I ended up really liking the first Splatterhouse, so it was a little bit of a bummer bouncing off its sequel. Unlike its arcade predecessor, Splatterhouse 2 is a console exclusive, and it feels like the devs worked overtime to bump up the game difficulty so the people playing it at the time couldn't beat it in a weekend.
The main character, Rick, was always slow and ponderous to control in the first game, but it generally felt tuned to match your move set. In Splatterhouse 2, I was really straining against what the game design expected of me versus how sluggish Rick is to control. Enemies felt quicker and more aggressive this time around, and often I felt like I didn't have enough time to react and move Rick out of harm's way before eating shit. It's one of those games that really incentivize rote memorization to beat some segments (looking at the elevator segments in particular). There's also less enemy variety overall than in Splatterhouse 1, so you're going to be punching the same weird looking-alien guys a lot.
When you combine that with the fact that you have limited lives, and can't pump virtual quarters into MAME or whatever to breeze past segments, it just compounded the frustration for me. You're going to die and get booted to the beginning of the stage a lot.
I actually wished I like this game more, because there are definitely some cool parts. The bosses in general are more interesting than the first game (outside of one or two really horrendously bullshit ones), and the music continues to be stellar. The plot is also pretty basic, but I do like that it deals with un-fucking Rick's life after the events from the first game. These games do tell a complete story over all three of its installments, which is rare to see in beat-em-ups. Overall though, this was a game I enjoyed way more watching someone else play on Youtube.
The main character, Rick, was always slow and ponderous to control in the first game, but it generally felt tuned to match your move set. In Splatterhouse 2, I was really straining against what the game design expected of me versus how sluggish Rick is to control. Enemies felt quicker and more aggressive this time around, and often I felt like I didn't have enough time to react and move Rick out of harm's way before eating shit. It's one of those games that really incentivize rote memorization to beat some segments (looking at the elevator segments in particular). There's also less enemy variety overall than in Splatterhouse 1, so you're going to be punching the same weird looking-alien guys a lot.
When you combine that with the fact that you have limited lives, and can't pump virtual quarters into MAME or whatever to breeze past segments, it just compounded the frustration for me. You're going to die and get booted to the beginning of the stage a lot.
I actually wished I like this game more, because there are definitely some cool parts. The bosses in general are more interesting than the first game (outside of one or two really horrendously bullshit ones), and the music continues to be stellar. The plot is also pretty basic, but I do like that it deals with un-fucking Rick's life after the events from the first game. These games do tell a complete story over all three of its installments, which is rare to see in beat-em-ups. Overall though, this was a game I enjoyed way more watching someone else play on Youtube.