I gotta be honest with myself, this one was a really mixed bag. I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game itself, but everything else was not my cup of tea.
To get it out of the way first and foremost, I just did not enjoy the story in this one. It's so verbose, feeling like it's using full essays to explain one little detail. Aside from that, it's filled with names that sound completely alien, and it all sounds like convoluted sci-fi technobabble to me. I often find myself skimming over the fucking paragraphs of text the game dumps on you in collectibles. I'm sure it holds meaning in some degree (likely in relation to the first Axiom Verge), but I cannot be arsed to decipher this shit.
Thankfully, the exploration (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the gameplay) carries this game extremely well for me. The objective markers on your map were a welcome addition, but since I kinda stopped listening to the dialogue after a while, I was completely content to get lost with every single new powerup I grabbed. The two worlds and the multiple tools you use to swap between them are used in extremely fun and creative ways. Aside from the blurb of text describing items you pick up, the game basically leaves it up to the player to learn how to use them, which made every use feel gratifying.
When I say "to a lesser extent, the gameplay", I'm mostly referring to the combat. Your only options for combat in this game are a smattering of melee weapons and a boomerang, neither of which feel satisfying in the slightest. Enemies are so damn aggressive, it always feels like you're 1 or 2 hits away from death. There was a point about halfway through the game where I sincerely stopped fighting enemies and just ran past/through them. The game only has one real mandatory boss fight (the final one), and it was honestly too easy for its own good.
Overall, I enjoyed the exploration, but I couldn't be arsed to care about anything else in this game. I feel like I can still recommend it regardless, maybe this one just didn't click with me the way I hoped it would.
To get it out of the way first and foremost, I just did not enjoy the story in this one. It's so verbose, feeling like it's using full essays to explain one little detail. Aside from that, it's filled with names that sound completely alien, and it all sounds like convoluted sci-fi technobabble to me. I often find myself skimming over the fucking paragraphs of text the game dumps on you in collectibles. I'm sure it holds meaning in some degree (likely in relation to the first Axiom Verge), but I cannot be arsed to decipher this shit.
Thankfully, the exploration (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the gameplay) carries this game extremely well for me. The objective markers on your map were a welcome addition, but since I kinda stopped listening to the dialogue after a while, I was completely content to get lost with every single new powerup I grabbed. The two worlds and the multiple tools you use to swap between them are used in extremely fun and creative ways. Aside from the blurb of text describing items you pick up, the game basically leaves it up to the player to learn how to use them, which made every use feel gratifying.
When I say "to a lesser extent, the gameplay", I'm mostly referring to the combat. Your only options for combat in this game are a smattering of melee weapons and a boomerang, neither of which feel satisfying in the slightest. Enemies are so damn aggressive, it always feels like you're 1 or 2 hits away from death. There was a point about halfway through the game where I sincerely stopped fighting enemies and just ran past/through them. The game only has one real mandatory boss fight (the final one), and it was honestly too easy for its own good.
Overall, I enjoyed the exploration, but I couldn't be arsed to care about anything else in this game. I feel like I can still recommend it regardless, maybe this one just didn't click with me the way I hoped it would.