I reviewed this game earlier this year and said it was good but I decided to replay it on all of the difficulties so I'm redoing this review to have my current thoughts.
So originally I had a 7/10 so why the change? Well that's because I played on the other two difficulties. The Average difficulty isn't too bad and while the game has some issues it's the Expert difficulty that hurts the game but more on that later.
The game itself I feel kind of gets worse the more you play it. The game just really doesn't have much staying power. I think what hurts it the most is what you do in the 2nd half of each stage which always feel the same and are never interesting. Some of the later levels also suck like the Desert.
I'm also not a fan of the powerups, they have that Fantasy Zone mechanic of having a time limit. They also just sometimes put you in a disadvantage depending on the weapon and situation. Though they can be pretty cool if used at the right time.
Despite all that it can be fun...until you play the game on Expert. This game is so bad on Expert. Now the first half of each stage isn't the worst, sure some enemies take too many hits to kill but it's the 2nd half that sucks. The formations of enemies not only have way too much health but the bosses omg the bosses are sooooo bad. They become bullet sponges to the extreme. It's so bad I didn't even know this game had a hidden timer for the boss to just leave if you take too long and you just move on. While they aren't all bad, some of them just don't want to die it's insane. I actually encourage some of you shmup players to play this difficulty just to experience it.
Now you may think what about co-op? Well funny story, I was wanting to play as the girl character so I tried using port to use her and it worked but it also had player 1 still so I just had him die till game over. Before he game over though, I notice the game runs really poorly when it's two players. Granted it has slowdown already in single player but I swear it's worse with two. I wish I could test it more to see how bad it really is.
It's a shame because I think the game can be fun and I much prefer it over the first Wonder Boy game. I just don't think it's that good and that one difficulty hurt the game for me. It's got some decent fun here and there and I do think it can be enjoyable on lower difficulties but it's a very flawed game. The one nice thing I'll say is cutting stages for space limitations actually puts this version up a bit as it feels less monotonous. It's still at the end of day one of weaker games in the Wonder Boy line up.
So originally I had a 7/10 so why the change? Well that's because I played on the other two difficulties. The Average difficulty isn't too bad and while the game has some issues it's the Expert difficulty that hurts the game but more on that later.
The game itself I feel kind of gets worse the more you play it. The game just really doesn't have much staying power. I think what hurts it the most is what you do in the 2nd half of each stage which always feel the same and are never interesting. Some of the later levels also suck like the Desert.
I'm also not a fan of the powerups, they have that Fantasy Zone mechanic of having a time limit. They also just sometimes put you in a disadvantage depending on the weapon and situation. Though they can be pretty cool if used at the right time.
Despite all that it can be fun...until you play the game on Expert. This game is so bad on Expert. Now the first half of each stage isn't the worst, sure some enemies take too many hits to kill but it's the 2nd half that sucks. The formations of enemies not only have way too much health but the bosses omg the bosses are sooooo bad. They become bullet sponges to the extreme. It's so bad I didn't even know this game had a hidden timer for the boss to just leave if you take too long and you just move on. While they aren't all bad, some of them just don't want to die it's insane. I actually encourage some of you shmup players to play this difficulty just to experience it.
Now you may think what about co-op? Well funny story, I was wanting to play as the girl character so I tried using port to use her and it worked but it also had player 1 still so I just had him die till game over. Before he game over though, I notice the game runs really poorly when it's two players. Granted it has slowdown already in single player but I swear it's worse with two. I wish I could test it more to see how bad it really is.
It's a shame because I think the game can be fun and I much prefer it over the first Wonder Boy game. I just don't think it's that good and that one difficulty hurt the game for me. It's got some decent fun here and there and I do think it can be enjoyable on lower difficulties but it's a very flawed game. The one nice thing I'll say is cutting stages for space limitations actually puts this version up a bit as it feels less monotonous. It's still at the end of day one of weaker games in the Wonder Boy line up.