Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2

[DANGERMAN]

I'm guessing at the tags because I assume it's on everything. 

 

It's more 8bit Castlevania style action, and it's very good. It's a lot longer than the original, and they seemed to have listened and altered the characters a little. Zangatsu has returned but he's altered a little, in the first game it amazed me how useless he was considering he was the main character, here he's immediately more useful with that really getting doubled down on later on. 

 

Dominique is back too, she has a better jump and attack reach than Zangatsu. She has a bounce move that let's you access certain areas if you're good with it, I'm not. Her spells are probably better kept as support. She can heal people with the right item, and if you can find the rare pick up she can also resurrect your party members. 

 

The two new characters are Robert, a sniper with a terrible jump and a weak, but occasionally very useful long distance attack. He can co prone and bounce off walls, again useful for shortcuts. He also has a really powerful special attack but it's restricted in range. If his health was better he'd be really useful. 

 

The most useful character is probably Haichi, who I'll describe as a mech. He's got the most health, can hover, destroys spikes when he stands on them and isn't affected by ice. His basic attack is pretty hefty and his only special is that he can go invincible, so you can sit him in front of bosses and beat the fuck out of them for as long as your magic lasts 

 

Curse of the Moon 2 seems to me a lot easier than the first game, maybe I'm wrong and I'm just more practiced at this sort of game again but I don't think I lost a life until stage 3. It's a lot longer, which is no bad thing, more inventive. My understanding is that there's a false ending which sounds a bit of a twat, but having not seen it I can't really judge it 

 

Really enjoying it though, I was playing it at release but put it down, glad to be back playing it 

[DANGERMAN]

Just to say, the false ending doesn't work the way I thought. You end up with an unlocked chapter, possibly more after that, but it's significantly harder than what went before. I don't know if you have to do the whole thing again, but I have done the first 2 levels. You keep certain aspects of the previous playthrough but your health and magic increases are gone. Now you have to use your extra characters to get to previously inaccessible areas of the early levels 

[DANGERMAN]

This is really long to complete properly. After you do chapter 2, which is basically the whole game again with the characters you've unlocked. Chapter 3 is the same thing, with different characters in some cases, hunting for power ups. 

 

I suppose at this point you should be an expert at these levels but they aren't staying with me so they're difficult every time, the bosses included in that. I think I'm going to have to sit with a guide to find all the power ups