The first Axiom Verge remained an inventive and memorable Metroidvania even several years after its release. Until now, she can be considered one of the best representatives of the genre, and few people have been able to repeat her success. The announcement of the sequel was a surprise. The sequel is being written by the original creator Tom Hupp (Tom Happ) also worked alone. True, calling Axiom Verge 2 a sequel is not entirely correct – in many ways it is a completely different game, and in some sense this is rather a drawback.
Change of scenery
Take, for example, the plot. There is no introductory video in the spirit of an animated comic, which was in the first part – the game begins with a helicopter landing and a couple of dialogues with the pilot, after which we can already control the character. To find out the plot of the story, you need to sit in the main menu for a couple of seconds, and then a wall of text will tell us what the game is about.
A narrates Axiom Verge 2 about Indra Chaudhary, the new protagonist. She is the founder of a large conglomerate that took advantage of a lucky coincidence and bought out almost the entire rival organization after its owner Elizabeth Hammond went missing in Antarctica. Hammond has invented a superluminal communicator capable of computing with zero latency. And when Indra turned on its first prototype, a message awaited her in which the heroine was invited to Antarctica – supposedly there she could find her daughter Samara, who disappeared without a trace many years ago.
Soon after arriving, strange things happen to Indra: she hears someone’s voice in the cave, falls into the water due to a collapsed floor, drowns and is resurrected. Then he meets representatives of the “conglomerate of intelligent machines”, who call themselves part of it, bear the names of gods and goddesses from Sumerian-Akkadian mythology and grant the heroine abilities. Here the player is faced with a verbal mess of terms and names: it all starts with the fact that in fact we are in an alternative reality and must build a portal to our world, continues with the Kazakhs who stole the work and ends with nanomachines.
History of the first Axiom Verge was also full of terms and reluctantly allowed the player to understand all its details, but there it was elegantly combined with a depressing atmosphere and a feeling of isolation from the whole world. Here, they don’t give a damn about the fate of Indra, her daughter, and all the other characters – they are absolutely uninteresting. That’s why I no longer want to read the notes by the middle of the game.
It is the lack of a suitable atmosphere that makes the narrative in the sequel so inexpressive compared to the first part. Detailed environment in the spirit of the works Hans Giger (Hans Giger) was replaced by open spaces – although they have become much more diverse (there are glaciers, a desert, and an underwater region), the zones, with rare exceptions, look faded. Visually nothing in Axiom Verge 2 is not remembered, while the color palette and some decorative elements from the original are stuck in the memory for a long time.
A pickaxe is always useful
All this clearly indicates how much the developer wanted to make a game that was as different as possible from its predecessor. And this is also expressed in the gameplay – if earlier we were regularly given a variety of firearms, here we arm ourselves with a pickaxe for close combat and a boomerang for long-range. That is, fights now take place at much shorter distances, and the arsenal is incomparably poorer.
The two-button combat system is boring, and the decent enemy designs don’t help much. One of the key innovations in the sequel is the ability to hack closed doors and even opponents: slow them down, force them to drop supplies, or even make them your allies. It’s just that the radius of the hack is small, so it’s easier to either engage in battle or simply run past the enemies – they still don’t leave anything behind. As a result, you use hacking only when the plot requires you to open doors.
For the sake of experimentation, you can try different hacking methods, but either you forget about the mechanics, or you’re just too lazy to press extra buttons.
But the funny thing is the bosses. In metroidvanias, we are usually locked in a small room with a large enemy and are not released until we defeat him or die. Here, all bosses, except two, are optional – you can run past and not get a penalty for it. And the remaining two do not cause any particular problems, since the character is reborn in the same room after death, and the bosses do not restore health. Well, the battles themselves are shameful – opponents do not change attacks, move slowly and fall apart in a matter of seconds.
The author probably wanted to make the sequel more accessible, but I wouldn’t call the first Axiom Verge complex. At least there was no reason to make a sequel so toothless. Especially considering that the game can be simplified even more in the settings. At first, you periodically die at the hands of enemies, but over time this becomes almost impossible – as the heroine upgrades, her health reserve and attack power become so great that you can run through enemy shells.
Good game
After so many paragraphs about the cons and shortcomings, you probably expect a low rating, but Axiom Verge 2 it’s still hard to call it a passerby. It does look weak compared to the last game, but it’s still a fun metroidvania with interesting map design and a great progression system. As you progress, you gain abilities you didn’t expect, and can’t wait to return to old areas to use them to collect collectibles.
Such brilliant ideas as “Address Destroyer” from the first part are not in the sequel, but there are others. In particular, a parallel world called Rift, in which we control a drone and climb into hard-to-reach areas of the main map. The drone has its own abilities, it encounters unique opponents, and at the same time the Rift map does not repeat the usual one. Therefore, spending time in the Rift is no less interesting than outside it.
The way the new skills https://casinosnogamstop.co.uk/review/iwinfortune-casino/ change the gameplay is no less pleasing than in the first game. I won’t spoil the experience and list all the abilities, but climbing walls alone is enough to make exploring the map even more exciting than at the beginning of the playthrough. Since in the “normal” world we control not only Indra, but also a drone, by the end of the game the set of active skills expands significantly.
Before you start Axiom Verge 2, you need to remember that in many ways this is not the same game as the original. It has a completely different atmosphere, different gameplay with a modified combat system and its own “tricks” – some successful, some not so good. While the game’s bland bosses and uninteresting story make it feel like it was rushed into development, it remains a fun metroidvania that makes you want to explore the entire map and collect everything. But you expect much more from the second part of such an amazing game.
Pros: a large map that you explore in the best traditions of Metroidvanias; an excellent progression system that constantly introduces new abilities; The separate card in the Rift makes it feel like you’re getting two games for the price of one.
Cons: the story is uninteresting, and there is no reason to empathize with the main character; primitive combat system and low difficulty; disgraceful bosses, with whom you most often don’t have to fight at all.
Axiom Verge 2
Best comments
Sudden Kazakhs are, of course, an interesting choice from a plot point of view.
At first, you periodically die at the hands of enemies, but over time this becomes almost impossible – as the heroine upgrades, her health reserve and attack power become so great that you can run through enemy shells.
Like in the first part. Let’s be honest, after the first hour and in the first part you could easily run past 95% of the enemies. And after teleporting to the drone – by 100%. Well, yes, in the first part there are only 3 bosses, which can be difficult (the rest are DPS checks), so getting a sequel with an emphasis on platforming and exploration is quite logical.
supposedly there she can find her daughter Samara, who disappeared without a trace many years ago.
Hmm, actually at first they don’t tell us what happened to her daughter. And then it generally becomes clear that she did not disappear without a trace. The type of complaint that the story itself is not interesting to follow at first is quite understandable and obvious – the CEO of a megacorporation personally flies alone to negotiate with the one who is holding her daughter hostage (why alone, why by herself). And then there are no such obvious discoveries as in the first part. It’s just that there was also such an obvious plot: “we got into the middle of nowhere and now we’re just chasing the specified goal”. It’s later, when you get into the story of two civilizations and what does the main villain have to do with it (who, by the way, is not a fact that he’s a villain), it becomes “hmmm, interesting”.
And yes, that flying thing from the penultimate screen was the boss?
Yes, after it there were a ton of red dots left and a bottle for an upgrade, as well as an achievement dropped – it turns out, boss!
Not really. It’s still a passerby. The first part was a balanced Metroidvania, half of the abilities are one-shot, 30 percent of the locations can basically be thrown out, because apart from a couple of notes they don’t make sense at all, and the fact that the game deliberately forces you to look for upgrades for hacking in order to go through the story makes it also incredibly tedious.
Well, the “rift” with the drone is a very boring part of the game, because it comes down to just stupid jumping on ropes.
The separate card in the Rift makes it feel like you’re getting two games for the price of one
Still, for the price of two, or even three.
While everyone is thinking about the gameplay and plot, I have only one thing on my mind: “Someone not from the CIS knows about the Kazakhs. Go crazy".
I love the first part, one of the best metroidvanias I’ve ever seen. Great music, interesting visuals, variety of enemies, weapons, locations, a plot that was interesting to follow, atmosphere in the end!
I was waiting for the second part, but was afraid because of the trailer. Everything is somehow boring, unprincipled, not the same as before. And at the release the fears were confirmed. The plot is not something original, but in principle there is an incentive to complete it to the end. But this incentive kills everything else.
I didn’t like the picture before, but I hoped that there would be some interesting, memorable locations. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to find out, because it’s very boring to play. Poor pickaxe, the same boomerang (lol there are seriously no more weapons?), enemies are dull robots. It’s especially “fun” to kill flying evil spirits by jumping and picking at them with a pickaxe or throwing a boomerang, which… Well, which boomerang.
Music sounds ok, but not catchy. But for some reason I was hooked by the sighs when the vocalists in the track take air into their lungs to continue singing. This breath is either cut off or not. Strange… And in general, in 2-3 hours I didn’t hear what I would like to listen to more (I listen to the soundtrack of the first part both on my computer and on my phone).
And yes, that flying thing from the penultimate screen was the boss?
To quote the classic, I would like to say “This is a fiasco of Thomas Happ Games”.
The first one at least had a variety of weapons. Both games are quite crooked, but the first option was intriguing, you could try on which weapons were best suited to which enemy, and how to use them correctly. There were secret guns that were cool and useful to get. And in the second part, our pickaxe and boomerang certainly grow in strength, but their method of use does not change in any way. So I would say that purely mechanically, Axiom 2 is definitely inferior to the original.
It’s later, when you get into the story of two civilizations and what does the main villain have to do with it (who, by the way, is not a fact that he’s a villain), it becomes “hmmm, interesting”.
It’s not the interesting plot, but the lore. The plot here is extremely straightforward, nothing happens in the game at all literally until the very end, the main character follows the same motivation right up to the very end. I admit that the end of the game was a complete shock for me. I thought, “Well, the plot is finally starting to heat up, I’m starting to wonder what will happen next.”. And then the credits greet me.
Lore was good in the first axiom, and I think that in the second it is still worse, there are fewer new exciting ideas, and for the most part they just spell out and explain what we already knew and heard. But still, yes, I got stuck on the subreddit reading people’s theories for a couple of days, and I also compiled my own.
About the drone, by the way. I don’t agree that in the original the drone was the boss of everything. Yes, he was super safe (because he didn’t waste health and was infinite), but at the same time he was very much inferior to Trace in everything else. He had terrible weapons, mobility, survivability. So, despite the fact that it was reasonable to use a drone to safely overcome a difficult section, for everything else the main character was still used.
In the second axiom there is no reason at all to switch to human form. The drone is more mobile than Indra, does comparable damage, fits into small holes, making it more difficult for enemies to hit it. Is it possible that there is less HP, but at some point this ceases to matter at all. In the first axiom, I still played dominantly as Trace. In the second, I simply did not get out of the drone for the entire second half of the game.