Spelunky 2 Review (i dodge every icebox match)
If the amount of hours is not an indicator already: This is one of if not my absolute top 1 favorite game of all time.
- The controls are very good, both on controller and keyboard
- The art style is unique and great
- The mechanics are great and responsive
- Gameplay in general is great. The progression and increasing difficulty feel natural and have a good pace.
- No handholding. Only a basic tutorial explaining controls. The player figures everything out for themself (or looks up certain mechanics on the world wide web).
- Basically all rogue-likes (-lites) have that mechanic but I'll mention it anyway: Replayability is great due to randomly generating levels and different paths the player can take, each having their own set of obsticles, rewards, ambience and so on
- (Almost) all deaths can be narrowed down to skill-issue and the player learns something new for the next run
^ Almost every run the player learns a new mechanic, which there are a lot of (what certain items do and why but also some secret ones as well like rare drops from enemies or breakables e.g. bone-blocks can sometimes drop the skeleton-key or a rather bizarre one a mosquito can drop a hover-pack )
- 3 endings of which two have a bossfight ( although one could consider the cosmic ocean to be a sort of boss as well because of how that part of the game differentiates from the rest of the game in my opinion )
- The questlines are good but I usually don't really do most of them, I have a set of questlines I do almost every run
- Ignore following point to avoid spoilers: The questline for the cosmic ocean is challenging in a really good way. One issue with the cosmic ocean itself: Like previously mentioned, almost all deaths come down to skill issue. Almsot . In the cosmic ocean some deaths occure solely based on chance and randomness, like spawning right under a crush block in a pyramid/egypt based level or some random explosive projectile flying in light speed toward the player. It wouldn't be too bad if the cosmic ocean wouldn't be 99 levels long (or 99-4=95 levels since both sunken city and cosmic ocean are area 7). Still I'd say that randomness adds to the challenge and it is also sort of the point of the "final challenge" but I would be lying if I said it isn't frustrating at some points .
Overall I definitely recommend this game to anyone looking for a 2D platformer and rogue-like with great mechanics, controlls, progression (in learning the game) and overall design but also for those looking for something new and fresh to add to their libraries consisting of only a single genre of games.