7.5 hours played
Written 6 days ago
first off, let me say that my low hours is a result of me downloading a 100% save file to just have the level select on classic mode, ive played about 12 levels so far. ive also played about 40 hours of the first game.
also, let me get some QoL suggestions out of the way:
1.) turn auto-zoom to high so the camera is fixed at max zoom. lets you react to more things and saves you nausea
2.) if you don't care about the story/hubs and all the fluff in this one, just download a save or get the classic mode unlocked mod.
3.) [b] i strongly suggest getting the fp2 rebalanced mod at some point.[/b] as is the case with the first game, lilac is the strongest, fastest, most technical character here, to the point where the other characters are pretty lame. the mod changes things so that, for example, carol's rolling actually functions and gains speed on slopes, and it brings the rest of the cast up to snuff. the rest of the review is written assuming this mod is installed.
ive always had a fondness for the first game since i played it as a kid (it came out 11 years ago), but playing it again over the years i find it to be a pretty lacking game for many complicated design reasons i cant fully go into here. mainly, bad physics, only lilac had interesting movement, the level design was suffocating and rarely gave you anything to do with height or speed, and it failed to blend the action elements since you run past all the enemies, and if you tried to slow down and play it like megaman, its too spacey to be interesting.
but freedom planet 2, against my expectations, is what the first game could have been, and might become one of my favourite platformers of all time, alongside sonic CD.
however [b]this game is not sonic[/b]. if you want to do white-bread novelty platforming in-between watching the game play itself like 3&K or mania, you will quickly eat shit and die in this game. if you want the flowing sandbox/obstacle course of physics expression like 2 or CD, you will find some stuff here to like, but ultimately FP physics just don't work on that level. you can slowly walk around loops, quarter pipe jumps are incredibly finnicky, at high speeds some slope jumps can bug out and make you instantly lose all velocity, and a lot of the stuff you can do in sonic just isn't possible here.
but this doesn't matter as much as you may think.
what this game is, is like the 'devil may cry' to sonics 'final fight'. the latter is more pure, classical, endlessly deep in its simplicity. the former is made by and for complete crackheads.
you have multiple characters with wide and technical kits, with almost every action doubling as a momentum interaction, and a combat utility. the stages, unlike the first game, are consistently open, multi-layered, and have a continuum of possible routing instead of isolated branching paths. the levels are also immensely dense with hazards, enemies that actually threaten your movement as obstacles, and fun gimmicks that interact with your physics and flow into platforming possibilities.
the end result is a game where there is at almost every moment, interesting decision making, opportunities for deep skill expression, endlessly variable challenge and routing, and buttons to press.
if you want to flow and move forward, the levels are constantly branching into numerous hazards and solutions. if you want to mess around and pull off stunts, the levels are massive playgrounds (mostly)
i tried some of the later levels, and they are the trenches bro. it's like im playing sonic and battle garegga at the same time, and its so fun that they feel like 5 minutes instead of 15. if you can't guard and you can't schmove, you will get filtered and only clear them by the skin of your nuts after 20 grueling minutes. for this reason you may want to consider gitting gud at freedom planet 1 first, because i couldn't imagine playing through some of these warzones without already being fluent in lilac. this game is so open that a newer player could get by with babys first jumps but then hit a brick wall (as some reviewers seemingly did), so make an effort to experiment and really learn what you're doing while you play.
those longer ""puzzle"" levels are a complaint often made, and i fully expected to find them miserable, but i didn't at all. they may have backtracking, but usually its justified with some sort of different challenge on the way back, and the rooms themselves in these levels are still very open with a lot to engage with.
look up a speedrun if you want to get an idea of some the problem levels. they are definitely too long, but keep in mind at least imo they're not the drags that you may expect. even if you end up hating them, there are so many levels in this game that you're bound to find a good number that you like.
overall, the game is platforming bliss if you prefer the expressive and interpretive sort, over the more prescriptive spike-tunnel sort. its like the freeform nature of a western platformer meeting japanese arcade tightness and chaos.
as a campaign, its probably quite bloated, and it wouldn't work as a single-run game. but as a collection of levels, its an insane amount of dense, high quality gameplay that you could pick at for dozens of hours. 100% get this if you think you can click with it.
