Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 Review (Circuit)
The first game walked so this game could run a fucking marathon.
This is the perfect example of a sequel done right. If you can think of anything from the first game that needed improvement, this game has it covered. The characters all play wonderfully and their movesets are so well designed and creative, making each fighter a blast to play as. The stages look wonderful, and are flooding with detail, plus the myriad of competitive layouts add gameplay variety, the costumes are a massive step up, with 2 extra full costumes + 2 bonus shadow skins you can unlock for every fighter. The singleplayer content is nuts, featuring a super fun rougelike campaign that encourages replayability. Think of it like a souped up arcade mode with enemy horde battles and bosses mixed inbetween. The voice acting is not only even better this time around, but all the cute dialogue interactions and jokes included in the story mode are a joy to listen to, giving so much soul to all these beloved characters.
All this, and I still haven't mentioned the real All-Star of the show, the Slime meter. To put it simply, this meter singlehandedly makes this game one of the most interesting and unique platform fighters out right now. It gives players of all skill levels an immense amount of options on top of the already packed movesets, making gameplay even more frantic and dynamic. Competitive players are going to have a blast with the many options that it opens up, but even if you're just a casual player who doesn't want to learn bursting, slime dashing, cancels, or EX Specials... you can simply save up your slime for each character's super move, which are very charming and feature so many cute references.
My favorite aspect is that for the online... when it works, it works WONDERFULLY. I will warn that currently online does have some bugs currently and there will be an occasional softlock or disconnect, but aside from the occasional issues, the netcode is surprisingly solid!
To list a few criticisms, the lack of replays is very strange, not being able to remap movement controls on all platforms sucks, and the game really needs Multi-man or an endless enemy horde mode.
Overall, this game turned out way better than I think anyone expected, and I can't recommend it enough to people who love Nickelodeon or Platform Fighters!