izigame.me

I absolutely adored the original Monaco game and was stoked when they finally announced its sequel (although I'd argue 10 years for a sequel is longer than what I believed it should've been). Although I miss the original 2D retro-style look, I think this new styling appeals to a wider audience of gamers. I had a lot of my friends confused in the previous game from not knowing where they were and where to go, so this improves on that. I think the UI in Monaco 1 was vastly better than this one though. The amount of times we struggle to see where we are missing a coin or us passing by so many power kill switches because they just aren't labeled very well on the map or present themselves well whilst running around is frustrating. You could argue it's never been great but this is just my opinion.
Being about 6 hours in, I'm not sure if this changes or not, but being limited to 4 characters per map no matter what, is annoying. I love playing as Cosmo and Gimlet and when she isn't available I'm just not looking forward to the heist as much. I understand that in the previous Monaco you'd have missions where someone wasn't available but guess what, you were on a map that makes you unlock them later (like the data hacker solitary confinement mission!) While that isn't a game breaking thing, I would just question why limit the experience that way, nobody was asking for that, right?
A big opinion from me here, but, I think making the pickaxe an item instead of a character (The Mole) was a mistake. I'm not fully convinced whether I like it or not.. I just feel as if the pickaxe is an absolute 'get out of jail' free card and you need to have it on somebody. When you put it on a character, you essentially remove one additional characters benefits and you'll have to work around it, whereas now, it's just an item and you can pick it up whenever you want. I just really loved the Mole as a character and they were such a goofy, lovable character in Monaco 1 that it sucks to see it just reduced to an item on the map. Which kind of leads me to this point - I just think the characters/story in Monaco 2 is a downgrade (so far) to the original and we will see if I change my mind as we move forward. I hope I do.
I know I've been primarily negative this whole time, but I do still enjoy the game! At the end of the day, you're still completing heists with your friends and running around the map trying to get all the coins and seeing who is going to inevitably mess up the mission by tripping an alarm. It's all a fun, whacky time and I still enjoy having that experience in Monaco 2. I will say, the maps in this game are 10x better than the original. I think the map design is phenomenal and it shows they spent A LOT of time working to make them challenging and engaging. The Prison map is so hard but for me, I enjoy that - I think if people complain about the difficulty then they need to find a different game. It's not a 'run and gun' kind of game where you just go around killing everyone! We don't have a lot of games like this these days and it's refreshing to get another crack at the Monaco heist game.
I do recommend buying and playing the game if you loved the first one. It may take getting used to it, but I think the learning curve is enjoyable and we should support games like this when they come our way. If you have a good gaming group of friends, this is a great purchase and you'll have a blast cosplaying as criminals.