, but they're pretty niche due to not having much room to grow at all, since the only challenge that remains is Nightmare, AND she joins at Level ONE. Like Stoj however, she can ignore damaging tiles on the floor due to the fact that she has wings. So as a party leader, She might be a better Stoj, but outside of that, she's nearly useless.
Nightmare
In this game, Nightmare has the same look and feel as the original. Hell, it even has the same music, and the retextured red and black eneimes as the original with all of the previous bosses coming in without any changes whatsoever, giving more of the fact that INSIDE_SYSTEM loves to reuse content in their games. However, the game has the original + new layouts with some provided by the fans who've worked with the Early Access program. The final boss was stated to be something completely different, but all it was is Zizou with her sister, Mati. This boss has even more HP than what she had in the original (She had 15 million but is currently unknown how much she has now), and they're extremely hard to beat offensively, and it requires additional setups in order to actually defeat the boss.
Zizou and Mati are certainly a fight. With a recent update making status ailments worse against enemies the higher the difficulty is (Version 0.93.3), the already nearly impossible fight has become even harder. Oh, and this fight was implemented before the two even reused "Was that meeting despair", so the fight was complete and utter silence outside sound effects! It took about 30 updates for music to be added here. Kind of pathetic, huh?
Guess what happens after you beat Nightmare? Spoilers for anyone who hasn't beaten Nightmare yet, but you don't even get to play as Zizou or Mati! What's probably going to happen is that Zizou and Mati are going to be added as DLC, and I have proof! Check out the Brave Dungeon 2 page, and you'll see why. This was the biggest insult when it comes to BD2. Instead of unlocking Zizou/Mati through... oh I don't know, BEATING THE GAME! Just make them paid DLC for everyone to buy for $2-10 dollars (that's my guess). DLC in RPGs is very hard to get right. Most often, it's done poorly. Look at Persona 5 Royal, for example. It had some nice costumes for purchase, which is nice. They also give you the original Persona 5 DLC for free, which is great. But the paid personas. Oh my god. Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro. Buy this and you win the game. So if this is really DLC, just make it good NAN-A. Don't make it a cakewalk (hell, some difficulty would be nice), make them actually worth a damn, and don't do this in the future.
The Good
The music is a banger.
Exploring is fun.
Nice character designs.
Great pixel art, with smooth animation. The whole game looks pretty good, and the art style is pretty consistent, compared to the original Brave Dungeon.
Decent character progression. The Mind
Some decent improvements to the gameplay.
The Bad
The battle system.
Bugs. We really couldn't find a place to put this, but yeah, this game has so many bugs, it's not funny. And people think Sonic 06 and Cyberpunk were bad with this. I already mentioned one of them, but Oersted can easily list many below.
Like hell I'm listing all of the bugs. Wait until the full release and I'll consider making a list.
Terrible boss fights, getting borderline unfair at points.
Poor story, which really sucks for an RPG.
Klinsy's playthrough.
Some parts are untranslated. (Note: This seems to be no longer true)
Some fps drops at points, particularly if you run the game above 60FPS. We noticed some short freezes, particularly if you're in a new area for the first time in one session.
Re-used assets.
I'm just gonna personally add my thoughts onto this part. This has when a common issue of ANY game INSIDE_SYSTEM has released. Yes, even spanning all of the way back to their Touhou games back in the 2010s. Touhou: Unorganised Heroes is i believe the first game he'd worked on, and it is baffling to see that the designs for the enemies came all of the way from this game, with some still acting the same way without any changes whatsoever. For Brave Dungeon though, some of the enemies have new attacks, which puts up the pace a little bit, but my issue is this: Ever sinee the first Dark Witch, they basically brought all of the enemies from that game and put them in here without any major changes to the design at all. It's like if Nintendo were to make the Goomba or any enemy from Super Mario 64 and use it in every subsequent Mario game after that. It would just look really werid to some, especially me. And the music? I know I've talked about this already, but while Raito's music are all bangers with some sounding a bit boring, most songs reuse the same instruments instead of finding new instruments to make music with. It just makes eveyrthing feel the same and such, and I řally REALLY hope that NAN-A will take a different direction with The Legend of Dark Witch as a whole.
Another thing we couldn't really mention. This game re-uses a crap ton of assets, and while the other games did this a bit, it never stopped being noticeable here. The attacks look goofy at points, like Patty's attack, which is annoyingly slow.
The Early Access program is a disaster.
Mindless difficulty, even on Lunatic.
Difficulty spikes are frequent, leading to lots of frustration throughout 15 hours.
Conclusion (all 3)
Overall, Brave Dungeon 2 is frustrating. Not because it's really all that bad. The core gameplay could be fun, but Brave Dungeon 2 is brought down by issues that bog down the whole experience, and as a result, Brave Dungeon 2 didn't do any justice for the original Brave Dungeon.
Our scores are as follows:
Scores
Reviewer Score
Average (rounded) 3/10 (5/10 with original scores)
Blad 3/10 (originally 6/10)
Mali 4.5/10 (originally 7/10)
Oersted 2/10
And that unfortunately ends the review series on a really sour note. This game has a bunch of promise, but it ended up half baked. No joke, this is one of my least favorite games of all time. Note I said "least favorite", not "worst". Objectively, the game is below average, but it doesn't feel like a below average game. What should've been a slam dunk crashed and burned. I must note that when I reviewed 3, I didn't TYPE IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS. That's because that game was so close to being great, but they dropped the ball. This game actively frustrated me. It fails to improve over Brave Dungeon, and just isn't a good game period. I also didn't mention this because it applies to all of the games I review, but this one in particular; if you like Brave Dungeon 2, great! As long as you acknowledge the flaws it has, that's totally fine, and that's not the point of this reviews. You can enjoy a game in spite of it's genuine flaws. But if you blatantly ignore the issues with a game, just hear us out for once. Ignoring the problems with a game doesn't make it go away; it just makes the series worse. NAN-A will see the positive reception of these games, and keep doing that, and improve it. Look at Episode 2, and, in some eyes, Episode 3. If NAN-A sees the mixed/negative reception, he'll fix the future games even more. So if you like Brave Dungeon 2, that's fine, just don't force everyone to like it. Also, some of you may be asking why we're reviewing the game now instead of waiting for the full release. After all, that's not fair, is it? I'm just going to say this: I don't care if it's in Early Access. NAN-A wants us to pay $20 (EDIT: 4/11/23: NOW 30$) for this. A game that's technically not finished yet. I can only name a few indie games that meet/exceed 20$, and when they are, they're well worth it. Celeste, Cuphead, OMORI, Skul, CrossCode, My Friend Pedro, and more. Or one of my personal favorites: Afterbirth. These are all worth 20$, and these are well acclaimed by critics and players alike, and in Isaac's case, it's worth 25$. If you want even more stuff with Isaac, it costs 50$. And it's worth every penny, at least from what I've seen. So when Brave Dungeon 2 comes along as a 20$ game that's not even finished, it's just pathetic. If you're seriously saying "Don't review the game as it isn't finished", you can't review Sonic 06. I'm less insulted by including a free demo with a physical edition, as it has a bunch of stuff with it, including a demo. That's awesome. But this game? What a fucking joke. Some of you may have noticed how long this review was, and that's because I wanted this game to be good. I wanted it to be up there with the likes of Dark Witch 2 and (arguably) 3 and 1. But it just didn't win me over, and there's no way in hell I can recommend this game. Not only is it worse than mediocre, unlike some of the other Dark Witch games, this game is just utter hell throughout this runtime, and even more insulting, this is coming from my favorite game franchise of all time! And to see NAN-A put out something so unambiguously revolting is baffling. I've ranted for a bit, so let's end this.
TL;DR: Brave Dungeon 2 is not worth it, and I'd heavily suggest avoiding it if you enjoy anything fun at all. It's barely worth it's asking price of 30$, let alone 10$. This is worth 3$ at most. While it has some good music and some decent fundamental gameplay, it fucks up what it got right before and is ultimately a terrible game, and the worst in the Dark Witch franchise. Yes, sorry Yuzrnaime, even worse than Break Rock Syega Crystal and 3. The only reason you should play it is to see yourself in the credits if you're there, and nothing more.
Anyways, my work here is done. I really appreciate your support throughout the entire journey, and I hope you all enjoyed the review series. If Mali or Oersted want to add stuff to the end of this, they can. Anyways, see you guys once Dark Witch 4 releases! And pray to god it's good. Because if it's not, I'm retiring from this series.
And thus ends the Dark Witch review series, not with a bang, but a whimper.
This review was originally posted on The Legend of Dark With Wiki, prior to it's closure and my retirement from said wiki, and is now fully archived on Backloggd. I do not condone NAN-A nor Inside System's actions. They have participated in morally grey actions within the community and inside the franchise itself. As such, these reviews can no longer be considered recommendations, and do not have any formal scores to them. I stress that you do not take these reviews at face value. Any content within this review is subject to being broken, questionable, outdated, low quality, or at times, unreadable. Additionally, these were made from a different point of view compared to my writings of today, so I please ask that you disregard any positive statements about NAN-A or Inside System. All of these articles may be found, in their original, intended form here, alongside their numerous revisions. Additionally, these reviews are liscensed under CC-BY SA 4.0, under wiki policy. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the review.
For a series like Dark Witch, you'd expect way more spinoffs, right? Well, that couldn't be farther from the truth. We only have 3 spinoffs, and today I'm gonna look at all 3 of them (or 2, but we'll get into that later). First up is Rudymical.
Rudymical
Rudymical is a rhythm game, where you slash balls (i forgot their official name) in 3 directions and jump to avoid hazards. You have 4 difficulties, one unlocked by beating the game. It's a retelling of The Legend of Dark Witch 2, plus a furry who's looking for a good time, and fights herself. I'm assuming Riva was out for breakfast, as she's all but absent in this game. There are 2 versions with some differences (mainly in the difficulty, mobile and the console versions. Today, I'll look at the console versions, as the controls are a little better (at least in my opinion).
Gameplay
So you know Rudymical from The Legend of Dark Witch 2? Well, this is basically that mode, but bigger. As I mentioned, you slash balls and get ranked on your performance. The ranking system is harsh, and you can only miss 1-2 balls to get an A rank. Easy and Normal can be fun at times, and they're pretty easy to S-rank. You have 14 stages, all based on the music of Dark Witch 2, which is amazing. By S ranking stages, you get some new characters/skins. New to the console versions are a 2-player VS/deathmatch, and achievements (if you play on Steam). There are 4 difficulties, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. And this is my main issue with Rudymical. It's either too hard to be enjoyable, or too easy to be worth a damn. I play on Normal, but for the love of god, do not play on Hard mode, unless you got a good night's sleep, because you need really good reaction times to even get the Syega Crystals here. And don't even get me started on Lunatic. On Normal, the game is WAY easier, so I suggest you play on this mode, but Normal is too easy, so I just end up kicking ass. If Rudymical could give a decent balance towards the two, I'd be praising it a whole lot more, but in it's current state, I can't really enjoy Rudymical. I'm really sorry, but it was just too much to take. Another issue I have is with the notes themselves. This is coming for an above average rhythm game player, so keep that in mind as some of the issues I have with this game stem from that. The balls bounce around at varying speeds, depending on how they feel. This just threw me off, and while it gives the game personality, it made the game worse. The circles that appear around your character somewhat mitigate this issue, but that just gives me less time to react to on-coming notes, which makes the game even more frustrating. To add to another issue with the notes, you often have to hit notes twice in succession, even on Easy mode. Another annoying part about Rudymical is the sound effects. While you can turn off the voices (and I highly suggest you do), you can't turn off the ball bouncing noises, which is pretty annoying, and it threw me off even more. Finally, the offset is annoying to set up. If you've played a game like Muse Dash, they make setting offsets as easy as pie, but in Rudymical, no such sandbox exists, and overall made setting offsets extremely frustrating.
This is also a bit out there, but I wish this game had a lot of other songs as well. Yeah, I know. But hear me out. I'm not talking about other songs from other games, no. What about the entire series? This series has some of the best VGM I've ever heard, and it's a shame only 14 songs got used. And if NAN-A can reuse hundreds of sprites, why can FHW/Esquadra reuse some songs? Hell, throw in the arranged songs. You can make it a DLC, but unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen, given that the game is 5 years old now, bordering on 6 (how the time flies, huh?).
Conclusion
I know I complained a lot, but this is coming from an above average rhythm game player, and seeing a lack of certain features other rhythm games have is disappointing. I really wish this was made by a seasoned rhythm game developer, otherwise I think it'd be a lot better. Despite that, this game is alright. Although its difficulty is poor, and it's on the short side (seriously, only 14 songs?), the gameplay is pretty basic for what it is, but fun, and if you're a Dark Witch fan, you'll probably get a kick out of it. If you want to slash balls for an hour, this is a decent pick. Just be wary of the issues I've mentioned. Overall, I'd give it a 6/10.
Dark Witch Connect!
Alright, up next is Connect. Connect is a matching puzzle game, and you use revenge magic to get a higher score, and that's really it. Yeah, it's not really that big. There's a mission mode where you can get more Tres. You use Tres to unlock more characters, and if you unlock a character, you can use their revenge magic. You can also level up your character, but all it does is That's about as far as it goes. To be fair, unlocking new characters is satisfying, but that's about it really. There's also no English translation unfortunately, but you can get used to it.
Conclusion
Overall, I'm not sure what to think of Connect. It's pretty shallow, but it's also free, so I can't knock it too much. So I'm abstaining from rating Connect. But I will say, if you have time to kill, Connect is alright.
Break Rock Syega Crystal
Break Rock Syega Crystal is the last game we're looking at today. It was released in March 2021 for And...roi... oh no. Yeah, I'm an iPhone user, an unfortunate disease, I know, but there's not much I can do here. I do own a Kindle Fire, which is an Android device, but 1. that thing is really, REALLY old, and 2. it only has 1GB of RAM. Yikes. I know there's a way to use Android apps on Windows 11, but... it's Windows 11. I don't like having 2 diseases at one time, so no thanks. And yes, I know Bluestacks exist, but I'm not installing it just for one game. So... shit. Review's over.
OR IS IT? There exists something called YouTube, so maybe I can get a gist of the game there.
Break Rock Syega Crystal is a clicker game. You tap for 2 hours on end and you have a hunger mechanic. I'm not sure what happens if you run out of food, but I presume you die and reset. Anyways, you click until the meter at the top depletes, and then the game stops. Doesn't that sound AMAZING? Yeah, I'm glad I skipped this game. My good friend Mali described the game as "a buttload of shit, with nothing making any sense to it at all." This truly is the greatest game of all time.
Conclusion
Overall, save for Break Rock Syega Crystal, I think the spinoff games are worth your time, particularly if you're a Dark Witch fan. They're not really that deep, but they can be fun in short bursts (more so Rudymical). If you're looking for a longer lasting experience, I'd stick to the main Dark Witch games, however.
This review was kinda filler, because the next game... ooh boy. We're looking at Brave Dungeon 2, and that's going to be a ton of fun. I don't have much else to say, other than stay tuned. Good things come to those who wait, and it'll be good. I promise. Anyways, see you guys later!
For a series like Dark Witch, you'd expect way more spinoffs, right? Well, that couldn't be farther from the truth. We only have 3 spinoffs, and today I'm gonna look at all 3 of them (or 2, but we'll get into that later). First up is Rudymical.
Rudymical
Rudymical is a rhythm game, where you slash balls (i forgot their official name) in 3 directions and jump to avoid hazards. You have 4 difficulties, one unlocked by beating the game. It's a retelling of The Legend of Dark Witch 2, plus a furry who's looking for a good time, and fights herself. I'm assuming Riva was out for breakfast, as she's all but absent in this game. There are 2 versions with some differences (mainly in the difficulty, mobile and the console versions. Today, I'll look at the console versions, as the controls are a little better (at least in my opinion).
Gameplay
So you know Rudymical from The Legend of Dark Witch 2? Well, this is basically that mode, but bigger. As I mentioned, you slash balls and get ranked on your performance. The ranking system is harsh, and you can only miss 1-2 balls to get an A rank. Easy and Normal can be fun at times, and they're pretty easy to S-rank. You have 14 stages, all based on the music of Dark Witch 2, which is amazing. By S ranking stages, you get some new characters/skins. New to the console versions are a 2-player VS/deathmatch, and achievements (if you play on Steam). There are 4 difficulties, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. And this is my main issue with Rudymical. It's either too hard to be enjoyable, or too easy to be worth a damn. I play on Normal, but for the love of god, do not play on Hard mode, unless you got a good night's sleep, because you need really good reaction times to even get the Syega Crystals here. And don't even get me started on Lunatic. On Normal, the game is WAY easier, so I suggest you play on this mode, but Normal is too easy, so I just end up kicking ass. If Rudymical could give a decent balance towards the two, I'd be praising it a whole lot more, but in it's current state, I can't really enjoy Rudymical. I'm really sorry, but it was just too much to take. Another issue I have is with the notes themselves. This is coming for an above average rhythm game player, so keep that in mind as some of the issues I have with this game stem from that. The balls bounce around at varying speeds, depending on how they feel. This just threw me off, and while it gives the game personality, it made the game worse. The circles that appear around your character somewhat mitigate this issue, but that just gives me less time to react to on-coming notes, which makes the game even more frustrating. To add to another issue with the notes, you often have to hit notes twice in succession, even on Easy mode. Another annoying part about Rudymical is the sound effects. While you can turn off the voices (and I highly suggest you do), you can't turn off the ball bouncing noises, which is pretty annoying, and it threw me off even more. Finally, the offset is annoying to set up. If you've played a game like Muse Dash, they make setting offsets as easy as pie, but in Rudymical, no such sandbox exists, and overall made setting offsets extremely frustrating.
This is also a bit out there, but I wish this game had a lot of other songs as well. Yeah, I know. But hear me out. I'm not talking about other songs from other games, no. What about the entire series? This series has some of the best VGM I've ever heard, and it's a shame only 14 songs got used. And if NAN-A can reuse hundreds of sprites, why can FHW/Esquadra reuse some songs? Hell, throw in the arranged songs. You can make it a DLC, but unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen, given that the game is 5 years old now, bordering on 6 (how the time flies, huh?).
Conclusion
I know I complained a lot, but this is coming from an above average rhythm game player, and seeing a lack of certain features other rhythm games have is disappointing. I really wish this was made by a seasoned rhythm game developer, otherwise I think it'd be a lot better. Despite that, this game is alright. Although its difficulty is poor, and it's on the short side (seriously, only 14 songs?), the gameplay is pretty basic for what it is, but fun, and if you're a Dark Witch fan, you'll probably get a kick out of it. If you want to slash balls for an hour, this is a decent pick. Just be wary of the issues I've mentioned. Overall, I'd give it a 6/10.
Dark Witch Connect!
Alright, up next is Connect. Connect is a matching puzzle game, and you use revenge magic to get a higher score, and that's really it. Yeah, it's not really that big. There's a mission mode where you can get more Tres. You use Tres to unlock more characters, and if you unlock a character, you can use their revenge magic. You can also level up your character, but all it does is That's about as far as it goes. To be fair, unlocking new characters is satisfying, but that's about it really. There's also no English translation unfortunately, but you can get used to it.
Conclusion
Overall, I'm not sure what to think of Connect. It's pretty shallow, but it's also free, so I can't knock it too much. So I'm abstaining from rating Connect. But I will say, if you have time to kill, Connect is alright.
Break Rock Syega Crystal
Break Rock Syega Crystal is the last game we're looking at today. It was released in March 2021 for And...roi... oh no. Yeah, I'm an iPhone user, an unfortunate disease, I know, but there's not much I can do here. I do own a Kindle Fire, which is an Android device, but 1. that thing is really, REALLY old, and 2. it only has 1GB of RAM. Yikes. I know there's a way to use Android apps on Windows 11, but... it's Windows 11. I don't like having 2 diseases at one time, so no thanks. And yes, I know Bluestacks exist, but I'm not installing it just for one game. So... shit. Review's over.
OR IS IT? There exists something called YouTube, so maybe I can get a gist of the game there.
Break Rock Syega Crystal is a clicker game. You tap for 2 hours on end and you have a hunger mechanic. I'm not sure what happens if you run out of food, but I presume you die and reset. Anyways, you click until the meter at the top depletes, and then the game stops. Doesn't that sound AMAZING? Yeah, I'm glad I skipped this game. My good friend Mali described the game as "a buttload of shit, with nothing making any sense to it at all." This truly is the greatest game of all time.
Conclusion
Overall, save for Break Rock Syega Crystal, I think the spinoff games are worth your time, particularly if you're a Dark Witch fan. They're not really that deep, but they can be fun in short bursts (more so Rudymical). If you're looking for a longer lasting experience, I'd stick to the main Dark Witch games, however.
This review was kinda filler, because the next game... ooh boy. We're looking at Brave Dungeon 2, and that's going to be a ton of fun. I don't have much else to say, other than stay tuned. Good things come to those who wait, and it'll be good. I promise. Anyways, see you guys later!
2014
old review because I reviewed the wrong game :p
"Worth it for the song alone"
"Worth it for the song alone"
This review contains spoilers
No joke this time, I just want to highlight this motherfucker named Kanna. I want to know who at Inti Creates decided to give this girl a whole ass DLC minigame, half a year after release, JUST for herself, and it's like, 5 minutes, too. I know, the funny plant girl, but JEEBERS. Damn, when’s the Kanna’s Downfall DLC for Blaster Master Zero III, turning Zero III into Devil May Cry?
Blaster Master Zero is one of my favorite games of all time. So naturally, Zero II should follow. And… yeah. It's peak. Shocker. I mean, I already said that Zero 1 was “a 10/10 in my heart”, and I then followed that up by saying that Zero I was “truly the worst the [Zero] series has to offer”, so it's no shock that I find Zero II and Zero III more appealing by default. So, I could just end the review there. Zero II is a great follow-up to Zero I, and expands on its gameplay greatly. But, no! Because Blaster Master Zero II, is really, REALLY GOOD. Shockingly so. This was one of my favorite games ever, the 5th spot on my list of GOATed favorites. It's stayed pretty stagnant since Zero III forced it out of the Top 5 slot, but Zero II is still definitely up there in terms of my favorites. But I will say, I honestly forgot about what made Zero II so great. I hadn’t played it in a long while, so I decided to do so for this review, and man. Once I heard the music again, got into the groove of it all, that was it for me. Because I knew Zero II would be near perfection. Not the perfect game (i can name a few of those), but the perfect game to me. And, a perfect game with no major version differences. Like Zero II, the game is the same across platforms, you just need to buy the DLC. Hooray! So, what say you? Here's my review of BLASTER MASTER ZERO II!
A few months after the True Ending of Blaster Master Zero I, after Jason, the young scientist, saved Eve, the support droid for Sophia III, from the Mutant Core, the two live in harmony. While Sophia III was left to die with the Mutant Core, Sophia Zero manages to come out unscathed. Eve however, does not. In Blaster Master Zero I, Eve’s body was taken over by the Mutant Core, altering her appearance to be incredibly veiny. Although everything seemed okay after the fact, Eve would begin to undergo what I'll dub her “Corruption”, where the mutant cells began to overtake her body. This radically changes her appearance from a sweet, innocuous girl, to a half-mutant, with only a bloody tear to convey her pain. Also, cats. Both figuratively, and literally, because yeah, Eve got a breast implant. I’ll chalk it up to her “Corruption”, but the comments about her being a Mutant [SPOILERS] in Zero III? Yeah, can’t blame ‘em if you’re picking up what I’m putting down. BUT ANYWAYS... This sends Jason into a panic, as he attempts to save Eve once more. He attempts to find a cure for Eve’s mutation on Earth, but fails to find one. So, with the creation of Gaia-Sophia, born from the parts of Sophia Zero, now with the possibility of space travel, the trio blast off into space, not knowing where to go or what to do next. But, not before showing Eve trembling, sweating, almost looking half-dead. It’s a thrilling note to start the game on, and tells the player if that the mission fails, Eve is pretty much dead. I really like how they portray this in the main quest and promo material, too. Following the release of most Inti Creates games, they release some free to download wallpapers, and Zero I is no different. But in these promo materials, Inti was like, “uhhhh so like what if we made a sequel to this game????” So then with each release of a wallpaper, a part of Eve’s skin turns increasingly green. So yeah, if you thought Inti was fucking around, you'd better think twice, because Zero II would be beloved within the community. Also, in the game’s story, Eve will often go under without prior warning, providing that greater sense of urgency for the player, really pushing them to act fast, lest the worst possible outcome were to occur. So yeah, hop on your tank, and lets go!
When it comes to the Tank gameplay, there aren’t many changes overall, which is great, because it barely needed any change, because Zero I had already perfected the formula. The main change is the “Gaia System”, which allows you to recover some SP after falling, or taking damage. Otherwise, it’s largely the same. To be honest, I really did not care about the Gaia system. It’s not intrusive at all, but I never found that it added to exploration. It was nice when I needed to recover some SP, but other than that, it’s largely disposable in my eyes. Although, they do something neat with it in the final boss, but yeah. Not a game changer, but an acceptable addition overall. I think they tried to use it as a sort of comeback mechanic, because in Zero II, you no longer regenerate SP, so maybe they tried to negate camping strategies? I'm not really sure, to be honest. Other than that, Gaia Sophia is basically the same. But, that's totally okay. Because Sophia III kicked ass in the first game, and continues to do so here with Gaia Sophia. So Gaia Sophia is a success here. But what about the worlds you traverse in?
Arguably the best improvement in Zero II is the phenomenal level design. Zero I had good level design that lacked focus, but Zero II’s level design is extremely concentrated and fast paced. There is not a single dull moment in Zero II. Everything is always changing, shifting, to make for some varied and fun levels to blast through. To help with the pacing, each “area” is now divided into a subset of levels. One big level, combined with several sub-areas. This makes the pacing sooooo much more faster than one could expect. Especially when it comes to 100%. I never had the biggest issue with 100%ing Zero I, but Zero II has it better, straight up. All of the items are listed in the Info tab of a planet, so if you miss something, it's readily apparent. I wish you could check the status of an entire world’s collectibles, though that’s a nitpick. Because it's really not that hard to 100% a planet in one go. And with the tinier planets offering only one or two items, 100%ing isn’t an issue at all. So when you finish the big level in an Area, the side planets offer a nice break between the bigger levels. I never got tired of Zero II, because it’s such an easy game to pick up and play. When you see that fully completed world, it simply feels satisfying. And the levels you travel within? OH MY GOD. These levels are WAY better than the first one’s! Non-stop, constant speed, and each level gimmick is so varied, intertwining your abilities with the level’s perfectly. As soon as the first screen shows up, you can see a Life Up that’s just barely out of your reach. But when you get the Hover ability, that Life Up is yours. Already, you feel like you’ve made significant progress. Combined with the side worlds, and you have a satisfying gameplay loop that any fan of the genre can fall in love with. And combined with the quality-of-life features I haven’t even mentioned, like weapon shortcuts, this transforms Zero II into a very different game that transcends the quality of the first game. From fun in Sophia the III, into one of the best metroidvanias to be released to date. And that’s just Sophia! Because folks, we have a few other Metal Attacker pilots to mention.
Yeah, Jason ain’t the only one in town with a tank. With the new worlds of Zero II, comes all new pilots, support droids, and Tanks, too! From a casual farmer with a nature loving southern fox (I think?) girl, to a more father-daughter relationship, and even a voluptuous plant girl. A voluptuous plant girl. Okay??? Thanks, Inti. You attracted all of the Plants Vs Zombies artists. Ughhhhhhh. Jokes aside, I really like the cast of Zero II, although a part of me wishes we saw them outside of just their own worlds. All of them have some really fun dynamics between Jason and co., but it’s only temporary. Gonbei is the down-to-earth guy, Stein is a hard worker, and Kanna is, well, as silly as her own design is. It’s a shame that they’re a one-and-done deal though. Outside of [SPOILERS], though, that doesn’t really count, because they barely show up there, either. Sure, the collectible emblems give the characters a bit more screentime, as well as leading into the True ending, but even then, I really wish these characters were more developed, as I said, they’re really fun to be around. I appreciate the world building of the Zero series though, as this could hint at the possibility of more Metal attacker pilots in the future. But as the “Jason” saga came to a close in Zero III, it’s uncertain if the series has a future with the current chronology. But hey, we’ll see. Hey, speaking of pilots...
Jason in this game is absolutely CRAZY. The weapon system received yet another overhaul. While the weapons can still deplete like normal, the weakness has an even greater emphasis than before. While Wave is still the top dog in terms of damage, the other weapons have seen way more love. It’s less viable to spam Wave, as the weapon begins to rapidly lose damage with each shot, which restores the less you fire it. While Wave is still the best in terms of raw damage and universal weaknesses across the game, in order to maximize the capabilities of Jason, you need to switch up your game plan a whole lot more than Zero I. Because of this, the Whip became a personal favorite of mine. It has piss poor range, but it does great damage, and is immune to weapon staling. That's not to say the rest of the bunch aren't slacking, though. The Seeker is solid, and Guard can be useful in a pinch, but that's about it for me. I really wish they gave you more reason to stick with other weapons. Staling weapons is a start, but other than that, there's still little reason to not stick to your guns, literally. But believe me, folks. We haven't even touched the best ability by far. BLAST COUNTER!! Blast Counter is cool as hell and you cannot tell me otherwise. If enemies have a reticle above their head, hit the Y button, and BAM! It stuns most enemies, and also looks cool as hell, but when you get the Speed Striker, it just annihilates the boss of Montoj. It’s like, “Fuck you, I don’t have time for this shit”. It’s great. Spamming counter is ill-advised as timing it correctly is the only one that makes enemies weak. But this ability alone makes the combat of Zero II so much more refined and dynamic, and some of the most fun in the series. Hell, pop in the Empress DLC, and... DAMN. They don’t call her The Empress for nothing! Even then, what the hell? I know nothing about Dragon Marked For Death, but if The Empress can pull this off in her own game, sign me up! Well, that is... if Dragon Marked For Death wasn’t a dead multiplayer game itself! LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO shut the fuck up it’s not funny. Bad jokes aside, Zero II would be perfect. IF the bosses weren’t so mediocre.
THE MOUNTAIN OF CHAOS, MY FUCKING BEHATED. There is genuinely zero skill needed for this fight. Mash this shit like it’s Cookie Clicker, and THEN you get to play the video game! Oh, and if you accidentally fall off as Jason? That’s a wrap! Jason is so fucking fragile in this game. He can fall, like 2 blocks and that’s a reset. Oh, and the Unknown Cell-046? Can you AIM? If so, you just beat the fight. Just like that! The Dig-Rawer, too. It’s laughably easy. There aren’t too many bosses in Zero II, but too many of them err on the lame side of things. And, yeah, this applies to the final boss, too. But first, let’s head back to the story.
As Jason makes his way through the galaxy, a mysterious, hostile figure shows up, dubbed Leibniz. They constantly try to impede Jason’s progress, whether by fighting them directly or otherwise. It’s unclear what Leibniz wants, as they continue to insult and berate Jason and co with no clear motivation behind the attacks. Hell, Leibniz even attacked Kanna, and embarrassingly lost to Miss Melons. This comes to a head in Area G, where Leibniz and Jason duke it out for the final time. Turns out that Leibniz was a victim of the now infamous Planade-G. Before the events of the game, Leibniz and his now deceased support droid lived on that Planet, right until the planet was invaded by mutants. Everything was destroyed, with Leibniz surviving, but with their support droid dying with Planade-G. This drives Leibniz into madness, killing anything that comes in Garuda’s path, as a false sense of payback ensues over them. And in this encounter is where Leibniz’s backstory is revealed. They believe that killing Jason is a better fate than taking Planade-G head on, believing that the two are trying to save Planade-G. In reality, Planade-G stands right in their path to the planet Sophia, and regrettably, they cannot avoid it. So like it or not, they have to take this thing on. Concerningly, Eve ran some simulations about what would happen if they actually won. Should that happen, the energy within Planade-G would malfunction, essentially dooming the universe that they’re within, including the tunnel to Sophia itself. Either way, Planade-G is a big enough threat to the universe anyways. So concerningly, Sophia charges towards the giant, purple planet.
Planade-G is probably my least favorite boss in the entire game, and probably the entire Zero saga. God, this one is just so fucking dreadful. It’s basically luck if you can even land a hit or not. You have to stomp the energy out of Planade-G with the Gaia-Sophia system, but doing so is a tedious process in of itself. The debris flying in the sky is supposed to help you deal more damage, but it often intercepts you giant Gaia stomp, making the process frustrating. Hell, even if you don’t run into the debris, an enemy that spawns on the floor can just straight up cancel your stomp, no matter how hard you fall. Oh, and not to mention, at low HP, the planet will start rotating, with NO TELEGRAPHING! Christ! This may very well be one of the worst bosses in Inti Creates HISTORY, and you KNOW they never miss with their bosses. But what in the hell happened here? I might say that this is THE worst boss in Blaster Master, not just the Zero series, but Blaster Master 2 exists, so... good job, I guess? This is also where the first ending comes into play.
Once again, the Bad Ending is the one most players will see on their first playthrough. As the two pre-maturely celebrate, as Eve predicted, Planade-G’s tunnel becomes unstable, flinging the crew into a black hole, Area Ω, separating them in the process. Although the universe avoided it’s inevitable destruction, the team are essentially left for dead, with no one to save them. Eve recants on the journey that just occurred, how Jason was a fearless leader, reflecting on the other pilots we’ve seen throughout the course of the game, but also beginning to believe that the mission was a bust from the start. Her last regret was not spending more time with the pilots, but as her consciousness begins to fade, Eve calls out to Jason one last time. Cutting to Leibniz, they receive the distress signal that Eve sent out, before the signal cuts off. Leibniz is initially ecstatic over the news, laughing at the two’s downfall, as well as their home planet’s, before returning to a striking silence, as the game fades to black. This is a pretty blatant bad ending for the crew. I mean, everyone on the team was wiped out, never to be seen again, and Sophia suffers, as Leibniz says. No more, no less. But, if you actually have a sense of joy and/or happiness, you’ll want to aim for the true ending. You thankfully don’t need to 100% the game in order to do so, but you’ll need to instead collect the emblems you get from the other pilots. These have no apparent effects, but upon defeating Planade-G again, everything plays out, realizing everything that Jason did for her. However, she realizes that she must be her own person. Sure, Jason is a great acquaintance, but Eve is nothing without Jason. That all changes, when Eve stands up, corruption be damned, determined to do what Jason did for her all those months ago. And thus begins Area Ω.
Eve is... intentionally bad. She has no ranged game, only getting a bitch slap, also being as fragile as Jason, and has the ability to slow down time with the powers of kittens and cats alike. It reflects her deteriorating state at this point in the story. The player is forced out of their comfort zone at this point in the story, with this level being the hardest Area in the game, in my opinion. This is where the game becomes more puzzle-like, as the player needs to get with the grips of fall damage. Without any tank, even a short fall can kill Eve. Hell, you even fight a few bosses with her, which aren’t too ballbusting, thankfully. After a bit of exploring, Eve finds a Blaster rifle, which alarms her, as it may potentially belong to Jason. She hopes for the best and trudges on, but apparently, she pissed off a religious figure, because Leibniz shows up, and tries to go in for the kill. Eve is like, “Girl, bye”, finding a tank behind Leibniz, alongside a spirit of a former support droid, Elfie, killed by the Mutant Cocoon. Elfie’s support droid is Roddy. Yes, this is a reference to Blaster Master: Blasting Again, where Eve and Jason’s children are named Roddy and Elfie. They’re not the same characters, but you gotta applaud the amount of care this team has. It should be criminal. I mean, shit, almost all of the new character names are references to previous Sunsoft games, and hell, even some of the worlds are references in of themselves. I love this fucking company. Anyways, Elfie consoles Leibniz about their loss of their pilot, with Leibniz in denial. Elfie then namedrops Leibniz’s support droid, Lucia, sending them into a moment of silence. Leibniz blasts off, telling Eve to keep eye on the Emblems that she acquired. Elfie lets Eve pilot her tank, with Eve noticing that the structure of the tank, Andreia, is a near-replica of Sophia III’s. Eve blasts off in her fancy new talk intent on completing the mission that Elfie started. At this point, there is very little else in Zero II. Only a few HP ups before the big showdown with the Mutant Cocoon, so we can cover that now. The Mutant Cocoon towers over a stone-cold Jason. His vitals are still present, though waning. It’s believed that he tried to take on the Cocoon himself, before failing and succumbing to the Mutant Cocoon. Eve is hopeless, yet tries to save Jason either way, before realizing her attempts are fruitless without the Acceleration Blast, which is unusable. When all hope seems lost, Gonbei and the others come in to save Eve and defeat the Mutant Cocoon, revealing that the Emblems are teleporters, of sorts. Eve fends off the Cocoon as the crew starts to show up to save Eve. While the Acceleration Blast may destroy Andreia, Elfie accepts this, and allows Eve to proceed. Using her Mutant cells as fuel, she destroys that bitch-ass Mutant Cocoon, and Jason returns to normal. The fight is not over just yet, as the Mutant Cocoon reveals its true form; the Drolrevo Mastro. Despite my qualms with the bosses in Zero II, this fight is a solid time, although it ends way too quickly for my tastes. But, once Mastro falls, the grand Planet Sophia lays in front of Jason and Eve. With the beautiful planet in front of their eyes, Eve only has one thing she has to say. What is this confession? Play Zero III to find out!
In an undisclosed location, Leibniz catches a distress signal from Earth. The mutants strike again, calling for Gaia Sophia. Leibniz doesn’t stand around and watch, though. This time, they take initiative, joking around at how he’s the hero of the story this time. And, in the final words of the game, Leibniz proclaims, “Let’s go... Lucia...”
Yeah, if I didn’t make it clear, Zero II is amazing. Genuinely. Like, shockingly good. Zero I was great, but this blew away all expectations, and transformed an already good game into a TRUE masterpiece. Zero I was a fair bit divisive when it was released, but I’ve seen NOBODY shit on this game so far, and that’s when you KNOW a game is good. I love it, just like everyone else. And to think that it’s the SECOND BEST ONE! Zero III... might just be... a good game. Hell if I know! But, we’ll just have to wait and see. What say you? Let’s go... uh... Geese... But yeah. Buy this game. Don’t have the money? I’ll fucking gift it to you, how about that? Because you MUST play this game. Please do. I’ll love you forever and ever if you do.
Well, shit. We hit 200 before Zero III. Uh... yeah. I really don’t have more to say. Zero III will be the chef’s kiss, so be on the lookout. But other than that, gotta promote the Discord server again. It’s a tight-knit, yet active community. So, hop on in! https://discord.gg/CUH3RSFSSB But that’s really all I’ve got. Not even a Bayonetta Origins jo- oh, whoops. Okay, have a good night, play Blaster Master Zero, every single one of them, and support Inti, because goddamn. They’re the kings of making good games that nobody plays. Bye!
Blaster Master Zero is one of my favorite games of all time. So naturally, Zero II should follow. And… yeah. It's peak. Shocker. I mean, I already said that Zero 1 was “a 10/10 in my heart”, and I then followed that up by saying that Zero I was “truly the worst the [Zero] series has to offer”, so it's no shock that I find Zero II and Zero III more appealing by default. So, I could just end the review there. Zero II is a great follow-up to Zero I, and expands on its gameplay greatly. But, no! Because Blaster Master Zero II, is really, REALLY GOOD. Shockingly so. This was one of my favorite games ever, the 5th spot on my list of GOATed favorites. It's stayed pretty stagnant since Zero III forced it out of the Top 5 slot, but Zero II is still definitely up there in terms of my favorites. But I will say, I honestly forgot about what made Zero II so great. I hadn’t played it in a long while, so I decided to do so for this review, and man. Once I heard the music again, got into the groove of it all, that was it for me. Because I knew Zero II would be near perfection. Not the perfect game (i can name a few of those), but the perfect game to me. And, a perfect game with no major version differences. Like Zero II, the game is the same across platforms, you just need to buy the DLC. Hooray! So, what say you? Here's my review of BLASTER MASTER ZERO II!
A few months after the True Ending of Blaster Master Zero I, after Jason, the young scientist, saved Eve, the support droid for Sophia III, from the Mutant Core, the two live in harmony. While Sophia III was left to die with the Mutant Core, Sophia Zero manages to come out unscathed. Eve however, does not. In Blaster Master Zero I, Eve’s body was taken over by the Mutant Core, altering her appearance to be incredibly veiny. Although everything seemed okay after the fact, Eve would begin to undergo what I'll dub her “Corruption”, where the mutant cells began to overtake her body. This radically changes her appearance from a sweet, innocuous girl, to a half-mutant, with only a bloody tear to convey her pain. Also, cats. Both figuratively, and literally, because yeah, Eve got a breast implant. I’ll chalk it up to her “Corruption”, but the comments about her being a Mutant [SPOILERS] in Zero III? Yeah, can’t blame ‘em if you’re picking up what I’m putting down. BUT ANYWAYS... This sends Jason into a panic, as he attempts to save Eve once more. He attempts to find a cure for Eve’s mutation on Earth, but fails to find one. So, with the creation of Gaia-Sophia, born from the parts of Sophia Zero, now with the possibility of space travel, the trio blast off into space, not knowing where to go or what to do next. But, not before showing Eve trembling, sweating, almost looking half-dead. It’s a thrilling note to start the game on, and tells the player if that the mission fails, Eve is pretty much dead. I really like how they portray this in the main quest and promo material, too. Following the release of most Inti Creates games, they release some free to download wallpapers, and Zero I is no different. But in these promo materials, Inti was like, “uhhhh so like what if we made a sequel to this game????” So then with each release of a wallpaper, a part of Eve’s skin turns increasingly green. So yeah, if you thought Inti was fucking around, you'd better think twice, because Zero II would be beloved within the community. Also, in the game’s story, Eve will often go under without prior warning, providing that greater sense of urgency for the player, really pushing them to act fast, lest the worst possible outcome were to occur. So yeah, hop on your tank, and lets go!
When it comes to the Tank gameplay, there aren’t many changes overall, which is great, because it barely needed any change, because Zero I had already perfected the formula. The main change is the “Gaia System”, which allows you to recover some SP after falling, or taking damage. Otherwise, it’s largely the same. To be honest, I really did not care about the Gaia system. It’s not intrusive at all, but I never found that it added to exploration. It was nice when I needed to recover some SP, but other than that, it’s largely disposable in my eyes. Although, they do something neat with it in the final boss, but yeah. Not a game changer, but an acceptable addition overall. I think they tried to use it as a sort of comeback mechanic, because in Zero II, you no longer regenerate SP, so maybe they tried to negate camping strategies? I'm not really sure, to be honest. Other than that, Gaia Sophia is basically the same. But, that's totally okay. Because Sophia III kicked ass in the first game, and continues to do so here with Gaia Sophia. So Gaia Sophia is a success here. But what about the worlds you traverse in?
Arguably the best improvement in Zero II is the phenomenal level design. Zero I had good level design that lacked focus, but Zero II’s level design is extremely concentrated and fast paced. There is not a single dull moment in Zero II. Everything is always changing, shifting, to make for some varied and fun levels to blast through. To help with the pacing, each “area” is now divided into a subset of levels. One big level, combined with several sub-areas. This makes the pacing sooooo much more faster than one could expect. Especially when it comes to 100%. I never had the biggest issue with 100%ing Zero I, but Zero II has it better, straight up. All of the items are listed in the Info tab of a planet, so if you miss something, it's readily apparent. I wish you could check the status of an entire world’s collectibles, though that’s a nitpick. Because it's really not that hard to 100% a planet in one go. And with the tinier planets offering only one or two items, 100%ing isn’t an issue at all. So when you finish the big level in an Area, the side planets offer a nice break between the bigger levels. I never got tired of Zero II, because it’s such an easy game to pick up and play. When you see that fully completed world, it simply feels satisfying. And the levels you travel within? OH MY GOD. These levels are WAY better than the first one’s! Non-stop, constant speed, and each level gimmick is so varied, intertwining your abilities with the level’s perfectly. As soon as the first screen shows up, you can see a Life Up that’s just barely out of your reach. But when you get the Hover ability, that Life Up is yours. Already, you feel like you’ve made significant progress. Combined with the side worlds, and you have a satisfying gameplay loop that any fan of the genre can fall in love with. And combined with the quality-of-life features I haven’t even mentioned, like weapon shortcuts, this transforms Zero II into a very different game that transcends the quality of the first game. From fun in Sophia the III, into one of the best metroidvanias to be released to date. And that’s just Sophia! Because folks, we have a few other Metal Attacker pilots to mention.
Yeah, Jason ain’t the only one in town with a tank. With the new worlds of Zero II, comes all new pilots, support droids, and Tanks, too! From a casual farmer with a nature loving southern fox (I think?) girl, to a more father-daughter relationship, and even a voluptuous plant girl. A voluptuous plant girl. Okay??? Thanks, Inti. You attracted all of the Plants Vs Zombies artists. Ughhhhhhh. Jokes aside, I really like the cast of Zero II, although a part of me wishes we saw them outside of just their own worlds. All of them have some really fun dynamics between Jason and co., but it’s only temporary. Gonbei is the down-to-earth guy, Stein is a hard worker, and Kanna is, well, as silly as her own design is. It’s a shame that they’re a one-and-done deal though. Outside of [SPOILERS], though, that doesn’t really count, because they barely show up there, either. Sure, the collectible emblems give the characters a bit more screentime, as well as leading into the True ending, but even then, I really wish these characters were more developed, as I said, they’re really fun to be around. I appreciate the world building of the Zero series though, as this could hint at the possibility of more Metal attacker pilots in the future. But as the “Jason” saga came to a close in Zero III, it’s uncertain if the series has a future with the current chronology. But hey, we’ll see. Hey, speaking of pilots...
Jason in this game is absolutely CRAZY. The weapon system received yet another overhaul. While the weapons can still deplete like normal, the weakness has an even greater emphasis than before. While Wave is still the top dog in terms of damage, the other weapons have seen way more love. It’s less viable to spam Wave, as the weapon begins to rapidly lose damage with each shot, which restores the less you fire it. While Wave is still the best in terms of raw damage and universal weaknesses across the game, in order to maximize the capabilities of Jason, you need to switch up your game plan a whole lot more than Zero I. Because of this, the Whip became a personal favorite of mine. It has piss poor range, but it does great damage, and is immune to weapon staling. That's not to say the rest of the bunch aren't slacking, though. The Seeker is solid, and Guard can be useful in a pinch, but that's about it for me. I really wish they gave you more reason to stick with other weapons. Staling weapons is a start, but other than that, there's still little reason to not stick to your guns, literally. But believe me, folks. We haven't even touched the best ability by far. BLAST COUNTER!! Blast Counter is cool as hell and you cannot tell me otherwise. If enemies have a reticle above their head, hit the Y button, and BAM! It stuns most enemies, and also looks cool as hell, but when you get the Speed Striker, it just annihilates the boss of Montoj. It’s like, “Fuck you, I don’t have time for this shit”. It’s great. Spamming counter is ill-advised as timing it correctly is the only one that makes enemies weak. But this ability alone makes the combat of Zero II so much more refined and dynamic, and some of the most fun in the series. Hell, pop in the Empress DLC, and... DAMN. They don’t call her The Empress for nothing! Even then, what the hell? I know nothing about Dragon Marked For Death, but if The Empress can pull this off in her own game, sign me up! Well, that is... if Dragon Marked For Death wasn’t a dead multiplayer game itself! LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO shut the fuck up it’s not funny. Bad jokes aside, Zero II would be perfect. IF the bosses weren’t so mediocre.
THE MOUNTAIN OF CHAOS, MY FUCKING BEHATED. There is genuinely zero skill needed for this fight. Mash this shit like it’s Cookie Clicker, and THEN you get to play the video game! Oh, and if you accidentally fall off as Jason? That’s a wrap! Jason is so fucking fragile in this game. He can fall, like 2 blocks and that’s a reset. Oh, and the Unknown Cell-046? Can you AIM? If so, you just beat the fight. Just like that! The Dig-Rawer, too. It’s laughably easy. There aren’t too many bosses in Zero II, but too many of them err on the lame side of things. And, yeah, this applies to the final boss, too. But first, let’s head back to the story.
As Jason makes his way through the galaxy, a mysterious, hostile figure shows up, dubbed Leibniz. They constantly try to impede Jason’s progress, whether by fighting them directly or otherwise. It’s unclear what Leibniz wants, as they continue to insult and berate Jason and co with no clear motivation behind the attacks. Hell, Leibniz even attacked Kanna, and embarrassingly lost to Miss Melons. This comes to a head in Area G, where Leibniz and Jason duke it out for the final time. Turns out that Leibniz was a victim of the now infamous Planade-G. Before the events of the game, Leibniz and his now deceased support droid lived on that Planet, right until the planet was invaded by mutants. Everything was destroyed, with Leibniz surviving, but with their support droid dying with Planade-G. This drives Leibniz into madness, killing anything that comes in Garuda’s path, as a false sense of payback ensues over them. And in this encounter is where Leibniz’s backstory is revealed. They believe that killing Jason is a better fate than taking Planade-G head on, believing that the two are trying to save Planade-G. In reality, Planade-G stands right in their path to the planet Sophia, and regrettably, they cannot avoid it. So like it or not, they have to take this thing on. Concerningly, Eve ran some simulations about what would happen if they actually won. Should that happen, the energy within Planade-G would malfunction, essentially dooming the universe that they’re within, including the tunnel to Sophia itself. Either way, Planade-G is a big enough threat to the universe anyways. So concerningly, Sophia charges towards the giant, purple planet.
Planade-G is probably my least favorite boss in the entire game, and probably the entire Zero saga. God, this one is just so fucking dreadful. It’s basically luck if you can even land a hit or not. You have to stomp the energy out of Planade-G with the Gaia-Sophia system, but doing so is a tedious process in of itself. The debris flying in the sky is supposed to help you deal more damage, but it often intercepts you giant Gaia stomp, making the process frustrating. Hell, even if you don’t run into the debris, an enemy that spawns on the floor can just straight up cancel your stomp, no matter how hard you fall. Oh, and not to mention, at low HP, the planet will start rotating, with NO TELEGRAPHING! Christ! This may very well be one of the worst bosses in Inti Creates HISTORY, and you KNOW they never miss with their bosses. But what in the hell happened here? I might say that this is THE worst boss in Blaster Master, not just the Zero series, but Blaster Master 2 exists, so... good job, I guess? This is also where the first ending comes into play.
Once again, the Bad Ending is the one most players will see on their first playthrough. As the two pre-maturely celebrate, as Eve predicted, Planade-G’s tunnel becomes unstable, flinging the crew into a black hole, Area Ω, separating them in the process. Although the universe avoided it’s inevitable destruction, the team are essentially left for dead, with no one to save them. Eve recants on the journey that just occurred, how Jason was a fearless leader, reflecting on the other pilots we’ve seen throughout the course of the game, but also beginning to believe that the mission was a bust from the start. Her last regret was not spending more time with the pilots, but as her consciousness begins to fade, Eve calls out to Jason one last time. Cutting to Leibniz, they receive the distress signal that Eve sent out, before the signal cuts off. Leibniz is initially ecstatic over the news, laughing at the two’s downfall, as well as their home planet’s, before returning to a striking silence, as the game fades to black. This is a pretty blatant bad ending for the crew. I mean, everyone on the team was wiped out, never to be seen again, and Sophia suffers, as Leibniz says. No more, no less. But, if you actually have a sense of joy and/or happiness, you’ll want to aim for the true ending. You thankfully don’t need to 100% the game in order to do so, but you’ll need to instead collect the emblems you get from the other pilots. These have no apparent effects, but upon defeating Planade-G again, everything plays out, realizing everything that Jason did for her. However, she realizes that she must be her own person. Sure, Jason is a great acquaintance, but Eve is nothing without Jason. That all changes, when Eve stands up, corruption be damned, determined to do what Jason did for her all those months ago. And thus begins Area Ω.
Eve is... intentionally bad. She has no ranged game, only getting a bitch slap, also being as fragile as Jason, and has the ability to slow down time with the powers of kittens and cats alike. It reflects her deteriorating state at this point in the story. The player is forced out of their comfort zone at this point in the story, with this level being the hardest Area in the game, in my opinion. This is where the game becomes more puzzle-like, as the player needs to get with the grips of fall damage. Without any tank, even a short fall can kill Eve. Hell, you even fight a few bosses with her, which aren’t too ballbusting, thankfully. After a bit of exploring, Eve finds a Blaster rifle, which alarms her, as it may potentially belong to Jason. She hopes for the best and trudges on, but apparently, she pissed off a religious figure, because Leibniz shows up, and tries to go in for the kill. Eve is like, “Girl, bye”, finding a tank behind Leibniz, alongside a spirit of a former support droid, Elfie, killed by the Mutant Cocoon. Elfie’s support droid is Roddy. Yes, this is a reference to Blaster Master: Blasting Again, where Eve and Jason’s children are named Roddy and Elfie. They’re not the same characters, but you gotta applaud the amount of care this team has. It should be criminal. I mean, shit, almost all of the new character names are references to previous Sunsoft games, and hell, even some of the worlds are references in of themselves. I love this fucking company. Anyways, Elfie consoles Leibniz about their loss of their pilot, with Leibniz in denial. Elfie then namedrops Leibniz’s support droid, Lucia, sending them into a moment of silence. Leibniz blasts off, telling Eve to keep eye on the Emblems that she acquired. Elfie lets Eve pilot her tank, with Eve noticing that the structure of the tank, Andreia, is a near-replica of Sophia III’s. Eve blasts off in her fancy new talk intent on completing the mission that Elfie started. At this point, there is very little else in Zero II. Only a few HP ups before the big showdown with the Mutant Cocoon, so we can cover that now. The Mutant Cocoon towers over a stone-cold Jason. His vitals are still present, though waning. It’s believed that he tried to take on the Cocoon himself, before failing and succumbing to the Mutant Cocoon. Eve is hopeless, yet tries to save Jason either way, before realizing her attempts are fruitless without the Acceleration Blast, which is unusable. When all hope seems lost, Gonbei and the others come in to save Eve and defeat the Mutant Cocoon, revealing that the Emblems are teleporters, of sorts. Eve fends off the Cocoon as the crew starts to show up to save Eve. While the Acceleration Blast may destroy Andreia, Elfie accepts this, and allows Eve to proceed. Using her Mutant cells as fuel, she destroys that bitch-ass Mutant Cocoon, and Jason returns to normal. The fight is not over just yet, as the Mutant Cocoon reveals its true form; the Drolrevo Mastro. Despite my qualms with the bosses in Zero II, this fight is a solid time, although it ends way too quickly for my tastes. But, once Mastro falls, the grand Planet Sophia lays in front of Jason and Eve. With the beautiful planet in front of their eyes, Eve only has one thing she has to say. What is this confession? Play Zero III to find out!
In an undisclosed location, Leibniz catches a distress signal from Earth. The mutants strike again, calling for Gaia Sophia. Leibniz doesn’t stand around and watch, though. This time, they take initiative, joking around at how he’s the hero of the story this time. And, in the final words of the game, Leibniz proclaims, “Let’s go... Lucia...”
Yeah, if I didn’t make it clear, Zero II is amazing. Genuinely. Like, shockingly good. Zero I was great, but this blew away all expectations, and transformed an already good game into a TRUE masterpiece. Zero I was a fair bit divisive when it was released, but I’ve seen NOBODY shit on this game so far, and that’s when you KNOW a game is good. I love it, just like everyone else. And to think that it’s the SECOND BEST ONE! Zero III... might just be... a good game. Hell if I know! But, we’ll just have to wait and see. What say you? Let’s go... uh... Geese... But yeah. Buy this game. Don’t have the money? I’ll fucking gift it to you, how about that? Because you MUST play this game. Please do. I’ll love you forever and ever if you do.
Well, shit. We hit 200 before Zero III. Uh... yeah. I really don’t have more to say. Zero III will be the chef’s kiss, so be on the lookout. But other than that, gotta promote the Discord server again. It’s a tight-knit, yet active community. So, hop on in! https://discord.gg/CUH3RSFSSB But that’s really all I’ve got. Not even a Bayonetta Origins jo- oh, whoops. Okay, have a good night, play Blaster Master Zero, every single one of them, and support Inti, because goddamn. They’re the kings of making good games that nobody plays. Bye!
2022
Chainsaw Man rip-off?
A short but sweet platforming experience. 100%ing the game was extremely satisfying but I wish there was more game to be had here. Had this been a full experience I would've probably given it a higher score. You gun, you dash, and float. That's really it TBH. I liked it for what it's worth, and would like to see more from this developer.
A short but sweet platforming experience. 100%ing the game was extremely satisfying but I wish there was more game to be had here. Had this been a full experience I would've probably given it a higher score. You gun, you dash, and float. That's really it TBH. I liked it for what it's worth, and would like to see more from this developer.
the funniest part of the game is that they announced the release date as well as it's fucking closure in the same post
2024
how does kay yu keep making games for free, needs to hop on a commercial game because he's ripping himself off
i slightly prefer holocure but this is again a solid time
sorry for a short review i am very tired + working on another big review (outside of backloggd tho)
i slightly prefer holocure but this is again a solid time
sorry for a short review i am very tired + working on another big review (outside of backloggd tho)
DuckTales Remastered was yet another game I got on the Winter Steam Sale this year. It was solid overall, but it felt a little rough around the edges. DuckTales Remastered, is far beyond a remaster. If anything, it could be considered a re-imagining of sorts. While it has similar level beats to the original, Remastered remixes elements of the original DuckTales to make a more metroidvania-esque version of the levels. While the levels have a defined beginning and end, and Scrooge McDuck doesn't get any new toys to use, the levels are open and usually require the player to do some backtracking in order to face the boss. While most of the levels are solid overall, the moveset holds them back a tiny bit. New to the remake is the ability to hit things with your cane, and it works fine, but it can feel annoying in some cases, such as the boss in the Himalayas. Also, somewhat frequently, I found the cane bounce (landing while holding X which propels you higher) to just straight up not function on certain platforms. This got pretty frustrating when it occurred, and while it isn't a huge deal most of the time, it can lead to some unfair deaths. The levels themselves can also be occasionally cheap; in the lava level I had a section where I repeatedly died where you needed to bounce on two geese to make it across. However, sometimes the Goose just doesn't want to spawn, making a very annoying section to replay. Also, while not a major issue, I did find the occasional bug or oddity. Once again, in the Himalayas, there's this part of the level where there's just a random gap in the ceiling. I don't know if it was a secret or not, because I bounced around for about a minute before giving up. This game feels like a prototype of Shantae Half Genie Hero (not to the detriment of either game for the record, I like them both). With its 2.5D graphics and music, it feels like WayForward were getting their feet wet when it came to platformers like this. And you can definitely feel that in some cases here. Overall, I did enjoy my time with Remastered, but it definitely could've been better.
1995
sigh To the wishlist it goes…
why did this game get 11 fucking ports jesus christ
2008
lmao