This review contains spoilers
Overall, I like Travis Strikes Again. it does lots of nice things but does an equal amount of uninteresting things. I’m not going to dive in and analyze the game’s lore into detail, but just lay out some pros and cons.
Cons:
-The game’s combat is ridiculously tedious and repetitive, and doesn’t have the same satisfaction as the combat from the first game. In the first game, it’s all over the top and bloody and you’re slicing people apart left and right with cool beam katanas... but in TSA you’re just... destroying game bugs. I’m not complaining about the fact that you do fight bugs, I’m just complaining that it just isn’t as fun as it was in the first game. The attacks are too simple and the only somewhat interesting thing were the skill chips. But even with the nice variety of skill chips I still found myself getting bored very quickly. It’s such a slog going through each level (with the exception of the DLC Killer Marathon) and I was honestly only motivated because of the music and the story.
-the top down combat was kind of annoying, I didn’t like playing as a flea on screen. I mean we have all these cool shirts to wear but you can’t even see it during most of the game.
-Badman and Travis suddenly have a truce and no interactions after the first cutscene of the game?? Badman was after Travis’ head out of revenge, and once the first cutscene was over they never speak to eachother until the credits. I wish they could’ve had some banter occasionally?? Some interaction would’ve been nice...
-Coffee and Doughnuts was a horrible level it was SO boring and had really bad platform sections. It’s a shame though because the boss of that level has a cool design.
-CIA was just as bad as Coffee and Doughnuts. it was very long and very unappealing... the only thing that was good about CIA was the final boss.
Pros:
-Man the way the game opened up was so killer... seeing Dan Smith and Badman interact was so exciting that I closed out of the game so that I could rewatch the opening cutscene again.
-the game looks nice in my opinion. I liked how stylistic the character portraits look in the death ball games, the cool change in animation or model style in cutscenes, and how the visual novel sections looked. It kind of shocked me that they didn’t really reuse any portraits for the visual novel sections, they made so many for so many characters.
-it’s charming seeing how each of the playable characters interact with Death and Drive (the character) and the bosses.
-Killer Marathon’s OST was insanely good and I LOVED Silver Face. His boss theme is probably one of my favorite songs from the entire franchise. That whole level was a blast, although a stressful one (it was pretty difficult). It’s sad how the best boss from the game with the most interesting backstory was locked behind DLC.
-Badman’s DLC story was very very engrossing. I had my eyes glued to the screen the entire time— it was such a good read. It made me a little upset seeing how we never get to see him talk in a visual novel section in the main story.
-The crazy amounts of Suda51 characters that appear in this game was mind blowing. Kurumizawa giving Travis a death ball was probably one of my favorite scenes in the game
-The Fax machine stuff from K (and the single one from Jeane)
-I love Henry Cooldown, so thank you Suda for the twenty lines of dialogue we get of him in the Bubblegum Fatale DLC.
Cons:
-The game’s combat is ridiculously tedious and repetitive, and doesn’t have the same satisfaction as the combat from the first game. In the first game, it’s all over the top and bloody and you’re slicing people apart left and right with cool beam katanas... but in TSA you’re just... destroying game bugs. I’m not complaining about the fact that you do fight bugs, I’m just complaining that it just isn’t as fun as it was in the first game. The attacks are too simple and the only somewhat interesting thing were the skill chips. But even with the nice variety of skill chips I still found myself getting bored very quickly. It’s such a slog going through each level (with the exception of the DLC Killer Marathon) and I was honestly only motivated because of the music and the story.
-the top down combat was kind of annoying, I didn’t like playing as a flea on screen. I mean we have all these cool shirts to wear but you can’t even see it during most of the game.
-Badman and Travis suddenly have a truce and no interactions after the first cutscene of the game?? Badman was after Travis’ head out of revenge, and once the first cutscene was over they never speak to eachother until the credits. I wish they could’ve had some banter occasionally?? Some interaction would’ve been nice...
-Coffee and Doughnuts was a horrible level it was SO boring and had really bad platform sections. It’s a shame though because the boss of that level has a cool design.
-CIA was just as bad as Coffee and Doughnuts. it was very long and very unappealing... the only thing that was good about CIA was the final boss.
Pros:
-Man the way the game opened up was so killer... seeing Dan Smith and Badman interact was so exciting that I closed out of the game so that I could rewatch the opening cutscene again.
-the game looks nice in my opinion. I liked how stylistic the character portraits look in the death ball games, the cool change in animation or model style in cutscenes, and how the visual novel sections looked. It kind of shocked me that they didn’t really reuse any portraits for the visual novel sections, they made so many for so many characters.
-it’s charming seeing how each of the playable characters interact with Death and Drive (the character) and the bosses.
-Killer Marathon’s OST was insanely good and I LOVED Silver Face. His boss theme is probably one of my favorite songs from the entire franchise. That whole level was a blast, although a stressful one (it was pretty difficult). It’s sad how the best boss from the game with the most interesting backstory was locked behind DLC.
-Badman’s DLC story was very very engrossing. I had my eyes glued to the screen the entire time— it was such a good read. It made me a little upset seeing how we never get to see him talk in a visual novel section in the main story.
-The crazy amounts of Suda51 characters that appear in this game was mind blowing. Kurumizawa giving Travis a death ball was probably one of my favorite scenes in the game
-The Fax machine stuff from K (and the single one from Jeane)
-I love Henry Cooldown, so thank you Suda for the twenty lines of dialogue we get of him in the Bubblegum Fatale DLC.
godslayer86
7 months ago