More Vikings on the Oregon Trail, what's not to love?

The art style and music remain fantastic in this sequel, and I took more than a view screenshots along the way to use as backgrounds. The gameplay loops are basically the same with very few additions, which is nice if you're picking this up immediately after playing the first game. A whole host of new character classes were added as well, adding a lot of potential variety to your battle setups. Buckle up though, because the story gets super crazy super quick. The first game mostly played it straight with the story, but in this sequel things take abrupt left and right turns often.

I still have several holdover complaints though. This game plays around with fight mechanics often, where the path to victory isn't necessarily being the last side standing. There's no indication up front that there's special conditions, so it's up to you to pay attention to battle dialogue and react accordingly. This can lead to fights where you've brought along the wrong setup, and arenas where Varl are more hindrance than help. Additionally, some fights were relentlessly difficult, or were chained one after another so that even if you win one, you're thrown immediately into a second or third without much time to prepare. The upside here is that not all fights need to be won to progress the story, but this also has the downside of not feeling very compelled to repeat a fight I lost. Finally, the ending just....happened. I knew I was getting close, but there's no indication that the final fight was, in fact, the final fight. You win (or lose, I guess, because I lost and it still let me proceed), and roll credits. Had I been playing it on release, the mile high cliffhanger and unresolved plot would've killed me.

Delightful game still, though, and I can't wait to see how things wrap up in the third game.