Spelunky 2 Review (Uncle Iroh)
At first, I disliked Spelunky 2. Spelunky 1 was my first steam game. I have been playing since 2015(9 years!) and have well over 200 hours. Managed to complete a no gold hell run and every achievement in the game.
And still, spelunky 2 started off extremely difficult. The caves were just way harder than every other level, and hearing about the cosmic ocean ending didn't inspire me. The idea of having to play through 7-99 . to achieve a true victory was odd. And I was right, for me, it wasn't enjoyable.
It took me 4 years post launch, and reaching 300 hours on spelunky to make the move.
Granted, this is a difficult game. But as a veteran spelunky player I didn't mind the challenge.
The game is awesome. It's quite incredible how different it seems from spelunky 1, everything feels smoother, the colors are more vibrant, Derek really made sure this is an amazing experience.
Despite being a veteran, it took about 60 hours for me to complete the game for the first time. I insisted on doing the medium difficulty ending(hundun), and I enjoyed learning about the different ways and methods to achieve this victory.
Few key things I would like to mention:
-This is definitely one of those games where you'll spend a majority of your time reading and learning about different things in the wiki. I don't know how people actually figured things out on their own before all the videos and wiki entries existed, and I applaud them for that.
-Multiplayer didn't work for me at all. I live 10 minutes away from a friend, we both have good connection and we couldn't play the game. Kept desyncing and lagging. I was really looking forward for multiplayer, disappointed it wasn't working well.
-CO is not enjoyable in my opinion. I love spleunky, but I would much rather start a new run than try to finish an hour long, repeating cycle. You have to be extremely careful there, which is interesting, but some levels are just softlocked/random ice cave explosions/any other random event that causes you to lose despite doing everything right.
I highly recommend spelunky 2. But I don't think everyone would enjoy it. If spelunky 1 could run at a higher frame rate, I would probably stick to it. Unfortunately nowadays it feels very bad and I can't go back, while spelunky 2 doesn't serve as an alternative for me.
Almost a decade after first purchasing the game, I can finally say I am done with spelunky., the journey is over.
Thank you for everything, looking forward to see your next work!