BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I consider Solomon's Key 2 to be superior if only because the Lolo games seem to have an element of trial and error; there's no way of knowing if the heart piece you collect is going to give you shots until you collect it, at least not an obvious one I could tell. Solomon's Key 2 has none of that and it's a pure logic and deduction game from the start of a level.
• each heart piece is flagged to give shots or not and you have to figure out which one in the level is which
Yeah, it's the latter. This is basically why I say Solomon's Key 2 is the more polished game.
Lolo has three key elements that might be important to solving certain puzzles, which you can't gauge simply by looking at the room:
- Which heart panels give you shots
- Where an enemy will reappear if you destroy it and block off its location
- Which way the water current leads
I think all of those are inexcusable for a game of this type, and definitely the one thing Solomon's Key 2 got over it. I also think they could all easily be remedied and the game wouldn't be any easier for it, the puzzles of Lolo 3 would still be hair-pulling brain teasers. Definitely a good excuse to give those games a much welcome remake (alongside the regional differences).
Overall though, the fact that the puzzles in Solomon's Key 2 are generally much easier, and individual bits of a puzzle can often be guessed simply by realising there is only one reason the shape of the stage would go in one particular way, is the primary reason I still prefer Lolo 3 over it. It does have a bit of that, but you need go back and reevaluate your approach much more often, and the thrill of solving some of the puzzles in the latter half of the game is like nothing Solomon's Key 2 ever manages to achieve.
BrianC wrote:
The US Lolo II, AFAIK, reused layouts from previous Eggerland games. I'm under the impression that the first JP Lolo, it's JP counterpart, was made to be much more difficult. I'm not sure if US Lolo 3 uses levels from older games, or just has a different level set from the JP version. From what I heard; I'm leaning towards the latter. I remember reading somewhere that the JP Lolo II starts out easter than the US Lolo 3, but I'm not sure on this.
The way I heard it, the first western (it wasn't just released in US, it was popular everywhere. plz) Lolo was basically a collection of older Eggerland stages.
Then the Japanese Lolo "1" was the equivalent of the western Lolo 2, but with different stages.
And the same again for JP Lolo 2 = western Lolo 3. The framework with the overworld and boss battles is identical, but stages are all different. Whether some of the stages from those last two (four) games have any crossover I have no idea about. This is all hearsay, and I think the source was HG101 or something, so take it with a grain of salt.