Overall, I found this game to be a bit better than the first game. I really like the narrative of the grandpa telling his grandchildren stories. It's a good way to make a ton of adventures that have independent stories. As for the gameplay, this game takes even more things from more Zelda games: rolling, item crafting, bottle hunting, and sword skills. The trading and the side quests does a better job at encouraging players to explore and engage in things outside of combat. Both of these games scratch the itch for a 2D Zelda game. I do wish this game let you set manual map markers. There's a ton of things to keep track of in the overworld, but there's no way to track them all. Also, I wish there was more of a use for currency. Money becomes literally useless after awhile.

I'll be talking about the Switch version of the game. I'm a big fan of the series. I've played every Shantae game that has been released so far along with their DLCs, so I was pretty excited to play the first game in the series. I ended up disappointed. World is too big, screen is too small, there's insta-deaths everywhere, and sometimes the NPCs will straight up lie to you about how to progress. This game is absolutely incredible on a technical level that it runs on the gameboy color, but I just didn't find it very fun to play. This is my least favorite game in the series.

Played a game called Mrs.Cat Between Worlds on Switch. It seems to be a compilation of two games: Mrs.Cat in Mars and Mrs.Cat in Neptune. Each game has 51 single screen levels. I ended up being pretty disappointed with both because they both feel like mobile games (derogatory) and controlling the cat never felt quite right. Mars is mechanically bare and it is more about memorizing where hazards are (most of them become invisible shortly after the level starts). Neptune adds wall jumping and dashing, so it's a bit more interesting for me, but there's too much visual noise. The effects they added makes the visuals harder to read. I beat both within a hour, so I'm glad I only paid about $2.

I was expecting a game inspired by Gameboy Zelda, but this is definitely not that. It's actually a puzzle game that shares a similar aesthetic. I was a bit disappointed, but still had a ton of fun. My main critiques are that (1) screen transitions are awkward. The character seems to shift between screen instead of feeling like they are going along the same path you entered from. (2) Hit and hurt boxes feel wonky. They seem to be based on tiles rather than sprites, so I found myself taking damage from attacks and stage hazards when I did not expect to. (3) The game is very short. There's about 12 levels total, but for the $5 I paid for it I still enjoyed my time. One other thing I should note is that I ended up beating this game 2.5 times because it seems like one of the achievements is bugged or it has a misleading description.

I honestly don't remember the first game very well, so I can't directly compare the sequel to the first game too much. I'm pretty sure the first game felt more like a Metroid game with the main weapon being a projectile, while the second game has more of a focus on melee combat. In Axiom Verge 2, I liked the story and the fast travel system. I wish the map (the menu, not the level design) was better. There's only one color for manual map marking and the zoom levels aren't great. I think having more save points would have been made it more convenient to get around. I kind of wish items were marked on the map automatically like in Metroid, but this game makes the player mark all items by themselves manually. If you happen to walk by an item and not notice it initially, it's a pain in the butt when you're trying to backtrack to get all of the items. All in all, this was a fun game.