Turnip Boy Robs a Bank Review (TeaTalk)
A departure from Tax Evasion
While technically a sequel to Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, don't expect similar game play going into this. Turnip Boy has gone from what felt like an adventure game to a rogue-lite. I am not typically a fan of the rogue-lite genre, of which I have played some games but not stuck with for a meaningful length of time. I stuck with turnip boy because I really enjoyed the original game and the world it built, but I will admit I was a bit sad to see the devs take it in the rogue-lite direction. It's what everyone's doing now and certainly with some rogue-lite games it feels like 30 minutes of game play stretched over 10s, if not hundreds of hours.
Thankfully, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank didn't do this, and I finished the main game with 20/23 achievements in around 8 hours.
I had a great time playing this game, but there are some things I think I'd change.
The end difficulty spike
I will not spoil what happens at the end of the game, but the difficulty spike is insane!!! Seriously, up until this point I felt the game was really balanced and between the weapons and upgrades you can get, I never really hit a wall.
The end game is unbalanced and completely disproportionate to the rest of the game in terms of difficulty. Seriously, if more time had been spent balancing this, I thing it would have been completely reasonable to remove god mode from the accessibility settings. Again, not trying to spoil anything but there's a huge chunk of game you have to replay every time you try for the end game.
The ending itself felt a little ill-conceived too. I was hoping to find out at least a little about what happened afterwards.
Accessibility Settings
Instead of just having a straight up god mode, it would have been nice to see some options to reduce the damage turnip boy takes from hits. Or maybe customise the amount of hearts you get. Speaking of...
The Upgrades
Offering the player more progression in terms of health upgrades would have encouraged replayability to max out the health even further before the end-game. Perhaps more could be done in terms of defensive upgrades too
Add a post-game
I appreciate that you can return after the end-game, but things are still in the state they were before the end-game. Reflecting the state of the bank and the hideout to be that of after the end-game and maybe adding some quests relating to what happens at the end in the bank would go a long way to keep players interested after clearing.
Conclusion
This was a really fun game, and kept me playing but I almost uninstalled towards the end due to the steep increase in difficulty and was slightly disappointed at the lack of post-game content. I don't want the developers to feel disheartened because I really enjoyed the game, but I would have enjoyed it way more if the end was balanced, and if it wasn't a rogue-lite it would have probably been up there with my favourite games I play this year.
Please please please, don't make the next game in the turnip series a rogue-lite. I know it's popular, but not everybody wants it. I'd be up for a completely different genre though. Turnip Boy Defrauds a Golf Club? Turnip Boy Invents Time Travel? Turnip Boy: Turnip Detective? Turnip Boy Tries Go Karting? Turnip boy builds a vegetable hospital? Turnip Boy Brings Back Television? Really there's no limit to where you could take this and I'm excited to see what comes next. Please feel free to use these xD
If I had to give Robs a Bank a score out of 10, its an 8 for me. Enjoyed it.