Axiom Verge 2 Review (wernaeh)
A sub-par metroidvania. Axiom Verge 2 disregards many strong points from Axiom Verge 1 and instead builds on those aspects of Axiom Verge 1 that weren't great to begin with. Minor spoilers ahead.
- Combat is Zelda-esque melee with an additional (low-damage) bumerang now. This alone is not a problem, but many enemies have ranged weapons and an AI that deliberately exploits the limits of your attacks (e. g. by moving away when you jump into melee range). In the end, combat feels tedious and in many cases, it sadly is more fun to just run past (or through) the enemies than to fight them.
- Fluid controls weren't a strong suit of AV1 and controls are even worse here: Normal movement is slow and stiff. You get near to no skills for faster, more fluid progression (e. g. double jump), and those skills you do get just feel bad. Climbing, for example, unintentionally sticks you to walls and has a pointless, limited range you need to cheese around by drone form.
- There are many items and upgrades for your human form, but most of these see little to no use. You lose human form about half-way through the game and only regain it shortly before the end. And even then, you'll be keeping to drone form because it is so much easier to move around with.
- The path through the game world is a random mess, even for a metroidvania. You just explore open ends until you find another progression upgrade at some unpredictable hiding spot. Upgrades are disdainfully waiting for you on the ground. There is not a single leading boss fight and in most cases, there is not even any kind of celebratory architecture (say, a shrine) around the upgrade.
- Exploration is excessively tedious. This comes from the limited movement options (as above), but also from the irregularly distributed quicktravel spots and the annoyingly pointless choice of prohibiting quicktravel between both game worlds.
- Dialogue is just as obtuse as in Axiom Verge 1, but there's two things worse now: First, dialogue boxes don't show pop-up heads anymore, so it is hard to follow who is talking. Second, the dialogues between humans sound weird, like unrelated monologues rather than communication (as if two people both had a stroke while talking).
- I experienced several minor bugs and glitches: from 100% CPU load while the game is minimized to momentarily getting stuck in walls to items that said I could "take" them, but I couldn't (without any "nope" sound or anything).
- The pixel art has improved over AV1. However, since the environment with its La-Mulanese touch isn't as technical and abstract as in AV1 anymore, the minor flaws in the pixel art become much more apparent.
- I still like the lore and the setting, the new biomes are interesting and varied, and the soundtrack is awesome.