Okay, I marathon'd to finish this last night and I'm still collecting my thoughts. One I know I definitely feel to be a fact, and thats that this game needed another 3 or 4 months of dev time. Its unfinished, and no I won't accept "ah thats the empty feeling of Travis' existence that Suda is trying to communicate!" answers so STEP DOWN, PRIVATE. Theres lots of stuff that feels odd and empty and since we also have hacked data thats even more relevant:
- There should have been an overworld. Especially if its the same city as the first game, some edits here and there with new buildings and creative use of them should have been in place. Yes well done on cutting out the requirement to pay before fighting Rank Battles, but the game-world is fractured and completely meaningless without being able to see how the Pizza Batt conglomerate has changed everything.
- Anything to do with the bike. That... segment before fighting Ryuji. Not just the rubbish game of Chicken before, I mean the drive to the location. Was that a fragment of the cut overworld? I don't understand why that was left in. It was just... nothing.
- Severe shortage of weapons. Naomi only has 2 weapons the whole game? You had Henry and Shinobu's weapons with their added quirks, but after playing with them, why didn't they become purchaseable for Travis to use?
- Why is the Scorpion Hunting game not 8-bit? Was this just directly ripped from the previous game? I don't understand. It feels so out of place being the only job thats not 8-bit.
Theres lots of other stuff as well, ranging from the small amount of Revenge Missions with no added plot that we sort of now know was another cut, but still, I have other issues with the game but...
I loved it. And its made an impression as a seriously probably the best Wii game I've played just behind Mario Galaxy. Combat is just fun, especially when dual wielding comes into play. When the game clicks with really good bosses like Margaret, Alice, Ryuji and more, thats when the game is firing on all cylinders. Epic locations, brilliant backing music.
But... then at other times I'd hate the game for completely failing to keep this quality up throughout. The robot battle with Charlie Macdonald was awful stuff, if they'd actually just kept the normal gameplay but with the robot model instead of Travis and the city minaturised as the arena, that could have been seriously fun instead of the shitfest QTE battle we got instead. Chloe Walsh battle seemed completely broken as I just cut her down with nothing hitting me at all, Letz Shake was just an exercise in patience which was boring, and while I loved everything visually and the theme of Vladimir, the actual battle just didn't do it justice. I also suffered from being trapped in Alice's knockdown filled with sabers endless loop as well, so that bit is deffo slightly broken. Truthfully, the game feels like they had some really great solid ideas for 4-5 new rank battles and then just half-arsed the rest to make a full sequel. Which is a real shame.
8-bit games were great, and the training exercises were some real old skool NES masochism. For anyone stuck on the last Attack Power one, I advise switching to a Classic Controller. I did, just for that one minigame, and it made the world of difference being able to tap B instead of squish in a trigger.
So yes, ultimately, I had a great experience. It washed the bad taste of Madworld out of my mouth and is probably my 2nd favourite Wii game. This is probably down almost solely to the Margaret/Reaper rank battle. With that location, the awesome music playing and some really fluid dodging and attacking is when the game clicked for me. If not very hard, it was still a genuinely fun fight. Which is something I can't say for at least half of the game.
♫ Well you're a god damn philistine.. ♫
