Jazeta brought peace back to the land. But as long as evil and fear live in the human heart, the dreaded Dirth, Emperor of Darkness, will be plotting his return. The Emperor is stirring under the peaceful surface of Neutopia, bringing suffering to its people. Who will save them? Jazeta, the hero, is lost in a labyrinth in a foreign land. Can his son withstand the powers of the Emperor of Darkness to rescue the good people of Neutopia from fear and despair?
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Onto the sequel! Right after finishing the first Neutopia, I fired up the sequel and was really impressed at just how different it is. Maru told me that Neutopia 2 was better but ultimately more of the same, and that's a statement I found to be true. That said, it's so remarkably different that it's something I had a much better time with. I also played this one in English, and since the PCE Mini doesn't keep times like the Nintendo mini consoles do, I don't really know how long I took. I'd say about 8-10 hours at the most. I also used save states a fair bit to keep my progress from being set back by dying, and I'll continue as to why that turned out to be a very good thing a bit later.
Neutopia 2 picks up some time after the first game ends. The main character of Neutopia 1 didn't marry the princess, but he did have a son, and that is your main character (whom you name yourself). Your mother awakes from a dream where your father dies while fighting a monster, and you set off on a quest to rescue your dad. Unlike the first Neutopia, this isn't just a "go get the 8 thingies to fight the final boss" quest. There are 8 dungeons again, sure, but they're more connected to specific goals at each point in the story (like a dungeon hiding a story-important item). The overworld is still more or less divided into several sections of "do everything here, then progress", but it's dressed up in a way to better hide that fact. The story and narrative are still very basic and doesn't really have anything revelatory in either its presentation or flow, but it's a significant upgrade from the first game and feels like a story rather than just the set dressing for an action adventure game.
Something else also significantly improved is the combat, at least mostly. The game now has the ability to walk diagonally, and that also means the ability to stab diagonally. Not only this, but you can also effectively "slash" your sword now by quickly turning after stabbing (not unlike 3D Dot Game Heroes would do 20 years later). This turns the sword from a useless joke into something that's actually your primary battle tool throughout the game, like it should be. There's also a very high-range flail you get that's pretty cool, but I never used it much since it's "cursed" so that you lose 10 gold every time you use it XP
Unfortunately, this has also come at the expense of the usefulness of the 3 magic wands in the game. The game's knockback system has been drastically altered since the first game. Instead of just always flying away from you, now enemies fly in the direction the character is facing. While you can usually use that to your advantage so enemies don't fly back into you too much (just because you turned to back up after firing a spell at them), some spells explicitly fire directly behind you, meaning if those shots land, you will be hit by the enemy it hits. The wands' damage is also just far weaker than the sword's. It's not inexcusable, but it's not exactly something as significantly better than the first game's combat as it seems to be at first.
The dungeons are ultimately the gauntlets of damage-before-the-boss they were the last game, lacking any puzzles beyond trying to conserve your bombs so you can bomb the right wall eventually (bomb conservation sucks and this game relies on it WAY too much). That said, the bosses are FAR better. While they sometimes are bullshit and a bit too hard, they're nowhere near the cake walks they were in the first game, and are a significant improvement. Some enemy types (I'm looking at you weird spiny things in the snow forest) are utterly unfair and horrible, but the enemy variety is also better.
Beyond the difficulty and annoyance of conserving bombs, the main thing I'm glad I used save states for is the way that the game uses its stop-time item. The weapons you use to fight things and heal yourself and such are generally exactly the same as the last game, but there is a new item enemies can drop when you kill them: an hourglass. This freezes time in the room you're in for your enemies for what appeared to me to be forever (although maybe it's just a super long time). If it is indeed forever, then you can soft-lock yourself in certain areas, since there are some cloud-like enemies who split into smaller pieces when hit, and when hit during a time freeze, they split in a way that means they can't be killed. Maybe I just didn't wait long enough, but it certainly seemed like I'd managed to lock myself in a dungeon room because I couldn't kill all the enemies in it XP
The game's presentation story-wise was improved a bit, and the graphics and music were as well. The graphics feel far less generic and are generally significantly improved. It's still recognizably Neutopia, but these feel far less like they were ripped from some 1990 version of the Unity asset store and fit a larger, more cohesive style. The music is still nothing I ever really noticed to great effect, but it's still a bit better than the first game. Nothing MP3 player-worthy, but overall an improvement worth mentioning.
Verdict: Recommended. Neutopia 2 is a game whose peaks and valleys are more extreme than its predecessors, but there are far more peaks than valleys. I felt like I was on auto-pilot for quite a long time in Neutopia 1, just going through the motions of playing videosgame, but Neutopia 2 was something I was actively having a good time playing. It still has some annoying bits lending to its age, but it's a far superior game to its predecessor and one I feel much less uncomfortable recommending to someone looking for a good Zelda-like game.
Neutopia 2 picks up some time after the first game ends. The main character of Neutopia 1 didn't marry the princess, but he did have a son, and that is your main character (whom you name yourself). Your mother awakes from a dream where your father dies while fighting a monster, and you set off on a quest to rescue your dad. Unlike the first Neutopia, this isn't just a "go get the 8 thingies to fight the final boss" quest. There are 8 dungeons again, sure, but they're more connected to specific goals at each point in the story (like a dungeon hiding a story-important item). The overworld is still more or less divided into several sections of "do everything here, then progress", but it's dressed up in a way to better hide that fact. The story and narrative are still very basic and doesn't really have anything revelatory in either its presentation or flow, but it's a significant upgrade from the first game and feels like a story rather than just the set dressing for an action adventure game.
Something else also significantly improved is the combat, at least mostly. The game now has the ability to walk diagonally, and that also means the ability to stab diagonally. Not only this, but you can also effectively "slash" your sword now by quickly turning after stabbing (not unlike 3D Dot Game Heroes would do 20 years later). This turns the sword from a useless joke into something that's actually your primary battle tool throughout the game, like it should be. There's also a very high-range flail you get that's pretty cool, but I never used it much since it's "cursed" so that you lose 10 gold every time you use it XP
Unfortunately, this has also come at the expense of the usefulness of the 3 magic wands in the game. The game's knockback system has been drastically altered since the first game. Instead of just always flying away from you, now enemies fly in the direction the character is facing. While you can usually use that to your advantage so enemies don't fly back into you too much (just because you turned to back up after firing a spell at them), some spells explicitly fire directly behind you, meaning if those shots land, you will be hit by the enemy it hits. The wands' damage is also just far weaker than the sword's. It's not inexcusable, but it's not exactly something as significantly better than the first game's combat as it seems to be at first.
The dungeons are ultimately the gauntlets of damage-before-the-boss they were the last game, lacking any puzzles beyond trying to conserve your bombs so you can bomb the right wall eventually (bomb conservation sucks and this game relies on it WAY too much). That said, the bosses are FAR better. While they sometimes are bullshit and a bit too hard, they're nowhere near the cake walks they were in the first game, and are a significant improvement. Some enemy types (I'm looking at you weird spiny things in the snow forest) are utterly unfair and horrible, but the enemy variety is also better.
Beyond the difficulty and annoyance of conserving bombs, the main thing I'm glad I used save states for is the way that the game uses its stop-time item. The weapons you use to fight things and heal yourself and such are generally exactly the same as the last game, but there is a new item enemies can drop when you kill them: an hourglass. This freezes time in the room you're in for your enemies for what appeared to me to be forever (although maybe it's just a super long time). If it is indeed forever, then you can soft-lock yourself in certain areas, since there are some cloud-like enemies who split into smaller pieces when hit, and when hit during a time freeze, they split in a way that means they can't be killed. Maybe I just didn't wait long enough, but it certainly seemed like I'd managed to lock myself in a dungeon room because I couldn't kill all the enemies in it XP
The game's presentation story-wise was improved a bit, and the graphics and music were as well. The graphics feel far less generic and are generally significantly improved. It's still recognizably Neutopia, but these feel far less like they were ripped from some 1990 version of the Unity asset store and fit a larger, more cohesive style. The music is still nothing I ever really noticed to great effect, but it's still a bit better than the first game. Nothing MP3 player-worthy, but overall an improvement worth mentioning.
Verdict: Recommended. Neutopia 2 is a game whose peaks and valleys are more extreme than its predecessors, but there are far more peaks than valleys. I felt like I was on auto-pilot for quite a long time in Neutopia 1, just going through the motions of playing videosgame, but Neutopia 2 was something I was actively having a good time playing. It still has some annoying bits lending to its age, but it's a far superior game to its predecessor and one I feel much less uncomfortable recommending to someone looking for a good Zelda-like game.
Quick! Good combat, but easy patterns and puzzles.
Now we're talking. A solid improvement over the first game, this is a more than decent A-RPG with a pretty classic story but colorful graphics and fun secondary items and dungeons.
This is also my review for Neutopia II.
My status says “played” but no I haven’t played it and I never will. I’m dishonest. Go fuck yourself
My status says “played” but no I haven’t played it and I never will. I’m dishonest. Go fuck yourself
A serviceable Zelda clone with minor wonkiness in controls/hit detection. This game can't compete with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which was released the same year, but there are improvements over the first Neutopia.