A Valley Without Wind 2

There's some interesting ideas here, and it's a multiplayer game in the strictest sense of the word, but at the end of the day when you cross genres you want to blend them rather than keep them in their own awkward boxes. This game has an art style that will be off-putting to many, but I found it charming in an odd way. The different powers are interesting, but could be a little more imaginative and balance between them is basically non-existant. For the most part, the powers don't make good use of the movement- and neither do the randomly generated maps that generally end up being narrow tunnels to fall down and strange ceilings. The boss fights are slightly better by being a little more open, but overall it's very static and repetitive. The game has a metric ton of good ideas, but the implementation and integration is so poor that everything steps on each other's toes. In addition the game uses strange terminology and despite explaning itself is still pretty difficult to puzzle out. Figuring it out is kind of fun, but once you unlock the puzzle you realize that it's a lot simpler than it lets on in a bad way and it's more about getting lucky early on with a co-operative starting area than anything else. Speaking of Co-op, it is barely functional and requires a great deal of patience. Still, it's nice to have the option to be able to suffer together. To it's credit, I can't say I didn't have any fun, but bad platforming, dissonant storyline, confusing mechanics and characters and luck-based play (a decent beginning can trivialize the hardest difficulty but a bad one makes all but the easiest one impossible) as well as terrible implementation of platforming means I'm not going to be missing it.

Listen. I love this game. It's one of a kind. If you like metroidvania type games you should definitely check it out especially when it's only 2.99 right now on sale. What makes it so unique compared to other games of the kind is that every level is a tile on the turn based strategy game portion, and what level you will want to do is going to be decided by what you need to be happening strategically. What makes the game such a fun challenge is that each tile has a difficulty percentage that can vary widely depending on different factors including what is happening in the strategy portion. So, you might really need to open up a section of a map that's blocked by a tile with %500 difficulty level, but have fun with those crazy fast enemies and projectiles that knock off a third of your health, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Or, what if you can't make it through? Time to rethink your strategy, work on earning enough coins to hire mercenaries to open it up for you, tweak your character to go for speed over health, or or whatever else you can think of. The world has it's own rules and mysteries and a lot of the fun is these things slowly becoming apparent to you as you play. What I love about the game is all the variety in the side scrolling action and it's effect in making your strategy come together to win the game. I think personally this game is tied with Red Faction Guerilla for most underrated, but this probably even more for all the hate it gets from people that can't look past its subpar graphics to see the amazing gameplay and feeling of being in a coherent world with its own inherent logic all coming together in a challenging and satisfying experience. Just like other Arcen games there are lots of difficulty settings, I suggest you crank it up a bit.

Hoo boy. The original [i]A Valley Without Wind[/i] struck me as about the quality of a particularly impressive bit of shareware in the late 90s: horribly dated by modern standards and without 1980s retro charm (though maybe that just means it came a decade early), but at the very least technically competent. Animations were smooth (though obviously based on some simple figure rendering program like Poser), the control scheme worked, the story didn't make much sense but a lot of 90s shareware didn't so I could at least poke around with it and be vaguely amused. You will note that I only have 19 minutes on record with [i]A Valley Without Wind 2[/i]. I'm going to hold off on explaining why for just a moment. This sequel--if it can really be called that, since the whole [i]AVWW[/i] "broken reality" thing never made much narrative sense to begin with, and apparently intentionally so--has you running a rebellion against a big bad. Unlike the original [i]AVWW[/i], where you had followers who you would make go away for so many minutes to go gather firewood or whatever while you ran around the infinitely side-scrolling (well, infinitely transitioning, at least) map, this actually has a strategic map for you to tell your followers to go to places and do things and fight baddies. It's a nice touch, adding some level of strategic force movement rather than simply "Bob has a 57% chance of getting a carrot with a 99% risk of dying because Bob is a loser." Well, I lie. It would've been a nice touch. If it worked. If anything worked. If [i]AVWW[/i] has the quality of decent 90s shareware, [i]AVWW2[/i] has the quality of [b]bad[/b] 90s shareware, the kind that I have spent a good decade and a half trying to forget that I grew up on. The characters have gone from smoothly-animated pre-rendered 3D geometry sprites to poorly MS Paint'd cartoons that move as though they're suffing grand mal seizures. In [i]AVWW[/i], everything was made of pre-rendered sprites so it all fit together visually. Random elements in [i]AVWW2[/i] are pre-rendered, some are drawn, others are painted, and they're all mashed together in incoherent tilesets so it's actually extremely distracting. The control system went from a simple but effective "keyboard to move, mouse to aim" system in [i]AVWW[/i] to a clunky and incoherent keyboard-only system. For a comparative example, let's say you want to shoot your magical ball-o'-death at some critter at an angle: [i]AVWW[/i], point and click. [i]AVWW2[/i], hold the right and up and fire keys at the same time and pray to whatever gods you have that you timed that perfect 45° angle shot just right because 45° angles are all you're going to be doing and also if you don't do the fire button at the right time then you're just going to jerkily leap your character up and into the target in a valiant but utterly stupid attempt to smash the enemy with her face. That's how [i]Archon[/i] worked back in the late 80s. It's as though the [i]AVWW2[/i] was coded for a particularly archaic D-pad setup. Everything about it is completely retrograde from the original. It's completely unforgivable, since these people were able to make something competent, if not particularly impressive before. However, it's also unimaginably hilarious. It is so bad you just have to stop and laugh at everything. And then just stop, since there's absolutely no point to go on any further with it. There's certainly no point in actually spending money on the experience.

Question the graphical choices all you want. This game is the ActRaiser successor I never realized I wanted until I played. It's a strategy board game tightly integrated with run and gun action. The regular threats to my units and structures provided by Demonaica and summoned monsters along the way kept me alert. You need those units and those units need at least some of those structures. While I won on the default settings, know that this is a game that allows you to lose after hours and hours of investment. The duration might be the only real gripe I have. I could be biased by my analysis paralysis and the time it took to learn my first game. However, the promise of another procedurally generated map to conquer loses some of its charm for me when it takes double digit hours to finish. I realize that's probably not uncommon for the strategy genre, but I have to too many games in my Steam library to bother. As a bonus, the game also comes with the prequel. Some may enjoy the more freeform exploration, but the branching pathways contain a lot of empty, useless space. It's big for the sake of being big. I much prefer the sequel's selection of more linear playfields. The prequel also allows players to gather much more loot and micromanage their inventory. Though I may whine when my equipment breaks, I much prefer the sequel's limit of a single, temporary piece of loot that disappears when replaced. With the collection of perks, feats and mage classes tied so closely to one's progress, there's enough to gather and worry about as it is. In short, the sequel cuts out a lot of the cruft and is a better game for it. Finally, forum complaints can largely be ignored. Mouse control has been added. It allegedly makes the game too easy at the moment so I'd suggest gamepad or keyboard controls for now. Either way, it shows that Arcen listens. I'd personally also like to see more animation detail and a final sendoff when the game ends. However, it's worth playing as it is.

Still as janky as the first one. You can screw yourself in the strategy section pretty easily. He added mouse aiming but it doesn't add much. Multiplayer isn't great but with coordination you can really make something happen. Its not pretty at all, but no true roguelike is. I personally find it fun to just endlessly plow through areas so I was not disappointed at all.

It seems like a lot of effort went into it, but it's got a lot of things that just make it not very fun. There's platforming and a strategic map section, and while the platforming is okay, the strategic map has you under constant pressure to deal with threats and keep a bunch of numbers up and it's not always clear what's going on. For someone who likes quick, engaging platformers, the strategy elemtn will probably just be stressful and overwhelming, as it was for me. If you like strategy games, you'll probably think the platforming is unpleasant. The eight way aiming makes it hard to feel like you have a satisfying level of control over your character and leads to combat that is more frustrating than it is pleasantly challenging.

I gave this game as many chances as I could- 26 hours in, and I'm 100% confident I can say this is not worth playing, even if you loved the first one. Let's skip all the reasons I straight subjectively dislike it, and get right to the bugs. When the music ends and loops, there is a 2 - 5 second delay, guaranteed, everytime. I'm not keen on technical jargin, but basically, it skips that many frames. Or, in other words, it fills in what it thinks you were doing in that amount of time. If you were in a frantic fight and slightly holding right, have fun dying in a pit of lava. This actually happened to me twice! Other times it ran me into enemies and also died. There was another. Whatever, I forgot. It sucks that the adviser doesn't let you know where the citadels are to be able to infiltrate the main dungeon. This goes for any tile that it doesn't outright tell you where it is. So many times I've been one tile away from a space I needed but the game's coloring of unpurified tiles is so dark I had no idea I'd been right next to it. I would explain what purifying tiles means, but really, truly, it's not worth it. Hard pass on this one. The first game is miles better. I tried.

Very weird game. Got it for 3$ (sales <3) so I can finally play it and test it out myself. It has more cons than pros for me, and I also give it a negative review as in "I don't recommend it to almost anyone", but [b]unlike[/b] most other games nowadays, it did make me enjoy or even hooked for a while, so I kinda feel bad for reviewing this negatively, but there are too many flaws to ignore. Pros: [list] [*][b]Exclusively Skillshot-based combat[/b] Your abilities are also very bizzare abilities (imagine shooting at a straight line) [spoiler]You must enable the mouse targetting at settings, because it is not default... And I see it as mandatory to play this. I legit cannot imagine anyone enjoying playing this without mouse since you can shoot only in 3 directions and everything is so mobile and fast[/spoiler] [*][b]A dazzling amount of areas/levels[/b] [*][b]Turn-Based Strategy done [u]right[/u].[/b] The Strategic layer is the thing that sets it apart. It is a metroidvania but with a strategy map where you command your [strike]minions[/strike]recruits. So, you explore and expand the map by going to places yourself, and your recruits do everything else. Resource management exists (food as an upkeep for recruits/scrap to build buildings/morale for effectiveness of recruits) and by building and assigning each one to a tile/building, you improve these. However, this is not some "pull someone into a farm to make food".... There is combat too. Nothing fancy (which is good, being complex isn't good), but monsters spawn around certain locations, and you must defend them with your recruits. Eventually (when early-game ends), big bad boss spawns, and chases to kill everyone. That means, if you built everything onto a few adjacent tiles, then you are about to lose, since the big bad boss is invulnerable and never dies. It prevents camping/turtling. So, you expand on the explored area of yours, with those recruits building stuff left and right, while the boss perma-kills them. This makes the strategic map dynamic with the monsters too, instead of building and snowballing the game with boredom. So, the biggest pro in this game, and what gets me playing is that it got right what matters: "[b][u]Just One More Turn[/u][/b]". You see where you want to explore/tiles to unlock for your recruits, you get in, you kill everything, then onto the world map, you build stuff and move your recruits appropriately. Repeat. Super satisfying gameplay loop not gonna lie, and its short on top of that <3 [/list] Neutral: [list] [*][b]The Artstyle[/b] There are 3~5 different artstyles from what I noticed in the game, and it shows. However, I find it refreshing to see tbh, however, sometimes the artstyle clashes too harshly. So, most people will dislike it for sure, since it is not consistent and high-quality, however I like it, hence the neutral category. [*][b]The Music[/b] The main theme is 100% [b]HYPE[/b], legit feels like you are about to play an incredible game you will never forget. But aside of that, the rest of the music is ambience. But its not bad, since it sets the mood right most of the times. Hence the neutral here, because you may dislike ambience music (ofc, you can turn it off and blast your playlist in the background) [*][b]The Multiplayer[/b] Haven't played it, can't judge. But I do appreciate that the developers support full multiplayer in this game, I will definitely get into this if I find replayability to the game, aka I finish it and want to replay it. [*][b]Procedurally Generated World[/b] You may not like this, because it is not hand-crafted. Though, I didn't notice, until I read it on the store page, so that means they must have done a good job with this. Adds a lot of replayability, for those who want to replay it. [/list] Cons: [list] [*][b]The Camera[/b] Perhaps the worse camera in any 2D game. Ever gotten damaged by off-screen enemies? Yeah, happens all the time. It never zooms in or out, it just moves a little to the left or right depending on your movement. So even if it moved properly, the zoom is really really bad, its un-needed sometimes because this is a skillshot game, and I cannot see how far away my enemies are... [*][b]The Movement[/b] You feel like you play a crippled mario. You move left and right, with an meh speed, and you can jump. That's all there is to it. No high jumping, no wall-jumping, no momentum feel, no high speeds ever. The platforming legit feels worse than the original mario... [*][b]The Balancing[/b] Not gonna mention the enemies, since I did dropped difficulty a lot because I hate meat-sponges (20 seconds of hitting a fodder enemy to kill it smh wtf) The balancing, means the player class' progression. There are 5 tiers of classes in-game. That's a lot, since at least 5 classes per tier. However, I am at tier 2, and there is a certain tier 1 class, that is extremely better, than any tier 2 class... That is sad. Because when I mean tiers, I don't mean levels. 5 tiers is the endgame, and tier 2 is early to midgame... [*][b]The Sound Effects[/b] Not horrible by any means, but just meh. Incredly forgettable/generic and unsatisfying. But at least they deliver the proper sound cue or effect, and I'm glad they at least exist in this kind of game. [*][b]The Animations[/b] Horrible, bad bad bad. The enemies' is even worse, if they even have one aside of walking/running lmao. But the player's is really bad tbh. Kinda sad, but whatever, it's not a deal-breaker to me at all, since I barely see my character when im trying to focus on enemies and skillshots. [*][b]The Bossfights[/b] At least they are not boring lel. Like, they dont have invulnerable phases, where you have to wait a million years for them to be vulnerable again. No bs moves either. They just walk on a platform shooting shit at you, while fodder are trying to get you. Pretty easy and predictable tbh. Then when they lose X of their life, they teleport deeper into the dungeon. The fighting area has Y depth, unlike some tunnel-levels in the game, and the enemies attack you a lot. But it just sucks, because the bosses are weak af with predictable/slow projectiles and the monsters arent infinite, so you can just slowly kill the enemies, then focus on the boss, which is an absolute weakling everytime. And ofc, every bossfight is essentially the same, but like I said, at least its not boring because you can go at your own pace guns blazing, or turtling to victory safely. And it also refreshes the pace since its a different kind of gameplay than killing enemies and advancing in a level, or doing strategy map stuff. [*][b]The Polishing[/b] It really feels like there is a lot of content in this game, and a lot of effort was spent making it. But the game lacks polish for sure. A lot is needed. [/list] If you still want to play the game after having read all of this, [b]ENABLE THE MOUSE SETTINGS[/b], because otherwise, you will be playing with some botched d-pad control settings, where every enemy is super mobile, and you can only shoot 0/45/90 degrees... I legit cannot believe the default control settings are keyboard-exclusive... Eight-Way aiming in 2019... Every enemy that doesnt move in a straight line is highly mobile, so it is impossible to hit without mouse! If I had to take a guess, you will like this, only if you are looking to play a unique platformer/metroidvania, since no other platformer or metroidvania game, has incorporated proper/fun strategic elements like this. But if you do, with all the replayability value onto this game(multiplayer + so many different classes + procedurally generated world that is actually good), you are bound to spend a lot of time with it (20 hours+) Even if you dont plan on replaying the game (like me as of now), having experienced all the flaws above as you have seen, I still like this game, and enjoyed my time with it thus far, but I legit wouldn't recommend it to almost anyone.

Much more polished and streamlined in terms of design and art than the first installment of the series, this game has a real (although basic) story arc and character progression system based on feats and perks. The combat is vastly more tactical than in the original as well. Simply bursting head first into the landscape on Storm Dash will only result in certain and immediate death. The overworld strategy layer and side-scrolling action integrate well with each other and manipulating one vs the other (to an extend) is a lot of fun. If you like tactical side-scrolling action integrated with a basic but unique strategy layer guiding where to engage next, this game is for you! Recommended.

- Eye-bleedingly bad art direction where everything looks like 2D paper cutouts, and only right and 45 degree angle platforms exist - Atrocious "level design" (non-existent would be a better word for it) - Uninspired platforming gameplay - Technicolor text strewn everywhere - Achievements popping up every few seconds, mostly for things that can't be properly labeled achievements (by the 3 hour mark, I had unlocked nearly half of the game's 200 achievements) - Hodge-podge of random ideas that doesn't come together into a cohesive whole Ok, the positives: + Quite relaxing (albeit somewhat melancholy) soundtrack that may be the overall highpoint of the game, in terms of quality + Overworld design has better overall art direction than the platforming segments + Interesting dystopic story and environment (unfortunately the writing quality is a bit lacking)

I actually enjoyed the first AVWW. I was abysmally terrible at it, but I enjoyed it. This game seemed like an enormous departure from the first game to the point where it's hard to believe they're sequels. The old one focused on evasive hit-and-run mouse-aimed projectile based combat with lots and lots of variations and possibilites for what kind of projectile you can use. As a side goal, there was a settlement you could build up and add things to. This game disables mouse aiming by default, restricts the evasion and projectile variety greatly, and send the construction/City Sim aspect into a larger role. Graphically, it looks somewhat better, but there's so much different. Too much to enjoy, if you liked the first game.

I usually take the time to play a game for at least a few hours before I decide I know enough to justify a recommendation. This time a little over a single hour was enough time for me. This game is a platformer / strategy hybrid, which kind of reminds me of an old SNES game called "Act Raiser". Much like in Act Raiser, in "A Valley Without Wind 2" you split your game time between the strategic "map view" interface, where you have to think, plan and prioritize, and the platforming/action based "area purification" phase. The game offers a variety of characters to choose from. I still haven't wrapped my head around the mechanics and differences between those characters, their classes or whatever it's based on, but it does look promising when considering replayability value, as it looks like it could be interesting to try the game again using a different type of character. I'll update and post comments as I accumulate more game time, as long as I learn anything worth adding, but so far, the game does look like it's going to drain quite a lot of my spare time. :D

This game keeps trying to lure me in with some good looking ideas but they are full of constant bad design choices. Enemies are NOT fun to fight and are not rewarding enough to make it worth your while. Bosses are boring and the overworld is unbalanced as hell. Avoid like the plague.

Nice Retro Fun Exploration/Survival/RPG. Nice interface, spells and skills. Little quippy humor by Devs make it fun as well. VERY underrated underappreciated game do yourself a favor and pick this one up. 8.5/10 EDIT: People talk about the VwoW2 not having mouse controls like the first. While I tried it to see why the Devs did this, I too was unsatisfied. All controls are REBINDABLE so keep that in mind before giving up.

My second pick for Love Indies Week. How come noboty talks about this game ? They talked about the first one, saying it was addictive and that was a bad thing. It received a lot of bad press. So the creator decided to make a second game and give it freely to the owners of the first game. This game is a mix of platformer and turn based strategy. A very innovative mix. You choose the level you're gonne try to beat next according to strategic choices. You also have to recruit and manage allies who produce ressources. This game really deserve more love and attention. (Unpopular opinion : I also liked the first game).

Hey everyone and this is my review about the game! This is a Platform game. [h1]Interface/Menu/Settings[/h1] The Main menu music is the best of all. Even better than the game itself! You are able to play with the controller. You are able to change the controls on the keyboard/controller. There are many resolution sizes. You can play in fullscreen or windowed mode. There is a music volume slidebar available. There is a sound volume slidebar available. There is an ambience sound volume slidebar available. There are many difficulty settings and there are 2 different difficulty settings Combat and strategic. Able to skip the tutorial. [h1]About the game.[/h1] You start off in a blank white area. Where you are going to select a "hero". There is hearts, attack power and ammo. Ammo is needed to call your "Super power". Once you have selected a hero you can give it a name. Once you have spawned on the castle, You can change and choose your perks here. You can also choose a different Element attribute. Try them all out before you go on. I would recommend FAST (DPS) spells, so you can steamroll through the levels. Once you are on the strategic world map. You will see a few things that might be confusing. You will see yellow characters, these are your people. Each turn they will gather resources or capture new units. You can only place them on the light tiles. There is also a danger level, If there is no protection and nearby dark area's the danger level will be higher then in other area's. You can move your units on top of the light tiles and they will perform action in the next turn. You can do all light tiles without doing a turn. Starting on a flicker tile and reaching the end on the level will end your turn.. If you have died, your troops will get weaker and will perform less damage against enemies. (This also counts for multiplayer). Most of the time you will just ignore all of the monsters anyway in the levels, but you could find some loot to make it easier. Confusing game at start. It takes time to actually start liking the game or to understand it. Music is decent. Graphics are a bit meh, but you shouldn't pay attention to it all too much. Multiplayer is IP BASED. Servers are dead So YOU HAVE TO HOST! [h1]Other things.[/h1] i have played Valley without wind 1 and 2. But this one is soo much better. I have seriously no clue what i am doing in valley without wind 1. ------------------- I Give this game a 7/10

It's been forever since I played this game. I was one of the folks that bought AVWW the first and got this one for free because Arcen realized that the original was too inconsistent to be worth completing. I remember the side-scroller of the first one being more fun than the rebuilt one, and liked the strategic exploration of this one better, but the side scroller parts being pretty terrible. I ultimately decided Arcen's games runs on good vibes, but their actual gameplay is godawful. Anyway, I mostly decided to write this review because I was trawling through my hidden games to see if any were worth salvaging, and those vibes pulled me back to the store page to read reviews. They reminded me that Against the Storm managed to pull off the formula it seemed like this was trying for. The inner game is a Settlers-style resource manager w/ quest elements. The outer is a choose-your-own-adventure style fog of war. The whole thing is wrapped up in a rogue-lite, which makes it a nice thing to pick up, win or lose, and keep going. That's a lot of the charm of games that try to make the formula work--and what I think was missing in both AVWW 1 and 2.

Very similar yet very different than its predecessor, AVWW2 is a unique and fun game. The platforming and weapon/equipment systems from the first game have been streamlined and polished up, but the overworld has been transformed into a sort of turn-based strategy game. The mix between these two modes keeps it moving along throughout each "world". It's a little hard to fully grasp all the concepts at first, but once you get a feel for it, it all falls into place. There was a lot of initial forum hate upon release, which was pretty unfounded IMO, but quickly addressed by the awesome developers, understandably begrudgingly.

-Funny little game, something different for a change- Like AVWW1 people either like this one or hate it. Unlike the first part this game is more focused and a match plays faster. You don't have to delve in randomized dungeons for hours to get achievements or unlockables although there might be persons who did just that. Also the graphical style is similar but not that awful, improved you might say. I was worried reading about the setting and how that might translate into gameplay but it's working nicely. You play on a strategic board against an immortal enemy and his minions. Your units run around turnbased and grab ressources or build tile improvements while the enemy hunts them down. Parallely you dispatch your PC into worthwhile areas to play jump and shoot. If you liked AVWW1 or enjoy jump'n'shoots along with light strategy give this game a try - if you hated AVWW1 then you don't like this one either I guess.

While I do have a soft spot in my heart for indie games that experiment with genre, i really just could not get into this game. It's ugly, the platforming is clunky, the procedural generation leads to cases where you can get stuck in unpredictable places, the strategy layer is impossible to parse, and the combat is really tedious.

An ambitious mess with pretty ugly graphical style, and fantastic soundtrack. Arcen do very interesting things, and while this is not exactly the most playable thing they have done, it is still pretty interesting. At the moment I do not remember what makes it different from the first one but hey, from what I recall they come together.

[h1] DISCLAIMER: This is a first impressions review, and NOT a full review [/h1] A Valley Without Wind 2 is a game developed and published by Arcen Games, LLC and is the sequel to A Valley Without Wind The game offers some pleasant graphics and graphical style, although some ugly glitches here and there, it is pleasant all the same However, the story is a little generic, but better than nothing, as well as the gameplay is a platformer type of game but also a bit generic, as well as quests are more or less generic. The game has some really sub-par voice acting, nothing stellar. This game is almost all generic... A Valley Without Wind 2 is a generic game but fun nonetheless [h1] RECOMMENDED :) [/h1] [b] REVIEW SOURCES: [/b] [list] [*] None

Just not good, a too much mix gender of everything... for me at least, could even complete one run...

Very different from the first one and all in all not as good but still good fun in its own way. Definitely play with the sounds on the music is super good.

As the movie "Night of the Templar" deserved a sequel, this licence deserved one as well, and oh god it got one! This game is truely a perl. It has few good ideas in it, but in the meantime, it looks/feels and flows terribly wrong(like the first one, except imho it is probably even worse). If you have some taste, and are able to get to 2nd degree, maybe try this. This licence truelly deservces its place in the history of video games, and people who have worked on it maybe need to write a book or to do some consulting, because they have things to share. Playing this game should be illegal, getting into that is close to taking psychoactive substances.

A Valley Without Wind 2 is an odd game, but very fun! It is an RPG kinda... with some overworld strategy mixed in. Try it out, you will not regret it! Beyond all that Arcen Games is one of the best developers there is! constant updates! very responsive! and so creative! I own all of their library and I fully recommend all their games!

Could not get into this game as much as I got into the first one. This one feels more limited and the combats slightly changed for the worst. Edit: The above was my original review. After not playing the game for a couple years I gave it another shot. The game is solid, may not have the best platforming or boss battles but it keeps you busy and engaged otherwise. It's a different styled game than the first one, you have to respect the differences to really appreciate it.

This is a really weird game, in lots and lots of ways, but I loved it. Simple action platforming, seemingly complicated metagame that still comes together in your head as you go. Liked the first one, but it never really gelled for me. This one did. It's an insane, weird game, replete with bizarrely implemented systems, and it's a blast. Oh, and turn VSync off - makes it choppy as hell for some reason.

Much like the original in terms of uber dev support, AVWW2 is a much more refined and linear game, which in some ways is bad, but in more ways is better than the first! Controls are iffy, but no longer game breaking (thanks to player feedback)

The usability in this game is horrible. It's just so confusing and awkward.

Well, that's enough for me at 22 minutes in. I *just* started playing the original and have already put in 10 hours. It's not perfect, but it's *fun* and even exploring the game world and it's mechanics. For the sequel, it seems the devs wanted to change everything for the sake of change and experimentation. And it is decidedly much less enjoyable. Perhaps if I hadn't played the original at all, but no... this game is too much of a mess. It appears to want to be a more straight up platformer and has a control scheme to match, encouraging you to use a gamepad over KB and mouse as in the original. In doing so, I can't help but feel that most of the gameplay and mechanics that made the original fun have been removed or extremely stripped down. For example, via spells and enchants, there was a significant amount of character customization you could do in the original. Granted, I've had only a brief look, but being able to use only one item at a time in the sequel really limits things. I'm guessing here, but I think that the devs, or perhaps too many players, found the original *too* complex and daunting and that explains the more limited gameplay. Personally, I much prefer the complexity. Yes, even the unusual "graph" based dungeon map that they needed to take a couple of help pages to explain. It worked, and it was a good idea on their part. So, skip this game unless you find it on a really steep sale price. The original is worth your time regardless of sale price. It's looks dated, but it runs great even on old machines, and is a lot more fun.

One of the things I liked about the first game was how easy it was to mod the textures. I had a bit of fun with that. This game doesn't even seem to have that going for it :(

The first one was better than this one. The overworld is the most confusing nonsense ever created. The controls for aiming are the worst i have ever used. Gamepad needed to even play because the keyboard controls are so bad, mouse aiming is a lie. The movement controls are decent but make no attempt at simulating physics you are magically floaty. The enemy A.I. is predictable and easily exploited. The spells are varied and so are the monsters. The game throws acheivements at you like crazy, some of them you have no idea what you did to earn them. Not a deep plot, kind of repetative. For all my complaints i still got my moneys worth out of the game and would have to recommend it if you ran out of other sidescrollers to play and can stand bad controls (you get used to them)

The mix of platformer and TBS isn't for everyone, although you always can set either arcade or strategy difficulty to newbie level and enjoy it. Especially good with a joystick but work nice with keyboard too. What else? Nice looking graphics and wonderful music. And you definitely should try it with your friends!

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, damn it Arcen Games! Valley without Wind was terrible - with clashing graphics and horrible animations. Valley without Wind 2 is just the same. It's creative, but not fun. Arcen Games is amazing when it comes to creating game systems, but they need somebody to sit down with them and work on visuals, a good user interface, and make the game systems work together flawlessly.

It feels more like a step back from the original. The graphics have improved slightly, but not nearly enough to cover the poor play control and reduced customization options. More of an action game than the RPG that was the first one and not interesting enough to warrant a recommendation.

Somehow worse than it's prequel, AVWW2 is somehow both tactically challenging and immensely boring. Don't buy it. Buy the first one, try it, and then still don't buy this one.

An ambitious concept that never really makes anything out of itself. It's cute, but lacks any real climax or great moments. Just sort of a stream of "eh" gameplay.

A poorly made game, with half-boiled ideas gracelessly executed. Lacks intuitive gameplay and ideas, as well as the capacity to hook the player on the premise of the narrative or gameplay.

Neat game and an interesting approach for a sequel. Instead of pushing the open ending chaos of the original there is a lot more focus and smaller worlds, but in turn a lot more strategy is put into the overworld game. Some people might not enjoy the lower focus on loot, but much of it felt reduntant in the original. All in all a fun game, and a nice streamlining of the original concepts.

This game tries to innovate on its predecessor, but fails in almost every regard. The most aggrevating of these failures is the pandering to gamepad and console players. The mouse aim has been removed from the game because it gave mice users an unfair advantage. In a single player game. Seriously, if it isn't AI Wars, stay away from everything else this company creates.

Controls are bad! The Gameplay didn't improve. The Ideas of the game are good, but the way it's developed is sad. DON'T BUY! Please consider following my curator page for more reviews. Thank you! https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40593904/

AVOID AT ALL COSTS! The first game is great..but this is a complete and utter cashgrab, half implemented controls, shitty ai, and horrible..horrible controls ...oh and the controls are horrendus... did i meantion the controls?!

Avoid at any cost. That's all i need to say, don't accept this even for free. It speaks volumes of what value Arcen put on this game by giving the original game for free in an attempt to sell this nonsense.

Отличная игра,смесь стратегического жанра,платформера,немного РПГ.Исследуем открытый мир,исследуем пещеры,пирамиды,побеждаем боссов,вообщем выглядит потрясающе,эллементы платформера очень похожи на Castlevania или Zelda,добавьте к этому очень хороший саундтрек,кооперативную игру,прокачку своеобразную,и нелинейность,как сюжета как такового,так и игрового мира,включая сам континент ну и конечно сами локации,то есть все это случайно генерируемо,и да,спасибо АТСЕ за то что рассказал про такую замечательную игру 10\10

This is a shitty, awful sequel to A Valley Without Wind, which removed mouse control from the game and made it unplayable. Get the original and steer clear of this piece of shit.

ok this game is pretty good for the price given you have a gamepad. Face it mouse and keyboard Vs Gamepad ...who cares its about fun ...and this game is fun.

Alright... first off... I did NOT play the first game. However, after watching my friend play and log hours on it, it looked like a nifty Metroid-like platformer. So, we decided to try the second one... Starting off, you are a person... who is in an apocalyptic like world. Now, there is not much variation here at all... I mean come on, there's only health and attack? Not much of an add-on there... Anyways, after starting a character you pick what mage class you are (why are there only mages? Is this Harry Potter on Dooms Day....?) There are NOT very many choices for the mages either and you're stuck with the same boring skills unlike the first one where you have a lot of options. Next, Satan is in front of you... Demonica (very original! What's next? The Angel Angelica!) He tells you he wants you to recruit for him now that you have passed you're training. Now, who knows what training you had to go through, but it doesn't seem like much... Now, Demonica has blessed you with immortality. This is shown by a purple/blackish shade moving weird object behind you. So, unlike the first game, when you die you keep your character. Sounds good right? You can now bond with your character. You have that emotional connection. You can now freaking dry hump the screen and pretend that you are ONE with your character... however... this isn't a good thing as I will mention soon. Next, you leave the place and you find out you're actually a spy with the "resistance"... again not original at all... LE SIGH. You rebels want to defeat Demonica by recruiting more people and then using a technological building that can actually hurt him and you can fight him. Wait, no you're on a world map! Much like Super Mario World and similar to games like Civ V...you now can move around the cells and travel to different lands! It is explained now that you personally CANNOT recruit people. They are scared of you because you have Demonica's purple/blackish blob thing showing you're immortality and allegience. What must you do? You must get these world map NPCs on your side, who will then recruit the people for you by standing there doing nothing on the cell. Now, these cells are terrible. This is TERRIBLE idea and terribly made... like Age of Empires Civ V + ABSOLUTE DOG CRAP. You start off, you have a farm. Your people on the map need food to live. These people are just 2D stick figures with no personality, no cool skills, and "life" that is only 1-9. This life is used to fight world monsters who also have life... every time they fight, you lose number of life points to the number of life points an enemiy has. Simple right? So, you build a clinic now... one guy has to keep farming for food for your new recruits. The clinic lets you heal life points. Alright, sounds good. So far (besides me mentioning CRAP) you would think this is a unique, cool twist on a platformer + Civ V like elements. WRONG. Every time you "purify" a cell, a turn ends for you. In 14 turns, Demonica comes out as well as monsters every consecutive X amount of turns. Well, you keep purifying, awesome! We are Team Good Guy Terraria now! But wait, Demonica is now out. No biggie, all you have to do is dodge Demonica, who moves only 3 spaces a turn. WRONG. I found that sometimes Demonica magically moves more than 3 somehow... after counting 5 spaces away or so , the next turn my people STILL Die. Yes, Demonica 1 hits them all. Now, here comes the REALLY stupid part of this aspect of the game. When Demonica goes through a space with buildings you make, he destroys that building and you CANNOT rebuild it. So, when your farm is gone... it is gone. I thought this would an easy fix... farm is "grassland farm" so if there is an empty grassland I can build a farm, right? NOPE NOT AT ALL IN THIS CRAZY BACKWARDS LAND OF JUJUBEEZBANANABOATS! You CANNOT. Like what in the hell? BUT WAIT. I found when you go to the Arctic cells, you CAN build farms. What in the actual duck mcfreaking hell is that? Farmlands... nope, the soil is TOO good. Arctic... hell yeah! Antartica is the best place for crops! What is this!?!?! Furthermore, you cannot build buildings on anything unless there are already pre-existing buildings there... which is also dumb? Remember when I said that having the same character throughout the game was VERY BAD... well here is why... So, you are like wow this is like a RPG ... minus the fact that you don't get to customize SHEET with consideration to the skills... also you do not even get to wear cool armor or look like a giant rainbow bunny like most RPGs. Now, you level up because your friend tells you to... because monsters level up every so often. After leveling up, you do not get any cool skills or anything... you get perks. Some perks are useful like more HP... others are well... completely useless... like literally making you into a glass cannon? Nothing works better than having crazy high attack with -5000 HP and defense! Anyways... this MAY be a bug for an online game me and my friend were playing, but after leveling up and getting perks we ended up dying. While trying to further my experience in the game, suddenly we lost all of our perks from dying... You CANNOT undo this? Like this is literally the most annoying thing! Once you beat a level up cell it disappears. So, you CAN exhaust all the level ups and then die... and be stuck at level 1 yourself for the entirety of the game? WTF IS THIS !? DEMON SOULS!? Seriously, I HOPE this is a bug because otherwise this game is like a 12 year old pre-pubescent troll face kid who spends his time on the 3DS trading Pokemon while asking his mother why he has hair growing on his genitals whilst Uncle Bad Touch is watching him... now if you like this game you may say, "Well, that sounds kind of hot!" to which I say...NO IT ISN'T YOU PEDOPHILE MORON GAMER FREAK! ITS WEIRD AND JUST PLAIN AWKWARD! Now, onto the biomes... this made little to no sense AT ALL. Now, when you first try to go to a Lava biome or an Arctic biome, you are told that it is too hot or too cold respectively and that you must take out the tower associated to each biome that will fix this...somehow? Well, one would figure that the tower to take down a lava place would be near the lava right? Well, wrong, because you cannot go into any lava areas without dying over there. Well, where the hell is the lava tower thing you ask? OH I KNOW! IT IS LITERALLY SURROUNDED BY THE ARCTIC AREA! How the HELL does this make sense to anyone? Why would there be 10 cells of arctic, then ONE lava cell in the middle of them all? How does this even work? It also works vice-versa... so POORLY constructed layouts here. The final problem with this game is the storyline too... they make it seem like there SHOULD be a story line with dialogue boxes popping up in every biome and when you kill a boss... but there isn't really. All I hear is, "DEMONICA WANTS YOU DEAD. SO DOES LILITH. DON'T WORRY I AM STRONGER THAN THIS PERSON AND YOU SHOULDN'T LIVE! I MAKE YOU DEAD BWAHAHA!" ... in which I reply... SCREW YOU SPECIAL ATTACK THREE TIMES AND YOU DEAD BOOIII. The "bosses" were no stronger than normal mobs... they were just humanoids with magic spells easy to dodge... like literally this was like Harry Potter again but with half-retarded adults who are mindless drones babbling about how the trailer park smells of fish when no one there likes sushi in the first place. When you do enter biomes, your buddy will always dialogue box about things to you or your character will recall things like, "humanity was once so great, now it is destroyed." "I remember this place being tough when going through training." That is about it... you learn little to nothing about anything. THE ONLY thing this game has going for it is the platforming fighting that is similar to the first game... In conclusion... WHAT THE HELL IS THIS AND WHO MADE IT? BIZZARO FROM SEALAB?

Can't say I would recommend this game, the first one is great... The Second though feels like they took a look at the first one and decided to take a step back and shiat on it.

I really liked the first game, but as I liked the 2D platforming fighting with tons of spells to choose from the new game is a big disappointment! The controlls are just so bad now that you mostly struggle with them when fighting, instead of struggeling with the enemys. It's like you would play a halve retarded character... Got play the first one if you like challangeing platform fighting and loot grinding, new one is bad...