Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner
The sequel to Zone of the Enders is based around mecha combat with the player once again controlling the "Orbital Frame" Jehuty. Unlike its prequel, the game is now centered on action elements with the player not needing to protect civilians in need and instead Jehuty contains more weaponry than in the previous game. The plot is set two years after the events from Zone of the Enders and focuses on Dingo Egret, a former member from Mars' military organization BAHRAM whose leader Ridley "Nohman" Hardiman wants back with him. Nohman shoots Dingo following his rejection but the agent Ken Marinaris saves Dingo by connecting his body to Jehuty and forces to work in order to defeat BAHRAM. The game had a new director, Shuyo Murata, who producer Hideo Kojima appointed in order to provide a different experience. The team worked to cover the criticism the original Zone of the Enders received resulted in The 2nd Runner having more action elements. The game received generally favorable critical response due to the improvements it has in comparison to the previous game. Critics praised the game's graphics and gameplay elements but criticized its short length and presentation. Despite the positive critical reaction, the game suffered mediocre sales. North American & Japan got regular ZOE2, but the regular edition of ZOE2 was never released in Europe. Europe directly got the ZOE2 Special Edition.
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there is far too much clunk. there is far too much jank. the experience of playing this game has aged like milk. the difficulty step up is monumental, for a start. certain sections of this game took far too long to complete. one after another, you are hit with missions that are just so poorly designed and repetitive. whoever conceived of the train level, there is a special place in hell for you.
the player has to constantly fight the awful camera system you get to work with. furthermore, you have to work around this hideous lock-on system. it works fine in a handful of battle scenarios (although often leads to these situations being so visually disorientating and chaotic you want to be sick) but something the game constantly likes to do is throw swarms of tiny enemies at you. this wouldn't be too bad on its own, but when there are other actually threatening robots in the mix, it's all over. when you are just trying to lock-on to the robot that is pummelling you, and the lock-on system is targeting individual enemies in these swarms, you feel a frustration i cannot put into words. just awful to play, and feels so bad.
the majority of your subweapons are useless in the majority of battle scenarios, too. this means that your best bet is to hack-and-slash through your opponents, and the game is not well-designed around this and doing it just feels so mindless and mind-numbing. the story starts out interesting, and there's a particularly cool cameo for players of the first ZotE game, which was nice. however it just doesn't lead to anything interesting happening and the cutscene writing feels like a combination of MGS and the more tech jargony stuff in a mecha anime like evangelion. that, and the voice acting is now just flat-out lifeless.
fuck, man. i was rooting for this game at the start. but, by its end, i had grown so sick and tired of it. ZotE 2 totally failed to live up to any expectations i had for it, and is proof that just because a sequel is bigger does not mean it's better. improving on the first game should have been so easy, and how hard they failed in that way just makes me sad.
yes this means i prefer the first ZotE game. i am not immune to abysmal takes, it seems.