Why is this game such a downgrade from the first one? I ask this sincerely because playing this game has caused me to have a bit of a breakdown much like when I played Rondo of Blood for the first time.
I enjoyed Curse of the Moon quite a bit, it was a challenging experience but it never felt like it was overbearingly so. I played two playthroughs of that game on the Veteran difficulty because I felt like it was a fair challenge that never felt truly unpleasant and it was incredibly replayable due to how your characters would allow you to utilize their skills to go through different routes discovering new secrets.
The levels were all well crafted and memorable, the bosses difficult but still fun...
Curse of the Moon 2 kind of just throws all of that out of the window for the sake of "difficulty".
Certain challenges in CotM2 simply revolve around trying to compensate for one character's ability, that being Hachi's invincibility move. It constantly drains Weapon Points though so trying to use it all the time is not the brightest idea but the game just loves making long hallways with several obstacles trying to fuck you all at once with the only solution being Hachi's invincibility.
Instead of being interesting, it comes off as the devs taking a massive shit on the enemy placement that was far better in the first game, where enemies weren't just focused on a singular characters abilities but their combined abilities.
Need a challenge right before the boss door? Put a fuck ton of enemies that can't be reasonably avoided to make the player waste Weapon Ammo using Hachi's invincibility. Truly, an excellent idea rather than something fun or interesting.
None of the stages in this game are particularly thrilling, there's no real set piece that quite got my attention unlike in the first game. No train ride, or climbing up a stormy ship. Instead we get fucking Mario level tropes, back to back. We've got Jungle Land, Followed by The Mine, Followed by Ice Land, Followed by Lava Land. Sometimes the game will even flat out reuse a set piece from the first game, like Level 8 just doing the insect horde thing that Level 8 in the first game did, oh but there's a big orb that chases you the whole level.
Then there's the bosses. Some are just not very interesting, the Dragon-Symbiote and the Alien Soldier looking boss in Stage 4 having really routine patterns that are more dull than anything, and then you have shit like the Pharaoh in Stage 6 which can eat a fucking dick even when you know what you're doing. So much fucking shit on the screen it's basically sensory overload, or the final boss of the second episode reminding me of the True Final Boss of Aria of Sorrow during its first phase... god I just got so tired with this game.
It's not enough that you have to beat the game once, or twice, the game expects you to play through these uninteresting, unfun stages three times facing off against miserable excuses for bosses just to see scraps of new content.
The second episode in particular is where I just called it quits on continuing on Veteran Difficulty because it just didn't feel worth the fucking effort. It would be fine enough if it just took away Dominique, that makes the challenge hard enough but they also take away Zangetsu's new moveset halfway through the run and it just... fucking sucks so much. It's like the devs thought "ah, people will like the game if we just make the difficulty to dick levels without it being remotely interesting."
The characters are easily the best part of the game, I like Dominique, she's essentially Eric Lecarde from Bloodlines but with the ability to heal and a subweapon that works as a one use revive item. Robert is a cool ranged fighter, with his javelin subweapon being incredibly useful and Hachi is a corgi in a mech.
However even then I still have issues: Hachi's hover fucking sucks balls.
This may be a completely personal thing, but I'm used to hovers usually being activated by a second button press in games. You jump and then press the button again holding it down to hover.
With Hachi, you have to hold on the first jump and it feels so wrong to me. It's an issue that is especially exacerbated when switching characters mid jump to try and progress to a different route, since I think the timing for the hover is determined on the jump made before the switch so you have to hold the button while switching and it just feels really fucking weird.
In the EX Episode, which you get after beating Chapter 2 you get the characters from the first game back, which is cool, and you get to explore the levels in whatever order you like... but by this point I was clocked out on this game. I just wanted the trainwreck to stop, because I had stopped having fun midway through Episode 1.
Episode EX then does the tired, terrible practice that many games love to do, a trope I absolutely despised and is alone why I lowered my rating by a star: Throwing in a shmup level at the last fucking minute with no regard to the fact that such a skill set has not been taught to the player throughout the course of this entire fucking experience.
I hate when games do this shit, I hated it in Kingdom Hearts 2, I hated it in Devil May Cry, and I especially hate it in this game. 7 minutes of one of the most mediocre shmup sections I've ever played in a game, with a ship with a large as fuck hurtbox, slippery as fuck controls that don't feel remotely precise, obstacles that blend in with the background, god it is so anti Me-Core I wanted to tear my hair out.
Please, devs. If you're going to incorporate a shmup level at the last second of your fucking game, do me a fucking favor and MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD AND DON'T PULL SHIT LIKE THIS FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!!!!
THIS IS THE MOST TIRED FUCKING TRITE NONSENSE BULLSHIT THAT YOU CAN DO WITH A VIDEO GAME, SHOVING IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMEPLAY STYLE THAT THE PLAYER HAS NOT BEEN TRAINED BY THE GAME TO DO, EXPECTING PROFICIENCY OUT OF THE UNPRACTICED. IT'S FUCKING BONEHEADED STUPID BULLSHIT THAT IS NEVER GOOD, AND THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR WHY GAMES NEED TO SHOVE IN CRAP LIKE THIS, JUST MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD, I DIDN'T COME TO A CLASSICVANIA GAME TO PLAY A FUCKING SHMUP!!!
All it winds up doing is making me not want to play shmups because it shows an extremely terrible example of the genre. It's like if I tried to sell you a car in the middle of a movie, but the car has square wheels, a broken windshield, and I took a fat shit on the driver's seat. It's unappealing, stop doing it.
I'll acknowledge this rant here is completely petty, but fuck, shit like this has got to fucking stop. It needs to be realized that forcing in unrelated gameplay styles into your game is not a good practice and never was.
All in all what I've come to realize is that I don't enjoy difficult games, honestly I've been dealing with this thought in the back of my head ever since I got called out for not enjoying Order of Ecclesia because it was "difficult". But then I've also played things like God Hand, DMC3, Ultrakill, games that are difficult and that I've enjoyed quite a lot.
And what I've come to realize is that I need to stop playing games to try and feel adequate as a "Gamer". Forcing myself through things like Celeste, Rondo of Blood, etc, doesn't result in a feeling of satisfaction but one of exhaustion and relief that I don't have to go back. And maybe that's fine, maybe I don't have to try and prove myself as a "Gamer", it's not like such a title has any actual value.
If anything coming to this bizarre realization is probably for the best, it'll be healthier for me to instead enjoy things catered to me and not to someone who isn't me, difficult or not.
Curse of the Moon 2 still sucks ass though just fucking play the first one instead.
I enjoyed Curse of the Moon quite a bit, it was a challenging experience but it never felt like it was overbearingly so. I played two playthroughs of that game on the Veteran difficulty because I felt like it was a fair challenge that never felt truly unpleasant and it was incredibly replayable due to how your characters would allow you to utilize their skills to go through different routes discovering new secrets.
The levels were all well crafted and memorable, the bosses difficult but still fun...
Curse of the Moon 2 kind of just throws all of that out of the window for the sake of "difficulty".
Certain challenges in CotM2 simply revolve around trying to compensate for one character's ability, that being Hachi's invincibility move. It constantly drains Weapon Points though so trying to use it all the time is not the brightest idea but the game just loves making long hallways with several obstacles trying to fuck you all at once with the only solution being Hachi's invincibility.
Instead of being interesting, it comes off as the devs taking a massive shit on the enemy placement that was far better in the first game, where enemies weren't just focused on a singular characters abilities but their combined abilities.
Need a challenge right before the boss door? Put a fuck ton of enemies that can't be reasonably avoided to make the player waste Weapon Ammo using Hachi's invincibility. Truly, an excellent idea rather than something fun or interesting.
None of the stages in this game are particularly thrilling, there's no real set piece that quite got my attention unlike in the first game. No train ride, or climbing up a stormy ship. Instead we get fucking Mario level tropes, back to back. We've got Jungle Land, Followed by The Mine, Followed by Ice Land, Followed by Lava Land. Sometimes the game will even flat out reuse a set piece from the first game, like Level 8 just doing the insect horde thing that Level 8 in the first game did, oh but there's a big orb that chases you the whole level.
Then there's the bosses. Some are just not very interesting, the Dragon-Symbiote and the Alien Soldier looking boss in Stage 4 having really routine patterns that are more dull than anything, and then you have shit like the Pharaoh in Stage 6 which can eat a fucking dick even when you know what you're doing. So much fucking shit on the screen it's basically sensory overload, or the final boss of the second episode reminding me of the True Final Boss of Aria of Sorrow during its first phase... god I just got so tired with this game.
It's not enough that you have to beat the game once, or twice, the game expects you to play through these uninteresting, unfun stages three times facing off against miserable excuses for bosses just to see scraps of new content.
The second episode in particular is where I just called it quits on continuing on Veteran Difficulty because it just didn't feel worth the fucking effort. It would be fine enough if it just took away Dominique, that makes the challenge hard enough but they also take away Zangetsu's new moveset halfway through the run and it just... fucking sucks so much. It's like the devs thought "ah, people will like the game if we just make the difficulty to dick levels without it being remotely interesting."
The characters are easily the best part of the game, I like Dominique, she's essentially Eric Lecarde from Bloodlines but with the ability to heal and a subweapon that works as a one use revive item. Robert is a cool ranged fighter, with his javelin subweapon being incredibly useful and Hachi is a corgi in a mech.
However even then I still have issues: Hachi's hover fucking sucks balls.
This may be a completely personal thing, but I'm used to hovers usually being activated by a second button press in games. You jump and then press the button again holding it down to hover.
With Hachi, you have to hold on the first jump and it feels so wrong to me. It's an issue that is especially exacerbated when switching characters mid jump to try and progress to a different route, since I think the timing for the hover is determined on the jump made before the switch so you have to hold the button while switching and it just feels really fucking weird.
In the EX Episode, which you get after beating Chapter 2 you get the characters from the first game back, which is cool, and you get to explore the levels in whatever order you like... but by this point I was clocked out on this game. I just wanted the trainwreck to stop, because I had stopped having fun midway through Episode 1.
Episode EX then does the tired, terrible practice that many games love to do, a trope I absolutely despised and is alone why I lowered my rating by a star: Throwing in a shmup level at the last fucking minute with no regard to the fact that such a skill set has not been taught to the player throughout the course of this entire fucking experience.
I hate when games do this shit, I hated it in Kingdom Hearts 2, I hated it in Devil May Cry, and I especially hate it in this game. 7 minutes of one of the most mediocre shmup sections I've ever played in a game, with a ship with a large as fuck hurtbox, slippery as fuck controls that don't feel remotely precise, obstacles that blend in with the background, god it is so anti Me-Core I wanted to tear my hair out.
Please, devs. If you're going to incorporate a shmup level at the last second of your fucking game, do me a fucking favor and MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD AND DON'T PULL SHIT LIKE THIS FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!!!!
THIS IS THE MOST TIRED FUCKING TRITE NONSENSE BULLSHIT THAT YOU CAN DO WITH A VIDEO GAME, SHOVING IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMEPLAY STYLE THAT THE PLAYER HAS NOT BEEN TRAINED BY THE GAME TO DO, EXPECTING PROFICIENCY OUT OF THE UNPRACTICED. IT'S FUCKING BONEHEADED STUPID BULLSHIT THAT IS NEVER GOOD, AND THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR WHY GAMES NEED TO SHOVE IN CRAP LIKE THIS, JUST MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD, I DIDN'T COME TO A CLASSICVANIA GAME TO PLAY A FUCKING SHMUP!!!
All it winds up doing is making me not want to play shmups because it shows an extremely terrible example of the genre. It's like if I tried to sell you a car in the middle of a movie, but the car has square wheels, a broken windshield, and I took a fat shit on the driver's seat. It's unappealing, stop doing it.
I'll acknowledge this rant here is completely petty, but fuck, shit like this has got to fucking stop. It needs to be realized that forcing in unrelated gameplay styles into your game is not a good practice and never was.
All in all what I've come to realize is that I don't enjoy difficult games, honestly I've been dealing with this thought in the back of my head ever since I got called out for not enjoying Order of Ecclesia because it was "difficult". But then I've also played things like God Hand, DMC3, Ultrakill, games that are difficult and that I've enjoyed quite a lot.
And what I've come to realize is that I need to stop playing games to try and feel adequate as a "Gamer". Forcing myself through things like Celeste, Rondo of Blood, etc, doesn't result in a feeling of satisfaction but one of exhaustion and relief that I don't have to go back. And maybe that's fine, maybe I don't have to try and prove myself as a "Gamer", it's not like such a title has any actual value.
If anything coming to this bizarre realization is probably for the best, it'll be healthier for me to instead enjoy things catered to me and not to someone who isn't me, difficult or not.
Curse of the Moon 2 still sucks ass though just fucking play the first one instead.