Guacamelee 2 Review

I played the first Guacamelee game a long time ago, but I do remember really liking it. I’m pretty conflicted on this sequel, though. The main thing I was looking forward to was the co-op mode, but this game is not co-op friendly. There’s just too much tricky platforming that ends up falling on only one player to do. My wife gave up after the first hour, because she felt like she wasn’t contributing. And it’s a good thing she dropped out, because the difficulty ramps up very early on. I get that you want to provide a challenge for people who’ve already perfected the first game, but it often feels like too much. Arena fights grow increasingly convoluted with monsters and hazards, and a lot of the platforming sections require split-second use of several skills at once.

To the game’s credit, it never feels impossible. I’m pretty used to difficult platformers and only got stuck in a retry cycle a few times. Even then, it was usually an arena fight that was giving me trouble versus a platforming section. The combat feels fine when you’re up against smaller enemies and manageable crowd sizes, but the flaws in the controls become all too apparent as the difficulty scales. It doesn’t help that the dimension-swapping power—which came pretty late in the first game as far as I recall—is introduced almost immediately and relied on heavily for the sequel. A typical platforming challenge ends up looking like this: jump, swap dimensions, grab an eagle hook, swap dimensions, grab another eagle hook, power dash, uppercut, swap dimensions, etc.

While it can be rewarding to execute these command chains successfully, it’s also annoying how frequently moments like this pop up. I could never decide if I should feel empowered for navigating a difficult room or annoyed at the developers for putting so many hair triggers in there in the first place. At times, you wonder if maybe the purpose of this game is just to troll you. The Guacamelee series gets a lot of flak for its humor that relies mostly on memes and references. In Guacamelee 2, it was still lame but didn’t bother me that much… until you find a cave where the NPCs literally complain about things people said about the first game. It came across as incredibly tacky and served as one final reminder that the first game is the better experience overall.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.