NG2 is definitely the easiest of the NES trilogy, yeah - only the deliberately mild Ryukenden III is more approachable. Big guns, plentiful ammo, easy wallclimbing and a noticeably low damage scale take a lot of pressure off. And on top of all that, you're coming in straight from clearing the much stiffer challenge of NG1.Shoryukev wrote:I played NG2 for a little bit saturday, is it just me or is it really easy compared to the first one? I mean, in my first time playing it I made it all the way to 4-2 without dying once. What the...? Here's a few first impressions;
The enemy movement speed is definitely slower than the first game, I noticed even the eagles seemed to be drenched in molasses (also harder to get them to fly off-screen since they have less momentum at their slower speed). What the...? There were a handful of recycled enemies I was anxiously waiting for them to throw something at me, but here they don't (most notable for me was the enemy I call pumpkin-head). The shadow ninja powerup where copies of you follow you around was kinda cool.....but it makes you feel too strong IMO. What the...? The boss battles were the best part for me, they mix things up and were generally pretty awesome. I definitely noticed the sword hitbox being smaller and more finicky as BIL mentioned, but it wasn't a huge issue (still an issue though). Seems knockback from getting hit was lessened, I got hit several times and took my eyes away from the screen thinking I'd surely be knocked into a pit....but wasn't. The cinematics have taken a step up, but they seem too long and often happen both at the end of an act and then also at the beginning of the next act.....I lost interest in them. Also, what the...?
Ended up dying a couple times on act 5 and getting a game over or two on the 5-3 boss. The boss wasn't incredibly hard or anything, I just didn't feel all that compelled to continue. I looked up a playthrough video just now and noticed there are 7 acts in this one...maybe I need to get to act 7 before I judge it. Chances are it could ramp up significantly by act 7 and give me the challenge I have a newfound craving for.
That said, its final Act is a significant spike, particularly the last stage which is long, packs some nasty jumps and won't refill your health at the boss rush (two out of three bosses here are reasonably tricky... I think the first is underrated actually, with his aggressive movement and shooting; quite pleased with the no-hit kill in my replay). I think you'll be pleased with the endgame.
even mean, though?!
Finally got a copy and dug straight into the excellently tweaked Hard mode you'd mentioned. Nice and arcadey! Will post in more detail on the weekend... suffice to say for now, this is definitely on my OGB sidescrolling action shortlist.
Just finished watching the replay - a pleasure, both your authoritative playing and the opportunity to re-evaluate the game from safe distance. HD truly reaches some masterful heights of level, enemy and weapon design in its latter three stages... as much as I too swore "never again" when it was done, I remember all too clearly why I got into it.
That room is so much nervier than it looks, imo. Blizzard might seem to ensure a freebie, but with the tricky footing and the ever-present spiders' horrible way of springing from pits (and ofc, the glitch...), I'm on red alert while picking off the frozen Lyers.
Did you see the raspberry coming, or was it an 11th hour scare? Truly the stuff of 1LC nightmares... in my run I waited for both to go offscreen, then used psychic waves of sheer murderous hatred* to keep 'em there while I speedkilled the Geno and got the fuck out. I'm still not sure how the Dags work, exactly - they seem pretty consistent about returning the way they left, but I was most definitely expecting a six o' clock instakill even as I made my move.
---due to the rapid switches to/from menu-diving. It's probably less jarring to the player with a firm grasp of the action, but still. If I were designing a powerup-driven NES/FC game I'd probably avoid this by forcing the player to just scroll through powers with the Select key while unpaused. Or even making Pause leave unchanged view of the action, though this risks undermining the twitch challenge. (Edited to add: I'm a bit curious how either option would affect HD's difficulty)