I've had an interesting relationship with Blaster Master for the NES. It's a game I had always admired from afar. I loved its pretty visuals, catchy music, and novel gameplay loop... but I could never really get into it? Believe me, I've tried, but I could never get past the first few areas. Well, no more, this time I want to beat Blaster Master once and for all, and really dive into what makes the game such a cult classic.
In addition to my normal game reviews, I wanted to start doing deeper analysis of games I like (or games I've recently played), going through each individual level, boss, mechanic, and presentation element to see what they do right, what they do wrong, and how it all clicks together. I'm still working on how to write them and they will come out far less frequently than standard reviews, but I think they could be a good chance for me to further develop my writing. I'll be doing these kinds of deep dives into a variety of games, ranging from new releases I latch onto, older games I've decided to come back to, or games I just generally have a lot of thoughts on, both good and bad.
To keep things simple, I wanted to start with the first Mega Man game. This is a game I come back to a lot and pretty much know inside and out, so I think it's a good first game to really delve deep into.
I'm at the point in my Top 100 where the games' quality speaks for themselves. I don't quite have the emotional attachment to them that I would a Top 25 contender, but they're also so obviously brilliant that there's no reason why I wouldn't put them on the top of this list. Super Metroid and Yoshi's Island are just simply stone-cold classics, but Bowser's Inside Story despite being more recent is a game that just about everybody seems to adore. Even TTYD has a lot of baggage around it, but Bowser's Inside Story is just so hard to dislike. So yeah, no wonder I ranked it this high.
The late AlphaDream's Mario & Luigi series often felt like they were second fiddle to the Paper Mario games, and I mean, considering I have three Paper Mario games on my Top 100 list and just one M&L game, I can't really say I'm helping with that perception. I generally prefer the more dramatic storytelling of the Paper Mario games, but I still have a lot of respect for these games and AlphaDream as a whole. They have a unique vibe and charm all their own, and in some aspects like the battle system, far surpass their sister series. But I feel like while every Mario & Luigi game is at the very least good, most of them have at least one thing holding them back from true greatness. Superstar Saga has a more basic battle system than the other games and a drawn-out final act, Paper Jam has unoriginal environments and characters that don't take proper advantage of the Paper Mario theming, Dream Team despite being my second favorite has a very slow start with heavy tutorialization, and Partners In Time has an overcomplicated control scheme, the flawed Bros Items system, and borked difficulty in the US release. But Bowser's Inside Story doesn't have any of these issues, everything just clicks.
Bowser's Inside Story doesn't really have the deepest narrative or anything, it's not anywhere near the level of its predecessor in terms of storytelling, but it more than makes up for that by being one of the funniest games I've played in my entire life. This game is an absolute riot, filled to the brim with some of the most quotable lines across the Mario franchise. A very big chunk of those lines belong to the game's villain Fawful, whose distinct broken English leads to a consistent string of comedic gold. There's a reason Fawful gained such a massive following, he's so much fun. But on top of the top-notch comedic writing, this game's got some pretty solid character work too, particularly for Bowser and the new character Starlow. Bowser starts off the game severely humbled and humiliated and has to learn to swallow his pride and work with the Mario Bros, and becomes all the more badass for it. Meanwhile, Starlow is pretty much just Tatl from Majora's Mask, a snarky little fairy who starts the game picking on Bowser and Luigi before growing a begrudging respect for them. I've seen a lot of people hate Starlow because of how much she pokes fun at Luigi, but I think that's doing both of their characters a disservice. Luigi is great because he's such an underdog, he needs that kind of friction to really prove himself. And Starlow is great because she doesn't immediately get along with the Bros, particularly Luigi, but by the sequels, she comes to know them better than most anyone else in the Mushroom Kingdom. Frankly, Starlow is one of my favorite Mario characters because she has that edge to her.
As far as core moment-to-moment gameplay goes, I have always thought the Mario & Luigi games were better than the Paper Mario games. The Paper Mario games do have their strengths like their badge system, larger scale, generally stronger narratives, and of course, their unique artstyles, but on a pure mechanical level, the Mario & Luigi games are just so much deeper. In the overworld, you play as Mario & Luigi at the same time. They have a increasingly wide range of platforming moves they can perform in tandem ranging from a spin jump to a double jump to a digging move and so on and so forth, which gives the overworld traversal a much stronger focus on platforming and puzzle-solving. Meanwhile, the battle system takes the action commands that defined Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario and fleshes them out even further. Now every enemy has their own unique attacks to learn and avoid, and the Mario Bros have their own special attacks that play out like full-on minigames. The Mario & Luigi games completely eschew any strategy and planning for pure mechanical skill, you'll need to master all the attack patterns and special moves to make it to the end, and that can be a fun change of pace for a turn-based RPG. I'm not saying it's better, but it is unique and refreshing in its own way.
The big gameplay hook of Bowser's Inside Story is the fact that you can now play as Bowser alongside Mario & Luigi. This isn't the first Mario & Luigi game to have you control more characters than the titular duo, but the way BiS handles it feels far less overwhelming. Bowser is on the upper screen, and the brothers are on the bottom. You can only control one of the two at a time, but that doesn't limit the ways in which they can interact. You can solve a puzzle as Mario & Luigi to allow Bowser to move something in the overworld, or in battle, Bowser can swallow an enemy or boss so Mario & Luigi can wail on him. This system also allows for a lot of gameplay variety. Mario & Luigi play as they always have, with a wide variety of context-sensitive actions and platforming moves, but all of the areas inside Bowser's body are played from a 2D perspective this time. Meanwhile, Bowser's sections are entirely top-down, and his gameplay is more focused on using pure raw strength to demolish your environments. And even more, around halfway through you get to start exploring Bowser's areas as Mario & Luigi, completely contextualizing them and making them feel fresh. It's some truly impressive mechanical interplay through and through.
And speaking of feeling fresh, I think the biggest strength of Bowser's Inside Story is its incredible pacing. Barring some occasionally overlong tutorial segments, AlphaDream always had a knack for RPG pacing and balancing. Their games never drag and never demand the player grind, and always know when to move on from the current setting and show you something new. Out of all of their games, BiS does this the best. The way this game operates is that you enter an area either as Bowser or the Mario Bros, and you will immediately start to struggle. The enemies have beefier health bars than ever before and entirely unfamiliar attacks. But as you progress through the area, you will start to learn the patterns and level up, which makes defeating those enemies much easier. By the time you reach the end, you'll be able to demolish every enemy in your path, so the game drags you to the next setting for the cycle to start again. Toss in the frequent swapping between Bowser and Mario Bros gameplay, a ridiculous amount of minigames, and even some very fun kaiju battles as a Giant Bowser, and you get a game that refuses to stay in the same place for more than half an hour. But despite this breakneck pacing, Bowser's Inside Story is still roughly 20-30 hours long, with barely any padding to be seen.
In terms of visual presentation, I think Bowser's Inside Story is still the best-looking Mario & Luigi game. While I do really like the look of the 3DS games, AlphaDream's greatest strength was always spritework and it really shows in their game, with its colorful and wacky environments, expressive and fluidly-animated characters, and crunchy effects. I've always especially loved their UI, and the way they shamelessly implement the console's button layouts into it. The soundtrack is also predictably incredible, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise considering it's by Yoko Shimomura, my favorite video game composer. While I do think Partners In Time and Dream Team have overall better and more tonally cohesive soundtracks, the Bowser's Inside Story OST is still fantastic in its own right and boasts a ton of the series' most iconic tracks, including The Wind Is Blowing In Cavi Cape, Beachside Dream, Grasslands All The Way, Short Break In Toad Town, Tough Guy Alert, Showtime, and of course, The Grand Finale, one of the best final boss themes of all time. Frankly, the entire final boss encounter is fantastic, easily my favorite in a Mario RPG.
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is one of the most tightly-designed RPGs I've ever seen, stuffed with so much gameplay variety that coalesces incredibly seamlessly. It's gutbustingly hilarious, boasts some fantastic character work that puts Origami King to shame, and impressively polished on pretty much every level. It's not my favorite game in the "Mario RPG" subseries, but it is my favorite Mario RPG.
Yoshi's Island is a game I've talked a lot about on this blog before, so like with Super Metroid, it's a bit tough to figure what I can really add to the conversation here. Yoshi's Island is probably the cult classic Nintendo game, a brilliantly designed, jaw-droppingly beautiful, and aggressively charming game that hasn't aged a single day.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was a unique departure for Nintendo at the time. Instead of making a standard sequel to one of their most beloved SNES games, they made a prequel starring Yoshi instead, and it was a brilliant move. Though I grew up with the Wii, Yoshi was always my favorite Mario character, so discovering that he starred in a beloved platformer of his own was awesome to me as a kid. And frankly, I think the original Yoshi's Island manages to stand above any 2D Mario made before or since because it stars Yoshi. This is a game that doesn't have to conform to any conventional Mario tropes and feels dramatically different, weirder, and more interesting as a result. The level design feels different, the movement feels different, the tone feels different, and of course, the art direction feels very different.
I can't really talk about Yoshi's Island without talking about the visuals. This game was made to show off the capabilities of the SuperFX chip and man, does it show them off. Yoshi's Island goes for a painterly style that still looks so fresh and vivid to this day, to the point that I still find new things to appreciate the more I play. I adore the cartoony character designs, the lush and bold color palette, the gorgeous backgrounds, the natural use of sprite scaling and rotation, and the way every object looks like it's physically painted with brush strokes. I still think this original game is the best-looking Yoshi game, hell it might even be one of the best-looking games period, it's just that timeless.
As far as gameplay is concerned, I don't think not enough people really appreciate how well Yoshi feels in this game. Yoshi's movement in the first Yoshi's Island is incredibly weighty and momentum-driven, you can really fling yourself across a stage with well-timed flutters and it just feels really nice and satisfying. Satisfying can also describe the game's central mechanic: Eating and tossing eggs. As a kid, I remember being skeptical about having to time your egg throws rather than actually being able to aim projectiles yourself, but nowadays, I love this decision. Nothing feels better than being able to pull off a perfect toss, let alone the times that you manage to nail a precise ricochet. The one other facet of Yoshi's Island gameplay is, of course, the health system. Yoshi is invincible, but getting hit causes you to drop Baby Mario, and if you can't catch him before the timer ticks down, you enter the fail state. This is easily the game's most divisive element since getting hit will cause Baby Mario to start wailing until you catch him and it's very grating. Honestly, I agree, I despise Baby Mario's crying, but it's something that just never dampened my love for this game. Besides, the actual concept of the health system itself is still very creative and well-executed, and it says a lot that other games like Halo took direct inspiration from it.
Yoshi's Island also has some absolutely stellar level design, it's frankly everything I look for in platforming stages. On one hand, Yoshi's Island is filled with fun, inventive, and satisfying linear obstacle courses that'll have you hopping across spinning platforms, ski lifts, giant balloons, disappearing platforms, rafts floating atop lava, all the while dodging giant maces, falling walls, falling icicles, firebars, and some of the biggest Bullet Bills in the series. There's some fun transformations for Yoshi that give the game a bit of a variety, and the castle levels even like to toss in some pretty sick-looking 2.5D elements using the SuperFX chip. But on the other hand, Yoshi's Island's stages are also incredibly explorative, filled to the brim with hidden nooks and crannies and cleverly tucked away collectibles. And there's a lot of collectibles at that. 20 Red Coins, 5 Daisies, on top of ending a stage with your countdown at the max makes for a grueling but immensely satisfying 100% completion that'll force you to fully master and learn each stage to the fullest. For someone who's as much of an exploration buff as I am, Yoshi's Island is an absolute dream to complete.
And then there's the bosses. This might sound crazy, but I think Yoshi's Island quite possibly has the best lineup of boss fights in any game ever. As I said, Yoshi's Island is very much a showcase of the SuperFX's capabilities and nowhere is this more apparent than in the boss fights. From sprite scaling to sprite rotation, to impressive 3D-ish imagery, each and every boss in Yoshi's Island uses the SuperFX to the fullest to craft a fight with a heightened sense of scale, while also being incredibly fun to defeat in their own unique ways. The highlights for me have to be the tug of war fight against Roger The Potted Ghost, fighting Prince Froggy from inside his stomach, skipping eggs across the surface in (or straight-up skipping) the fight against Naval Piranha, the climactic aerial battle against Hookbill, and of course, the technically mind-blowing antigravity fight against Raphael The Raven. But even those fights don't even come close to topping the incredible fight against Baby Bowser, which is equal parts difficult, cinematic, and shockingly intense to this day.
Oh yeah, as for the music, it's very good. I'd definitely say Yoshi's Island ranks up there with Super Mario Sunshine and Majora's Mask as one of Koji Kondo's best works. It's upbeat, charming, ridiculously catchy, and knows when to get serious. On one hand, we have the lovably adorable Flower Garden, Map, and Athletic themes. On the other hand, we have the haunting Castle theme, the tense Boss theme, and the jarringly metal Baby Bowser theme. You wouldn't expect Yoshi's Island to have some killer rock tracks, but it just made me wish Kondo had done even more of them.
Overall, Yoshi's Island is incredible. I don't think it'll ever be a game I don't absolutely adore. I love its beautiful painterly visuals, fluid movement, exploratory approach to level design, and its massive bosses, and it pretty much solidified Yoshi as one of my favorite video game characters of all time.
As I mentioned before, 2023 saw the release of three big N64 throwback games: Cavern Of Dreams, Corn Kidz 64, and Pseudoregalia, none of which I got to play. Cavern Of Dreams finally came out on Switch and I quite enjoyed it, and now it's Corn Kidz's turn. Unfortunately, I hate to say it but I'm not quite as enthusiastic over this one.
Corn Kidz 64 has you play as a goat dude named Seve who wanders into a gas station to get some nachos, only to end up in a dream world with a weird girl named Alexis. Now, you have to explore this dream world, find a way to escape, and get Seve his nachos. It's a very ridiculous and nonsensical story, but the darkly comedic writing still made it a fairly enjoyable narrative to follow. In terms of pure movement, Seve controls really well, there's a good weight to him that feels quite nice. Being a goat, he can headbutt in pretty much every direction, which he can use to pound stakes into the ground, stab it into walls, home in on enemies, and best of all, stick his horn into screws and spin them around. It's very Mario Galaxy, and it feels great. The other major move Seve has is a single wall jump which he can aim in any direction ala Super Mario Sunshine. This also feels very good, and you get a lot of freedom in terms of where you aim your wall jump. Right from the get-go, you'll quickly be tasked with chaining wall jumps and headbutts, and when everything clicks, it can feel incredibly good to bounce all over the place.
However, this is where my first big issue comes, because Corn Kidz 64 doesn't always click. The camera in Corn Kidz is not very good, but not in the way you'd think. A lot of N64 3D platformers had poor cameras, usually either due to limited controls or clipping issues. That's not a problem in Corn Kidz 64, instead its problem is that the camera seems to auto-center on its Y axis. This means that you kinda have to hold down the right joystick to be able to even look slightly up, and even then, it feels like you're not given full control of where you're looking. It's not fun to have to constantly wrestle with the camera, but it's especially unfun in a game with so much precision platforming. Speaking of which, yeah Corn Kidz 64 is pretty damn tough, and punishing. This is a game that often asks you to climb up high, but it also has some brutal fall damage that's pretty tough to gauge. There are cases where it felt like I should've taken damage but didn't, and other cases where I barely fell and took damage. It's finicky and inconsistent, and I just don't think it's the right fit for Corn Kidz 64 in particular.
Corn Kidz 64 only really has a single world to explore along with a slightly smaller tutorial area, but it's absolutely crammed with hidden secrets. The main collectible are the 360 XP blocks hidden around, which can help you uncover even more areas by getting enough of them. You'll have to pay very close attention to your surroundings to get these things, they can be quite hidden, though thankfully you only need like half of them to beat the game. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of this concept. With so many of them, I just don't feel like the XP blocks have nearly enough worth for how much effort it takes to get them, especially with the game not having any bigger collectibles like a Jiggy or Power Star. It feels pretty shitty and unsatisfying to make your way to the end of a brutal platforming gauntlet only to be rewarded with a single XP Cube, it's like the Moons in Odyssey but the complete opposite issue. And if you decide to go for 100% completion, prepare for hell. Corn Kidz 64 has some of the cruelest collectible placements I've ever
seen in this genre, there's some truly dastardly "needle in a haystack"
hidden spots that I couldn't even imagine finding on my own. I mentioned
that Cavern Of Dreams could sometimes feel a bit cryptic, but Corn Kidz
64 makes that game feel like God Of War: Ragnarok by comparison. No way would I be able to 100% this game, but that's assuming I even had the patience to beat it. Yeah, I ended up dropping this one after a bit. The frustration factor was just too much, and I realized I wasn't enjoying it all.
As far as the presentation goes, though, Corn Kidz 64 kinda nails it. I wouldn't say it emulates the N64 aesthetic quite as well as Cavern Of Dreams does, but it still does a pretty good job at capturing that console's distinctly surreal atmosphere. I also like how many options you have to change the game's look, ranging from console-accurate 240p, to CRT scanlines, to a hilariously useless 3D mode, to more HD 1080p visuals akin to the Banjo Kazooie remaster. The character animations, particularly for Seve, is incredibly fluid and expressive, really making him feel like a cartoon character on par with the Looney Tunes. Speaking of which, the overall world design of Corn Kidz 64 feels like a cartoon from the early 2000s like Invader Zim. There's a grungy, anarchic vibe to it that I quite like. However, I will say that the music didn't really do too much for me. From what I can tell, the music was borrowed from other sources and thus wasn't specifically made for this game. That's not exactly a bad thing since most of the tracks do fit their settings quite well, but their harsh synths and general EDM vibe doesn't fit the N64 aesthetic in the slightest.
Corn Kidz 64 feels like it's made by someone completely obsessed with the N64 era of 3D platformers, warts and all. It takes all of the best aspects of those games and the worst aspects of those games and amps them up to eleven. Thus, I feel like Corn Kidz 64 will only really 100% land for you if you can meet the game where it's at, if you're equally obsessed with N64 era 3D platformers, and unfortunately, I'm not fully there. The movement and exploration of Corn Kidz 64 is certainly great, but its ridiculously cryptic nature, weak camera, and frustratingly punishing level design ended up frustrating me more than not.
3/5 Stars
With Indie World comes a lot of game announcements and a lot of demos. In the last week or so, I downloaded a whopping five demos to try out, some being for games I've been looking forward to for a while, and others being out of pure curiosity.
Antonblast: With Penny's Big Breakaway, Pepper Grinder, and Freedom Planet 2 out, my new most anticipated game of 2024 is probably Antonblast, an indie game inspired by Wario Land 4. Peppino may not be coming to Switch, but at least Anton's got my back. The Switch demo of Antonblast is pretty much just the Dynamite Demo that has already existed for PC owners to play, but I've never gotten to play it so this is entirely new for me.
As I mentioned, Antonblast is primarily inspired by Wario Land 4. You play as a beefy and very angry dude named Anton who wields a giant mallet he can swing around as an attack. He can dash, dive and bounce off the ground, roll down slopes, very similar to Wario's moveset in that game. There's four switches to hit that open paths like the four jewel pieces in WL4, you can hop into the background ala VB Wario Land, and of course, the level ends with you hitting a switch and booking it for the end. All of this stuff was fun in Wario Land, and it's just as fun in Antonblast. Anton feels great to control, the pacing of exploration is spot-on, and the whole game feels so crunchy and satisfying. What really surprised me, though, is just how much is also inspired by the Crash Bandicoot games. There are boxes you can bounce off, nitro crates to avoid, and you can charge your dash ala the drift in Crash Team Racing, which is very satisfying to pull off.
Antonblast is a really dense game. The demo is around 20-30 minutes, but there's so much to talk about. Both levels are a ton of fun and are packed to the gills with secret areas, branching paths, opportunities to increase your score, and hidden collectibles that are so well-hidden I only found a single one across both levels. The game's tough too. Wario Land has a reputation for being pretty easy, but some of Antonblast's platforming has more of a DKC cadence to it. The GBA-inspired visuals also look absolutely fantastic, they have a very sketchy, anarchic, and crunchy feel to them and there's a ton of hidden details in the background and foreground. I really need to emphasize crunchy because that's easily the best description for how Antonblast feels. Each box you break explodes into a bunch of pieces, using your hammer causes the world to shake, I don't think I've ever played a game that made my Switch rumble this much. The soundtrack is also pretty great too from what I've heard, it's very jazzy and catchy, though a bit drowned out by all the constant explosions and sound effects.
So yeah, Antonblast is looking and feeling great so far. I want to wait until the game comes out to really dive into it since I'm 100% getting it when it comes out, but the demo made a very good impression on me.
Umbraclaw: Umbraclaw was a game I had my eye on for quite a while solely for its interesting premise. It's an original action platformer by Inti Creates where you play as a cat. You got nine lives, and every time you die, you gain a new skill, so you need to weigh your options between purposefully dying to make things easier for you or stick with a limited moveset to give yourself more room for error. It also goes for a unique papercraft-inspired artstyle that looks unlike anything Inti Creates has ever made, and let me just say, the trailers do not do it justice. Umbraclaw looks even more striking and vivid in motion, especially on my OLED. Overall it's a great concept with a lot of potential, but having played the demo, I think this might be one of those games that I respect more than I'd actually enjoy playing.
Beyond the great concept, let me get the other good elements out of the way. Umbraclaw uses a papercraft-esque artstyle that looks incredibly unique and striking, this certainly does not look like anything Inti Creates has ever made. While the trailers made Umbraclaw out to be a more fast-paced action platformer, in actuality this is quite the deliberate game. Kuon, the cat you play as, moves pretty slowly and dies in a single hit. Even if you die a bunch of times and get new skills, you can't go combo mad like you could in a game like Mega Man Zero or Gunvolt. Instead, Umbrawclaw feels more like a survival game, almost like Rainworld. In each chapter, it plops you into a large map filled with dangerous wildlife and tasks you with finding four keystones. You have pretty much no direction and are expected to wander around until you find them without losing all nine of your lives. Even in the chapter I got to play in the demo, Inti Creates took the training wheels off fast. Umbraclaw is a very tough, punishing, and kind of oppressive game and I... just could not stop dying. There are some generous features like difficulty options that either remove the lives completely or make the entire game permadeath, and an upgrades system that can augment Kuon's abilities further, but even then, I really don't think this type of game is for me.
That being said, I have no ill will towards Umbraclaw, not in the slightest. As I said, I seriously respect Inti Creates for going outside their comfort zone and taking a big swing. I'm 100% sure that there are going to be people who fall head over heels for this game, it will absolutely click for some people, I just don't think I'm going to be one of them.
Picross - Logiart Grimoire: This is going to be short, but while checking out the demos on Indie World, I noticed that a new Jupiter Picross game in an original setting is releasing on Switch soon, so I thought I'd check it out too. Jupiter is pretty much the Picross developer, and have a very strong track record, with even their weakest games still nailing the Picross fundamentals. So I don't really need to say that Logiart Grimoire plays really well. It's polished, it's got well-designed Picross puzzles, and it has a bevy of control options and assist features. What I'm more interested in is the new stuff...
Logiart Grimoire is about a Magolor-looking wizard named Emil who asks for the player's help to repair his grimoire by solving puzzles. Seems simple enough, but there's a bit more to it than that. Eventually, you'll start running into obscured puzzles that you can only unlock by fusing completed puzzles together. This essentially adds a meta puzzle on top of the already existing Picross puzzles, and it helps give Logiart Grimoire a unique identity. At least, beyond the mystical witchcraft-themed presentation and Emil's utterly adorable design. The demo mostly contains the first few puzzles of the game, but you're able to look around the menu and from what I can tell, the game has around 400-something puzzles which will definitely give the player a lot to sink their teeth into.
I don't think I'll be getting Logiart Grimoire or anything personality, there's a ton of other ways I can play Picross, but I do think that this is another very quality entry in the genre. It seems to be getting great reviews on Steam and Backloggd and I can see why, it's a unique and charming little experiment from Jupiter that easily stands out as one of their most visually interesting games.
Europa: Europa is described as a "peaceful exploration game". It's been delayed a few times, but it did just get a demo on the Switch so I decided to check it out on a whim.
The main premise is that you play as an android named Zee who's let loose on the planet of Europa to do... something. This definitely feels like one of those stories that's meant to be pieced together as the game goes on, so I honestly didn't really know what was going on most of the time. Europa basically lets you loose on a guided tour of the titular planet, while also picking up journal entries that explain the lore a bit more. Europa's greatest strength is definitely in its art direction. I've seen a lot of comparisons to BotW but honestly I got more Team Ico vibes, with its vast green plains and how they contrast with the intriguingly broken ruins. The level design does a pretty solid job at grabbing your attention without outwardly telling you where to go, so while the demo of Europa was mostly pretty linear, it definitely didn't feel like it. The demo also ended on a pretty impressive setpiece as you soar through the air as what looks like a giant dragon shows up right in front of you in real-time. Now that's a good-ass hook.
Unfortunately, all my praise towards Europa's art direction is severely hampered by the fact that I don't think the game plays all that great. Europa tries to play up the weird planetary gravity of Europa, so Zee controls incredibly floatily. He bumbles around, and you need to charge up your jump and let go of the button to launch yourself off the ground. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of jumping, but it feels especially delayed in Europa. This is another case where the developers certainly feel inspired by Ico's more realistic controls, but for as jank as Ico could get, it never felt anywhere near as sluggish or delayed as Europa does. You also quickly get access to a jetpack that lets you fly around, but that also has its fair share of issues like how you can't really angle Zee while in flight and just how quickly he runs out of fuel. For an exploration game, I should enjoy exploring but the controls in Europa make it really hard. Also, the trailer that showed at the end of the demo was weirdly stuttery and buggy?
So overall, Europa didn't really impress me. It's certainly a visual treat, but the clumsy controls just weren't all that fun to deal with, regardless of how on-purpose they were. This wasn't a bad demo, it definitely had its high points, but it was probably my least favorite of the bunch.
Cat Quest III: Cat Quest 2 was a game I got to play thanks to Apple Arcade, and it was a fun time. It's very simple and basic, but it's cute and addicting in its simplicity. That being said, Cat Quest 3 is looking an absolutely massive glow-up in almost every conceivable way. Just from playing this demo, I went from being pretty meh on the Cat Quest series to being genuinely hyped about this third installment.
In terms of gameplay fundamentals, Cat Quest 3 is mostly on par with the previous games. It's an action RPG with a pretty simple combat loop where you switch between attacking and dodging, like a Souls game for babies. Cat Quest 3 carries over the magic system that previous games had, but it also lets you swap to a shotgun for long range and it feels very good to use. But what really sets Cat Quest 3 apparent from its predecessors is its shift from a fantasy setting to a pirate setting. Now, you have an entire sea filled with islands to explore, and a pirate ship you can sail around in and engage in naval combat with. I'm a sucker for a good exploration-focused pirate game, and Cat Quest 3 absolutely scratches that itch. Even in just the demo, I spent so much time exploring the small amount of the vast open world I was given, stumbling on unique islands, and hunting for the game's many treasure chests. It's very Wind Waker in all the best ways.
On top of that, Cat Quest 3 looks so much better than the previous two games, it's night and day. There is some gorgeous 2D animation in not just the opening animation but pretty much all the characters, and the blend between 2D sprites and the 3D environments and ships looks better than ever. There is so much more detail in every aspect of Cat Quest 3's visuals, and even the dungeons already look more varied and dense than they did in 2. I'm actually so excited for this game now, the demo was great and it really looks like a huge evolution of the Cat Quest formula. Definitely my favorite demo alongside Antonblast.
2017 was a pretty big year for 3D platformers. We got Yooka-Laylee, the N Sane Trilogy, Snake Pass, and both Sonic Forces and Super Mario Odyssey in the span of a month. These games range from incredible to mid, but none of them rank as my favorite 3D platformer of 2017. Instead, we need to look towards an indie sleeper hit made just a few weeks before Mario Odyssey, the immesurably charming, hecking adorable, A Hat In Time.
A Hat In Time is about a little girl named Hat Kid who pilots a time-powered spaceship, which happens to lose all of the Time Pieces fueling it. The base premise is that Hat Kid needs to go to all four major worlds and retrieve all the Time Pieces, classic collectathon stuff, but to boil it down that much does a disservice to just how entertaining A Hat In Time's story is. In terms of pure charm factor, this game has got some truly top-tier writing and characters, and the worlds Hat Kid visits are so fleshed out that they feel like entire games in themselves. It's for this reason that I can't just talk about A Hat In Time in broad strokes, I need to dig into the game's five different chapters individually, though before I can do that, I'll get the general gameplay out of the way first.
As far as the controls go, A Hat In Time is incredibly simple for a 3D platformer, some may even say to a fault. You have a lot of options for gaining height including a double jump, a dash that you can cancel whenever you want, and even a homing attack, all of which you can chain in whichever order you desire. It's not at all challenging to just completely fly over a lot of this game's obstacle courses, and movement feels so tight and precise that it almost feels harder to miss a platform. For some, this makes A Hat In Time too easy, and fair enough. For me, though, I find the movement is so polished and smooth that it still manages to feel incredibly fun and satisfying despite how easy Hat Kid is to control. It also helps with how massive most of the levels can be in this game, and it allows A Hat In Time to toss in some very complex platforming challenges filled with tiny platforms and pitfalls knowing full well that the controls are equipped to handle it.
A Hat In Time also has a good amount of customization to give the game some extra depth. You can find yarn balls to craft a variety of hats each with their own unique abilities that you can swap between on the fly, including hats that let you spring, freeze objects, and cause invisible platforms to appear. Some of the later stages have you swapping between multiple hats in quick succession, and I've already expressed how fond I am of those types of platforming sequences. A Hat In Time even has a bunch of pins you can buy and equip to change up Hat Kid's build and make the game easier or harder, along with character skins and the like to give you even more options for customization. A Hat In Time may be easy, but it prides itself on player expression in every sense of the word.
The first world you'll visit is Mafia Town, it's the most basic world, but that's only by this game's standards. It's very much a throwback to Delfino Plaza, a vast and dense city filled with rooftops to hop across, and a fun and safe place for you to play around with the controls. The twist, as you can tell by the title, is that it's entirely populated by the mafia. This is where A Hat In Time's unique and offbeat charm comes in, because you actually get to talk to a lot of the mafiosi walking around the town, most of which are pretty amicable (and some of which punch Hat Kid in the face the moment a conversation ends). There's a lot of very silly and quotable non-sequiters for those willing to chat up the NPCs. Like all the other worlds, Mafia Town also has an interweaving plot across its main missions, as Hat Kid teams up with the mysterious Mustache Girl to take down the mafia regime from the literal top of the island. It's almost Sly Cooper-esque in how each task builds towards your eventual storming of the Mafia HQ, culminating in a literally show-stopping boss fight against the Mafia Boss. The boss fights in A Hat In Time are just plain incredible, they're these massive large scale encounters with screen-filling attacks and multiple phases, easily some of the best in a 3D platformer. And Mafia Town is easily one of my favorite first areas in a collectathon. It doesn't feel watered down in any way, it's actually pretty massive on its own, and the mafia theming helps it feel so fresh. It perfectly establishes everything you should come to expect from A Hat In Time... only for the next world to throw it all out the window and start anew.
Battle Of The Birds is my favorite world in the game, and I'm sure it's the same for many others. Unlike the other three worlds, BotB is a surprise genre shift from open collectathon to a Galaxy-esque series of linear obstacle courses. The first mission is a very fun stealth mission as you sneak into Dead Bird Studios, hopping across a variety of quirky movie sets ala Ape Escape 3. It's there that you meet the Conductor and DJ Grooves, two rival directors who drag you into performing in their films, though not without getting a passport picture taken first. If Mafia Town was charming, Dead Bird Studios brings it up to eleven. There are so many cute movie references and little touches, and the two directors and their missions are dripping with personality. DJ Grooves is the flashier of the two, and his missions involve parades, paparazzis, and a bustling city set with tall buildings to hop around. The Conductor steals the show hard, though, he's an absolutely hysterical and impeckably voice-acted Scottish director with some of the most memorable lines in the game, and the two best missions. Murder On The Owl Express is one of my favorite video game levels, period. It's a lovely throwback to TTYD's Excess Express, an incredibly fun and charming murder mystery stage with less platforming and more of that fantastic dialogue. Train Rush, on the other hand, is pure platforming, a mad dash as you escape a collapsing train, putting all your moves to the test. At the end of the chapter, you get to see whose movies did better based on your performance in their movies, and fight the loser as the chapter boss. Regardless of who you fight, it's another fantastic boss fight, but special mention goes to the sudden interlude in the middle of each fight where either Conductor or DJ Grooves bears their soul to you. It's stuff like that which gives the characters in A Hat In Time so much more personality and depth.
Subcon Forest is probably my least favorite of the four worlds, but it has the highest highs. This world is a vast spooky forest filled with so much... space. There's a ton of hidden areas and nooks here that will go completely unexplored if you're just doing the main missions. The main premise here is that Hat Kid signs a contract with the devil... I mean, The Snatcher... and has to do requests for him. Once again, the variety is pretty fantastic, between a neat Zelda homage where you discover a hookshot that you can use for the rest of the game, and an genuinely terrifying horror-themed stage that has you sneaking around a mansion avoided the creepy Queen Vanessa. Compared to all the other characters, The Snatcher is easily the one with the most baggage and hidden lore. It's very heavily implied that he has some sort of connection to Vanessa, and it's no wonder a lot of fans really latched onto him and his story. Subcon Forest culminates in my favorite boss fight in the game, the fight against The Snatcher to break Hat Kid free from his contract. It's a fast and intense fight where you need to resort to breaking the fourth wall to be able to land a hit on him, all the while one of my favorite pieces of video game music ever plays in the background, though more on that later.
Alpine Skyline is often regarded as the weakest of the four due to its lack of notable characters, lack of a boss, and its focus being purely on gameplay over the writing. It's my second favorite world behind Battle Of The Birds. Alpine Skyline once again changes the genre to pure open world by plopping you in the middle of a massive open world and asking you with ringing four bells on each of the four corners of the map. I love exploring Alpine Skyline, it's filled with so many varied islands each with their own fun and genuinely challenging platforming challenges, but that's not even getting to the bells themselves. Each of the four bells basically is its own unique platforming test, and they're all incredible. The Lava Cake has you climb up a giant layer cake made of lava, hopping across sinking platforms at a fast pace. The Birdcage puts you in a literal giant birdcage as you deal with some of the toughest combat in the game and a lot of pitfalls. The Twilight Bell teleports you to a surreal void filled with tricky puzzles involving disappearing platforms. And then there's my personal favorite, The Windmill, which has you climbing up what feels like a souped-up version of Tick Tock Clock. What elevates Alpine Skyline even further is the presentation, this world is stunningly beautiful, with blue skies, a massive sense of scale, and some truly gorgeous celtic-inspired music. Playing Alpine Skyline really feels like playing another game entirely. It feels divorced from the rest of A Hat In Time, but rather than feeling like a downgrade, it offers an entirely unique vibe that really stuck with me.
Once you complete all four chapters, you face a sudden betrayal from Mustache Girl who steals all your Time Pieces and proceeds to create a new timeline where all the "villains" you've met throughout the game face their supposedly deserved punishment. After making it through a very fun final platforming gauntlet, you confront Mustache Girl in what's easily the craziest and most fast-paced boss fight in the game, filled to the brim with multiple drastically different phases and bullet hell-esque attack patterns. The other major characters like Mafia Boss, Conductor, and Snatcher even help you out in one of the phases, which ultimately leads to one of my favorite takes of the "power of friendship" trope in media. Because every single member of this game's cast is composed of jerks at best and flat-out villains at worst, but they still band together to stop Mustache Girl's tyranny, save time itself, and get Hat Kid her time pieces back. It's at this moment that all four of A Hat In Time's disparate chapters finally align, as the game reveals itself to be a love letter to the comedic villain trope. Characters like Team Rocket, Dr Doofensmirtz, or Zangeif in Wreck It Ralph, the kinds of people who are bad guys but not bad guys, and that's just such a fun and refreshing direction for this game to go in.
Once you're done with the main campaign, though, A Hat In Time still has a lot left to offer. I already mentioned all the customization options you can unlock, but there's also side missions in all of the chapters, tough platforming-centric bonus stages inspired by the infamous voids from Super Mario Sunshine, true final chapters that expose some more lore for each of the major characters, and of course, two entire chapters and a massive challenge mode called Death Wish behind DLC. I admittedly haven't played A Hat In Time's DLC. I got them when they were free, but because I use a Mac, I'm not even sure if DLC worked for me at the time. Either way, DLC or not, A Hat In Time has all the fun and robust 100% completion you love to see from a 3D platformer, and that's not even mentioning the incredible modding community on top of all that.
I've touched on the presentation a bit, but as usual, I also wanted to talk about it in general. A Hat In Time purposefully aims for a sixth generation style, though slightly refined. In particular, A Hat In Time takes a lot of inspiration from the bright and colorful cel-shaded style of Super Mario Sunshine, even utilizing a similar filter for when the camera is behind a wall. I've always loved the way Super Mario Sunshine looked, and A Hat In Time further iterates on that aesthetic by giving the characters these adorably stylized 2D faces that add so much extra charm to the game. There's a reason other projects like Glitch's Sunset Paradise and the upcoming Billie Bust-Up seem to be heavily inspired by the A Hat In Time artstyle, it may be hearkening back to the Gamecube but it also has a vibe all its own. The soundtrack by Pascal Michael Stiefel is also just flat-out incredible, blending so many genres across the four chapters. From the charmingly militaristic Welcome To Mafia Town, to the tense synthy Dead Bird Studio, to the frenetically jazzy Train Rush, to the uplifting disco banger Picture Perfect, to the serene and spacey Clocktowers Under The Sea, to Snatcher's absolutely rocking boss theme Your Contract Has Expired. Alpine Skyline's music is easily my favorite in the game overall, though, this chapter is filled with utterly chill-inducing folk music like Alpine Skyline, The Lava Cake Peak, Alpine Skyline At Night, and especially The Windmill Peak. Oh, and I didn't even mention the guest tracks. They got Grant Kirkhope in to do the wonderfully whimsical hub theme Our Spaceship, and most of the major tracks got remixes by guest composers, with the easy highlight being Trainwreck Of Electro Swing, a track so hard-hitting it singlehandedly introduced countless people (including myself) to the electroswing genre.
Man, this was longer than my usual "Why I Love" posts. I guess A Hat In Time is just that dense of a game. It's not just a fun collectathon with fluid controls, lots of customization and expression, and lovely visuals and music, but it's also four equally fantastic games in one, each tackling distinct subgenres of the 3D platformer in unique, fun, and charming ways. There's a reason I mentioned so many influences across my review, because A Hat In Time feels like a wonderful melting pot of all the best 3D platformers, from Super Mario Sunshine to Super Mario Galaxy, from Sly Cooper to Jak & Daxter. That's why it's my favorite 3D platformer of 2017, and one of my favorite games of all time.
Zelda II: The Adventures Of Link was never a game I particular liked. As a matter of fact, it's a game I hadn't actually fully beaten until now, I usually bounced off at Death Mountain. So I was totally expecting to completely and utterly trash this game, but to my surprise, that's not what happened. Believe it or not, I actually really enjoyed Zelda II quite a bit, even more than the first game!
Don't get me wrong, this is a brutal and punishing game that strays far from what you'd expect from Zelda. Its death system is ridiculous, the magic meter is too tight, some of the puzzles are too cryptic, and some of the enemies are quite annoying. However, when compared to the many action RPGs of its time, I think it holds up as one of the best. It controls well, it looks more detailed, the soundtrack is an improvement, and even the dungeon design feels more refined. The dungeons in Zelda II are more streamlined and linear, each room feels important in some way, you can't just skip over massive chunks of the dungeon with bombs, there are no carry-over keys, there are more original room designs and defining features between the dungeons, and there are no repeated bosses. Even more, the lead-ups to each dungeon feel more fleshed-out. By the end of the first game, I was darting from dungeon to dungeon because there was nothing else to do in the overworld, but Zelda II feels far better paced and really breezed by despite being a longer game than its predecessor. Barring the lack of a map, some annoying backtracking, and the punishing gameplay itself, dare I say that Zelda II's dungeon design is actually pretty damn solid.
Here's my reviews of the dungeons in Zelda 2:
Dungeon 1: Parapa Palace
Like with the first game, Parapa Palace is a solid introduction to the way dungeons work in this game, with a particularly well-designed opening. You enter the dungeon and head to the right, as you do, only to hit a locked-door. You turn around and go to the left where you find a key to use on the door, and boom, now you have a complete understanding of how to navigate dungeons in Zelda II. The second half of the dungeon is a bit iffer, though. There's one part where you need to get a candle at the end of a long hallway, but it's locked behind a door and if you happen to go there before getting the key, you gotta walk all the way back. This is a common issue with Zelda II as there aren't any shortcuts and backtracking after getting an item is pretty frequent, but it feels particularly bad here. I'm also not a huge fan of that room with all the Bubbles, it's pretty tedious to navigate especially considering it's on the way to that aforementioned candle. Ultimately though, Parapa Palace is still a decent tutorial despite its flaws. It's too short to get annoying, but also too short to do anything particularly special.
Dungeon 2: Midoro Palace
Midoro Palace is a pretty standard improvement over Parapa Palace in two major ways. First off, the layout is better. There are no dead ends that would require extensive backtracking, and as long as you check every hallway as you pass them, you won't get lost. But even more, Link has a much larger kit now. At this point, you should have several spells beyond just the Shield Spell, the downward slash, and a higher level that should let you take out the beefier enemies like Darknuts a lot faster. Beyond those improvements, there isn't too much super memorable about Midoro Palace outside of that pretty neat rooms with the falling blocks, but it's overall a solid and well-crafted dungeon that feels like a breath of fresh air coming off the most tedious part of the game.
Dungeon 3: Island Palace
Dungeon 4: Maze Palace
Maze Palace has one of the more interested layouts in this game, and in a good way too. Early on, you come across a gap, and once you realize that dungeons never have pits that aren't filled with lava, you discover that jumping into the gap will send you to a floor with an important item on a lower level. It's one of the first times Zelda ever dabbles with spatial reasoning, and that's pretty cool. The enemy lineup is also mostly fair, though the Maze Palace does have one crippling flaw. This is a dungeon that loves to waste your magic, between an abundance of Wizzrobes that can only be defeated using reflect and a good amount of rooms that require the Jump spell, and this is very problematic when you need the Reflect Spell for the boss. I ended up finishing the dungeon with only just barely enough magic left, imagine having to purposefully die to regain magic because enemies just weren't giving you any in the lead-up to the boss?
Dungeon 5: Ocean Palace
This dungeon can suck it. While Dungeons 2-4 were mostly pretty alright in terms of navigation, Dungeon 5 is where Zelda 2's worst backtracking excesses show as it's filled to the brim with completely useless dead ends and contains a nonlinear layout that will have you running back and forth, while also dealing with a ton of some of the most annoying enemies in the game like the Bubbles and Magos, and in tight spaces to boot. What really seals the deal though is the fact that behind one of those "dead ends" is a secret passage that leads to the dungeon item. There is nothing signalling to the player that this passage exists, nor that fake walls are even a thing in this game. And when you do finally make it to the end, you're faced with a goddamn Darknut gauntlet.
Dungeon 6: Hidden Palace
Aaaaand this is where Zelda II completely drops the ball. My favorite thing about Zelda dungeons has always been their puzzle box nature where every room matters, and you need to engage with every part of the dungeon as a collective whole, which is a big reason why the first game's more open and aimless dungeon design feels so unsatisfying to me. Zelda 2 was a great step in the right direction... until the game gives you a Magical Key right before this dungeon that unlocks any door. Now, you don't need to scour for keys, you just need to get the dungeon item and make a beeline for the boss. On top of that, the actual room design of the dungeon is pretty weak too as it primarily reuses rooms from previous dungeons, which is also a shame since Zelda 2 previously did a pretty good job at adding new stuff to the table. That being said, this isn't to say Hidden Palace is entirely awful. It lacks the frustrating dead ends of the previous dungeon, and the first half with the looping rooms is actually a really cool idea and a fun puzzle to solve. I also kinda like the room where you have to activate the fairy spell in midair, but I can admit it'd be a lot better if the limited magic didn't mean you basically had one shot to get it right.
Dungeon 7: Great Palace
Considering how much I dislike Death Mountain from the first game, I was expecting to loath Great Palace. It does suffer from similar issues in how the Magical Key makes an entire half of it completely skippable, and it boasts an abundance of dead ends to boot (albeit not nearly as time-wasting as the ones in the Ocean Palace). However, what makes Great Palace stand out is that unlike Death Mountain which only exposed how few unique room designs there were in the original Zelda, Great Palace is entirely original. It not only has a ton of fun and unique room arrangements, but the enemy roster is completely new too, most of which is fun to fight. There are some clever puzzles involving dropping through the right hole at the right spot, along with some memorable encounters like against that giant blob that suddenly spawns on top of you. It actually feels like a climactic, rewarding final dungeon, and ended my playthrough on a surprisingly solid note.
Overall, my ranking of Zelda 2's dungeons would be:
1. Island Palace
2. Great Palace
3. Midoro Palace
4. Maze Palace
5. Hidden Palace
6. Parapa Palace
7. Ocean Palace
And here's my ranking of Zelda 2's bosses:
8. Carock
There's nothing I hate more than a boss that forces you to use a limited asset and doesn't replenish it if you run out. You need enough magic to use the Reflect spell to even hit him, and in a dungeon filled with Wizzrobes that also need the Reflect spell to be defeated, it's very possible for you to just not have it. But even if you do have the Reflect spell, this boss is just boring. You crouch in the corner and wait until Carock has been hit with enough reflected shots, there's zero effort required here. And this isn't even an exploit like in the Dark Link fight, no, the intended strategy is to just sit around doing nothing while Carock defeats itself.
7. Dark Link
I won't deny that as a concept, Dark Link is a very cool boss. In execution, though, this guy was just too ahead of his time. The AI in the Dark Link fight is ridiculously aggressive and can counter your moves almost perfectly. While it is possible to defeat him, the fact that most players resort to cheating and slashing from the corner says a lot. I'm willing to put him over Carock because at least you can try to defeat Dark Link the intended way for some extra challenge, but the fact remains that Dark Link is either way too easy or way too hard depending on how you fight him.
6. Thunderbird
Thunderbird basically turns the game into a bullet hell as you have to jump and slash at his head while dodging an absolute onslaught of fireballs. It's not particularly fun, but it is a decent change of pace considering how samey a lot of Zelda 2's fights can feel. However, what really kills this fight for me is the fact that you once again are required to use a spell to defeat him. But while the Reflect spell only needed about two bars of magic, the Thunder spell that you need to even expose Thunderbird requires half of your maxed out magic. This is inexcusable in my eyes.
5. Rebonack
4. Horsehead
A pretty solid first boss. He's very easy but I think it works for so early in the game, and nothing about his fight feels particularly BS. You have to jump and hit his head to take damage, before quickly backing off to avoid his subsequent mace swing. Horsehead's movement isn't super erratic, and trying to land a hit on Horsehead without getting hit through contact damage is a decent challenge.
3. Gooma
Gooma is similar to Horsehead in terms of his moveset, with the big exception being that he has a giant mace instead of an axe. This gives Gooma a large reach making run ups to hit him more dangerous. If you fight him normally, this fight is brutal... but if you think to use the Jump spell to jump over his mace swings, the fight gets a lot easier.
2. Helmethead
With Helmethead, your tactics remain the same but instead of using an axe, Helmethead shoots energy balls at you that you can deflect with your shield. It's still not a super tough boss, but the animation of how his helmets fall off every time you hit him is quite charming, and it plays into the fight as the helmets start to fly around shooting even more energy balls at you.
1. Barba
Yeah, this is a pretty obvious pick. Barba is easily one of the most iconic and well-liked boss in Zelda 2 for a number of reasons. Playing whack-a-mole with a dragon is a great change of pace after so many mano-a-mano boss fights against a humanoid with a weapon, and his attack pattern is tough but fair, simple but satisfying. There's a reason this guy came back in Ocarina Of Time.
Freedom Planet 2 just released on consoles, and it's quickly became one of my all-time favorite games. It does a lot right from its gripping and morally complex narrative, to its fluid and fast-paced movement and combat, to its beautiful visuals and stellar music, but one of the best aspects of Freedom Planet 2 has to be the level design. So, I want to rank all 25 of Freedom Planet 2's main stages. Keep in mind that I will not be including the hubs, the boss-only stages, the two tutorials, or the shmup stage Bakunawa Chase.
25. Weapon's Core
Unlike the first game, Freedom Planet 2 has a secret final level, and I... respect it more than I actually enjoy playing it. When Syntax takes over Bakunawa, you need to descend to its core while avoiding her watchful eye. This is a genuinely scary shift towards horror, between the stage being almost entirely made up of bones, and Syntax's creepy dialogue every time she spots you. However, on a gameplay level, trying to do slow-paced electricity puzzles while also dodging a giant searchlight in the center of the screen at the risk of instant death is not my definition of a fun time. The final fight against Syntax herself is also utterly brutal, especially since you need to let her heal at least once, making for the stage I easily died the most in. Merga's sacrifice was a nice final moment, but overall, Weapon's Core ended what was otherwise an incredible final act on a bit of a weak note, and I don't really look forward to S ranking it.
24. Sky Bridge
Okay, we got the mid stuff out of the way. Every other level in Freedom Planet 2 is good at worst and incredible at best. Sky Bridge is a pretty weird stage, containing four fairly long enemy gauntlets that each cap off you with taking down the same exact mini boss. Having to repeatedly stop for a mandatory enemy gauntlet drags the pacing to a halt, which is a real shame because the rest of the stage is pretty solid. I love the Sky Sanctuary aesthetic, and platforming across all the floating platforms in what's one of Freedom Planet 2's most open stages is quite fun.
23. Lunar Cannon
With the exclusion of Weapon's Core, Lunar Cannon is "technically" the final level of the game. Like Final Dreadnought 4 in the previous game, it's meant to be both a final challenge and somewhat of a breather after the more intense previous stages. The atmosphere is fantastic, from the ethereal music, to how you see the moon's light shine through Bakunawa's teeth as it repeatedly opens and closes its mouth. The actual platforming is mostly solid, as you get to play around with gravitational fields that let you jump super high, but at the cost of the ground frequently electrifying itself, which can get pretty annoying at points. The boss is pretty fun though, it's a nice throwback to games like Gunstar Heroes and TMNT: Turtles In Time where the camera is showing the fight from the perspective of the villains shooting at you. And of course, the Merga fight is incredible, easily one of the best final bosses I've played in a while, though I can't really count it since it takes up its own level.
22. Nalao Lake
Nalao Lake can best be described as "fun but jank". It's an all-out war as you blaze through Serpentine's massive army to reassembly the BFF-2000, all as some of the most intense music in the game plays. It's an absolute blast, but on the other hand, the stage layout does let it down a bit. The above water sections feel pretty sparse and spaced-out, and swimming through all the brambles underwater can be pretty annoying. The mech section that caps off the level has a similar issue. Controlling the BFF-2000 is absolutely awesome, but you can tell that it's way too big for its own good and the level design just does not accomodate its size. That's ultimately the biggest problem with Nalao Lake, it's too big for Team Lilac but still too small for the BFF-2000. Still a fun level though.
21. Gravity Bubble
Gravity Bubble is pretty noteworthy for being the only main stage
in Freedom Planet 2 to not have a boss, and it's also secretly one of
the most important stages in the game plot-wise. Gameplay-wise, Gravity
Bubble takes place pretty much entirely underwater, but Freedom Planet
always had pretty fast and fluid swimming controls so that's not
necessarily a bad thing even if I'd much rather be on land. There's also
a fair amount of currents and some really cool-looking 2.5D teleporters
that keep the momentum going. The real highlight of Gravity Bubble
though is the ending where Team Lilac meets with Merga only for her to
revive Bakunawa right in front of you, forcing you to make a mad swim
out of the stage as it fires giant laser beams to you. Such a memorable
and stressful finale that does a fantastic job at starting the final act
with a bang, especially with the Bakunawa Chase mini-stage immediately
after.
20. Globe Opera 1
The Globe Opera is easily one of my favorite sequences in the game, the only stage to boast two acts, and it manages to feel so climactic and grand that it actually briefly tricked me into thinking it was the final stage. However, Act 1 is far and away the lesser of the two. It's super fast-paced and has a great sense of flow, but I'll be honest and say that I'm not a massive fan of its central gimmick which has you touching lights to create platforms for a brief time. It can be a bit finicky to clamber up these light platforms at times, but when you're moving at fast speeds, you'll often be able to skip most of these bits which does mitigate the issue a tad.
19. Robot Graveyard
Robot Graveyard is a ton of fun, while it lasts. There is a lot to like in this stage, like the main mechanic which has you rolling up into a snowball to gain speed, and the massive twist of Brevon's robots still being active which certainly doesn't trigger any of Team Lilac's collective trauma or anything. However, my biggest issue with this stage is that it just feels too short. The Brevon twist only comes halfway through the stage, so the first half feels a bit empty, and once things really get good, you only have 1-2 minutes left until you hit the boss.
18. Palace Courtyard
Palace Courtyard is another super short level, though I at least understand why. It's less of an actual level and more of an extended setpiece, but man is it one of the coolest and most memorable setpieces in the game. The sense of tension as you race through a wrecked Shang Tu to try and stop Merga, all the while police lights dramatically light up the streets. It's just one of those moments where the music, visuals, and level design all sync up perfectly, and the first fight with Merga and subsequent reveal of what FP2's story is truly about is such a phenomenal and grippingly dramatic end to the game's first half.
17. Avian Museum
Most of the first few levels in Freedom Planet 2 are pretty equal in terms of quality. They're all well-designed and fluid stages with a great sense of flow, but are a bit too early in the game to do anything truly wild just yet. Avian Museum's best aspect is the cool setting, it's very fun to run through the different exhibits of the titular museum, boosting down dinosaur statues and jumping between the interior, exterior, and that weird mirror room. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of the disappearing blocks mechanic in that aforementioned mirror room, it does break the flow a bit in what's otherwise a very well-paced stage.
16. Shenlin Park
Shenlin Park was promoted pretty heavily and it's not hard to see why. It's a fun second stage with great music set in a bustling city with tons of fun setpieces and mechanics like the tunnels, gates, trains, and that final area set on a bunch of boats, a perfect encapsulation of everything that makes Freedom Planet 2 such a fun game. Like with Avian Museum, it does feel a bit simple compared to some of the later stages and some areas can feel a bit too cluttered, but otherwise, another really fun level.
15. Phoenix Highway
Phoenix Highway is kind of a sleeper hit of a stage. I originally found it pretty unremarkable, but now I think it's one of the most fun stages to go back too. Phoenix Highway is a very speed-focused stage, introducing mechanics like the boost rings and mobile drills that are solely there just to help you go faster. It's basically the Stardust Speedway of Freedom Planet, albeit also containing a neat mineshaft section in the middle filled with collectibles, gem crystals, and branching paths. Oh, and the music is godly, easily one of my favorite tracks in the game.
14. Zulon Jungle
Like most of Serpentine's stages, Zulon Jungle is complete and utter chaos, absolutely flooded with all kinds of enemies. It has a lot of the same kinetic appeal of Nalao Lake, but it's a lot more condensed, tight, and lengthy. There's also some fun new mechanics like the vines you can use to swing around, the geysers that shoot you out, and the level-ending setpiece where Serpentine starts shooting tons of missiles at you. The energetic music and jungle setting also gives me some real Mega Man X vibes, which is nice. The only thing holding this stage back for me is the pretty poor fight against Aaa at the end, but the rest of Zulon Jungle is an utter joy.
13. Dragon Valley
What an incredible first level. Freedom Planet 2's Dragon Valley reimagines the iconic setting from the first game brilliantly, between the gorgeous moonlit background, that absolutely godly level theme, and some very fun new mechanics like giant vines that swing you around and piles of leaves you can cut through. It's open, filled with hidden secrets and alternate paths, and is incredibly euphoric to run through time and time again. The fact that it hasn't even cracked the Top 10 goes to show how stellar Freedom Planet's level design is.
12. Tidal Gate
What an incredible first level. Seriously, though, what I love about Tidal Gate is that it's basically the Dragon Valley of Freedom Planet's second act. The first half of the game is fairly familiar and quite heavy on the remixes, but by the time you hit Tidal Gate, you really get the feeling that you have no idea what to expect for the rest of the game. It's a very fun level to speed through too, with tons of water slides, some of the more complex routing in the game, and a boss that you fight whilst running on top of the water. The stunningly beautiful visuals and musical score also really help.
11. Airship Sigwada
Airship Sigwada is basically just Sky Batallion but better in pretty much every way, it has that same kinetic energy but it's also far more streamlined. Instead of visiting three different airship each with their own unique mechanics, Airship Sigwada has you jumping and blasting yourself from airship to airship all the while dodging a metric ton of lasers. The main gimmicks like the battery-activated doors, flamethrower conveyors, and the aforementioned cannons are also easily some of my favorites in the game. Add in a cool opening where you ride a missile to reach the airships ala Mega Man Zero, some banger music, and a surprise double-boss fight and you get one of the most pure fun stages in Freedom Planet 2.
10. Inversion Dynamo
Hey, remember when I said Zulon Jungle was chaotic? Well, Inversion Dynamo amps that chaos factor up to eleven. You spend the entire level being flooded by Syntax-infected enemies, all the while flinging yourself across teleporters. There's Metallic Madness-inspired music, Mega Man X5-inspired landscapes, and windy level design that goes all over the place while keeping the momentum up throughout, and it's so damn fun. And unlike Zulon Jungle, Inversion Dynamo caps off with one of the best fights in the game, a tense on-foot battle against Serpentine's mech as you fight for Milla's independence.
9. Shade Armory
I was a bit skeptical of Shade Armory at first since it seemed like a sewer level, one of my least favorite level tropes. But to my complete and utter surprise, this stage is such a blast. From conveyor belts, to platforms that slide down when you stand on them, to little gravity bubbles you can launch yourself out of, to some surprisingly fun puzzles about pushing walls to clear a path, Shade Armory has a lot of very fun mechanics and the level design still manages to maintain a great sense of flow without any of the stage's more puzzle-y elements slowing the pace down at all. What really elevated Shade Armory for me though is the latter half where Syntax starts messing with the stage, pulling platforms and levers back, it's a very charming touch. Oh, and the music is once against incredible, but that's a given at this point.
8. Ancestral Forge
Pangu Lagoon was my least favorite stage in the first game. It was a more serene breather stage focused around annoyingly precise Dragon Boosts, and it felt a bit too start-and-stop for my tastes. Ancestral Forge is basically this game's Pangu Lagoon. It's lighter on the enemies, heavier on the puzzles, and packs an incredible calm and moody atmosphere and you uncover and explore the water dragon's collective grave. Despite the crushing length and heavy emphasis on puzzles though, Ancestral Forge is a really fun stage since most of its puzzles are in fact very enjoyable. From liquefying lava to raising the water levels to sprouting seeds, Ancestral Forge has some pretty inventive environmental puzzles that all come together in a very satisfying way by the end of the stage. The boss is kinda annoying though.
7. Lightning Tower
Lightning Tower is another more puzzle-centric level, focused around the electricity puzzles I mentioned in Weapon's Core. But unlike in that hellscape of a stage, the electricity puzzles are lot shorter and more fun, and you don't have to simultaneously be playing a stealth mission while doing them. Lightning Tower is also noteworthy for its streamlined, linear, entirely vertical level design that helps it feel like a nice breath of fresh air, without suffering from any of the literal pitfalls that come with vertical level design. The music is also a solid bop, and the sick 2.5D boss fight ends the stage on a high note.
6. Bakunawa Rush
Bakunawa Rush is a fantastic love letter to Sonic Adventure 2's Final Rush, kickstarting with you briskly grinding on rails in space. This is easily one of the fastest-paced and most propulsive stages in the game, even in the interior second half which has you blazing through nearly every early boss. What elevates this stage even more though is the incredibly fun pinball gimmick where you can hop into a powerful pinball and destroy pretty much everything in the fight, and it's even used in the boss fight too.
5. Tiger Falls
Freedom Planet 2 has its fair share of cool 2.5D assets, but nothing was quite as fun to mess around with as the waterfalls in Tiger Falls. This stage has you hop between being in front of and behind waterfalls to navigate the stage and dodge obstacles, and while it can feel a bit unwieldly at first, managing to keep your momentum and pull off perfectly-timed plane-switches at high speeds feels so good. The lovely visuals and music also help make this one of the best early stages in the game.
4. Zao Land
Zao Land is basically this game's Fortune Night, and it has pretty much the exact same appeal. It's a beautiful and colorful carnival-stage filled to the brim with fun interactable objects, ranging from strength tests that give you gems, to giant baseballs you can ride on, to a ridiculous amount of balloons to pop. This stage even introduces grind rails for the first time, which are always a joy to use. I try to avoid the Sonic comparisons whenever possible when talking about Freedom Planet, but I'm gonna be real, Zao Land is better than any Sonic casino level.
3. Globe Opera 2
The first act of Globe Opera was fine, but the second act, now that's the good stuff. It starts off strong with a memorable opening that has you turn on the lights only to be immediately flooded with enemies. The main gimmicks introduced like giant plugs you have to use by riding them down to the outlets, teleportation portals, and spinning cylinders you can fling yourself off of are all a ton of fun to play around with. And to further sell the illusion of it being the final level, Globe Opera 2 also ends with a bunch of rooms based on previous stages, all of which are quite fun in their own rights. And the music, holy shit, Globe Opera 2's theme is easily one of the best tracks in the game, it's so intense, climatic, and ethereal. This is why I hold the Globe Opera sequence in so high-regard, it really has everything, from fun level design, to flashy visuals, to emotionally effective music, to shocking story revelations.
2. Clockwork Arboretum
Out of the final Bakunawa stages, the Clockwork Arboretum stands out as my favorite of the bunch. The main premise is that you're riding up an elevator that stops on every floor, where you have to go in, get a key, and move onto the next one. There's a nice variety between the floors, from faster speed-focused sections to slower puzzle-focused ones, and there's a great blend between repurposed level mechanics from previous stages to fun new mechanics like the spinning gears you have to hop across. But what really brings Clockwork Arboretum to second place is its emotional impact, as this is also the stage where you have your final face-off against Corazon, which easily ranks alongside Merga as the best and most heart-breaking boss fight in the game.
1. Magma Starscape
From what I can tell, Magma Starscape is a fan favorite stage and it's not hard to see why. It ranks alongside Bakunawa Rush as being the most relentlessly fast-paced in the game, as you have to quickly dart from shelter to shelter before Lilac heats up. This could've been a really annoying mechanic, but the level has such an incredible fluidity to it that blazing through the stage and frenetically hopping across sinking platforms feels beyond exhilirating. It also helps that the visuals and backgrounds are some of the prettiest in the game, and the head-bangingly intense stage music is straight-up my favorite Freedom Planet 2 track. And while I can't necessarily count it since it's a separate stage, the Askal fight right after this is really good too. Also props for pulling a Gravity Bubble and ending the stage with a chase sequence as you have to scramble up out of the volcano before the lava catches up with you.
