The original is one of the greatest action games of all time, but with a few glaring blemishes that hold it back from being as good as it should be.
This game fixes all of those blemishes, but then stumbles in recreating the action. Enemies are poorly balanced and become absurd damage sponges without Umbran Climax. Fights lack visual clarity, especially the Lumen Sage boss fights where an entire Godzilla movie is happening in the background, obscuring the actual fight and the boss' telegraphs. Healing items no longer count against your rank, meaning you can and should shove them down your gullet constantly, trivializing the game and pushing the player into bad habits. And a myriad of other problems.
Trying to truly master this game on the same level as the first is a waste of your time, because it's ridiculously simple to get platinum ranks on the highest difficulty, but borderline impossible to get pure platinums. They prioritized the spectacle of the first playthrough over the quality of subsequent playthroughs. Which hurts, because there's so much cool content in this game that would be wonderful to explore in a game that felt better to sink a lot of time into. The massive number of weapons, the big roster of playable characters, and the whole extra "build your own challenge" co-op gamemode make this one of the most content-rich action games ever, but I will never get the most out of any of it.
If you're a low-key action game fan who wants to play a game through once on normal mode, have fun, and put it down, Bayo 2 is absolutely a better game than 1 for you. And I still like this game a lot, the core of what I love in the first game is still here. But it ain't "one of the best ever" tier like the first, and I think that's a shame, because it 1000% could have been.
This game fixes all of those blemishes, but then stumbles in recreating the action. Enemies are poorly balanced and become absurd damage sponges without Umbran Climax. Fights lack visual clarity, especially the Lumen Sage boss fights where an entire Godzilla movie is happening in the background, obscuring the actual fight and the boss' telegraphs. Healing items no longer count against your rank, meaning you can and should shove them down your gullet constantly, trivializing the game and pushing the player into bad habits. And a myriad of other problems.
Trying to truly master this game on the same level as the first is a waste of your time, because it's ridiculously simple to get platinum ranks on the highest difficulty, but borderline impossible to get pure platinums. They prioritized the spectacle of the first playthrough over the quality of subsequent playthroughs. Which hurts, because there's so much cool content in this game that would be wonderful to explore in a game that felt better to sink a lot of time into. The massive number of weapons, the big roster of playable characters, and the whole extra "build your own challenge" co-op gamemode make this one of the most content-rich action games ever, but I will never get the most out of any of it.
If you're a low-key action game fan who wants to play a game through once on normal mode, have fun, and put it down, Bayo 2 is absolutely a better game than 1 for you. And I still like this game a lot, the core of what I love in the first game is still here. But it ain't "one of the best ever" tier like the first, and I think that's a shame, because it 1000% could have been.
Reviewed on Apr 11, 2022