Oh no! Wise Man's Super Gorgeous Ghost Machine has accidentally summoned Sister Bismaru, an evil nun from Goemon's dystopian future! Bismaru is Ebisumaru's French Catholic descendant and looks exactly how you'd imagine Ebisumaru dressed as a nun would look. After facing defeat at the hands of the gang in "Ganbare Goemon 3: Shishijūrokubē no Karakuri Manji Gatame", Bismaru is back with a plan to marry Dochuki, prince of the underworld! Normal video game stuff.

This game is the culmination of everything Konami learned from developing 16-bit platformers, refined for a 64-bit world. Best soundtrack and co-op in the series, voice acted cutscenes and some properly difficult levels with branching paths and various secrets throughout.

Gameplay is 2.5D with levels having background and foreground elements, sometimes with the camera moving around a central point, like a fancy Klonoa. Like most previous Goemon games, you visit towns in between stages to pick up daft side quests and stock up on items. Every world or in this case island, has a castle at the end, usually followed by one of the series' signature Impact mech battles.

Sadly, some quirks are present in the localisation like removal of battery save in favour of the N64 Controller Pak. It's also missing the Hironobu Kageyama opening "Smile Again" (https://youtu.be/5eeHifHoqKA) and Goemon Impact henshin jam, "Double Impact" (https://youtu.be/F-6arYwxCZg).

My only small criticism is that there's some cheap "okama" humour in there which I really don't care for. It's pretty harmless and very of its time but I don't love it!

All that said, Mystical Ninja 2 Starring Goemon is the best 2D platformer on the N64 and quite possibly the best (but not quite my favourite) Goemon game. Annoyingly, it's very hard to emulate correctly (WiiU VC inject seems to be the best option) but if you can get it running well on something, I really recommend giving it a shot! I absolutely love it and it's great.

Reviewed on Jan 14, 2021


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