My thoughts on the second chapter

[Yours truly, Garbage]

Potential spoiler warning.



The story

The story picks right back up where it left off, as was promised.
It gives further information on things that happened in chapter one and continues overall smoothly. It definitely kept up the charm I came to enjoy when playing through the first chapter. The characters tie into the story nicely and put a few twists in it, in both humorous and serious ways.
It involves serious real-life topics towards the end and stays interesting all the way through, achieved through several ups and downs the story manages to set the right mood where needed, including a rising tension at the very end to set up the transition to the next chapter.
Chapter 2's story felt like a side-track to the infection presented at the end of chapter 1 by only including it at the beginning and very end with only a few other hints at it, through characters and environmental lore, throughout the main parts of the chapter.

The characters

Chapter 2 introduces a few new characters to the game, each playing their own significant part in its story. They all feel well designed with their own interests, personalities and roles in the world.
Plot twists here and there reveal more information towards already existing characters from chapter 1 and sometimes change the way they feel and behave in comparison.

The visuals

Just like in the first chapter, the game continues to look phenomenal in all it's pixely glory.
The areas look very well designed and give off the right vibes to fit the story at each given moment.
The enemies' and characters' models also look wonderful. With little details and nice shading they look quite lifely and their animations further improve upon this. They all look different from each other, no lazy copy-paste resprites.
The dialogue sprites once again rake in a huge plus in my book as they look incredible, cute and add more personality to the characters through facial expressions.

The enemies

The enemies each have unique attack patterns and overall behaviours. They can turn an already challenging parkour section into a total nightmare. Just like the enemies from the first chapter they make for an excellent challenge or annoyance in every situation. Whether on their own or clustered together with backup they are no joke and force caution where they see fit.

The bosses

Introducing 7 new boss fights (4 Main, 3 Sub) chapter 2 once again raises the tension level significantly to make each act end with a bang. With a much higher focus on bullet curtains than the bosses from the first chapter, the chapter 2 bosses cause massive havoc on the screen and show why they are a force to be reckoned with.
Each boss is well designed in its unique way, with several different, difficult and stressful attack patterns and phases they turn each fight into a stress fest.
Seriously. What even is Mercury One's final phase... and don't get me started on that salad.

The difficulty

Since I played my very first, blind playthrough of chapter 2 on Executive Chef difficulty I will only be able to judge the game's balance based on it.
Considering that the Executive Chef difficulty is the highest difficulty in the game and was specifically designed to be a challenge I can certainly confirm that it is not a joke.
Making everything hit like a truck and tanking hits left and right, the game forces you to make use to the fullest of everything you have. Due to insane damage reduction during bosses' enraged phases they force you to truly learn and understand their patterns rather than just pushing them over and moving on.
Parkour sections become a game of thread the needle as every hit taken may be fatal.
Certain encounters with large groups of enemies may even seem impossible at first.
As for general balance I feel that, despite being frustrating at times, the game is certainly possible to beat at this difficulty, although it may take several trials and error to finally succeed.
The food and weapons appear to be balanced around Sous Chef difficulty, making them less effective when playing on Executive Chef but they overall still manage to get the job done.

My boss ranking list looks something like this:
*Some of the chapter 2 bosses don't have official names that I am aware of so I named them based on their looks.

Easy
Little to no effort required to beat, easy patterns, little chaos.

- [ch1] Big Vine
- [ch1] Lord Protector
- [ch2] Flamethrower Lieutenant
- [ch2] Guard Captain

Hard
Stressful, difficult and shockingly illusive

- [ch1] Clifford
- [ch2] The Core
- [ch2] Mercury One
- [ch2] Simmer

Bruh.
Bruh.

- [ch2] Fruit Medley
- [ch2] Necromancer

The food and weapons

The food introduced with chapter 2 sadly lacks a bit of utility and is overall very conditional.
The weapons introduced with chapter 2 are more unique than those of chapter 1 and open a much wider array of character builds to play. They feel well balanced based on the progression of the areas they are obtained in.

Bugs, crashes and other issues

Absolutely none.
Aside from a slight, insignificant graphical glitch, making enemy-health bars of Leeches and Toxic Sludges and ammo-bars on guns with magazines change sizes every now and then during use, I encountered no issues whatsoever.



Final thoughts

Overall chapter 2 was an incredibly pleasant experience and definitely worth the wait.
And although I am usually not a fan of difficult games, the adrenaline rushes during bossfights really gave me a reason to keep trying.
The game is well enough designed to make almost every single death feel like it was my own fault, rather than it being due to a flawed control sheme, invisible enmies/attacks or a softlocking glitch, which is exactly what games should be doing. Aside from certain "I can't see balls!" moments that is.
Several little details in environments, the adorable character styles and the experimental aspect with different weapons and foods make this game a blast to play.
The story also contains enough jokes to lighten up the mood after an infuriating boss.
It doesn't take itself fully seriously which in this game's case just adds more bonus points.
The only thing I am disappointed about with this chapter is the fact that recipes from chapter 1 cannot be upgraded. When the announcement for "food upgrades" dropped I got really excited to finally be able to enhance some of my favourite foods from the first chapter, but sadly that is not the case.

All in all my excitement for this update has certainly paid off and at this point I can safely give this game a total rating of 9/10. As one of the only still-running games I am currently interested in, this one has secured a spot in my all-time favourites.
Although the development may be slower than for most other games I feel that the wait with this one is worth it, as chapter 2 has shown. Lots of effort has gone into making this chapter and I could tell that during every minute of playing. I feel Dungeon Munchies is headed in a good direction and I'm certainly looking forward to chapter 3.

[MadCrabPrime]

fruit medley and the necromancer were a one try for me but the cluster and gaurd captain killed me a few times. different builds. was mercury one that hard, it was a just one shot for me, the last phase was a tad difficult but pales in comparison to the core. but at the same time i was playing sous chef difficult.

[Yours truly, Garbage]

Originally posted by thatinsaneperson:

fruit medley and the necromancer were a one try for me but the cluster and gaurd captain killed me a few times. different builds. was mercury one that hard, it was a just one shot for me, the last phase was a tad difficult but pales in comparison to the core. but at the same time i was playing sous chef difficult.

Main reason why Necromancer was so hard for me was because I had a less than ideal setup at the time and no way to swap out foods or weapons at the time. The patterns were overall not that hard, it was just totally clustered. It took me about 15 attempts I only got to the final phase once but luckily managed to beat it first try.
Mercury One was less of a difficult fight and more stressful to me. That last phase was just pure chaos.
Fruit Medley gave me a hard time for a reason I'm not sure about, I got to the last phase almost every time but kept messing up then until I changed some of my food.
I can't say for sure what exactly the difference between sous and executive chef are but I hope that executive is a signifcant increase, as an excuse for my lack of skill at the game.
I saw a lot of people complain about the cluster fight and while I have to admit that I thought it was a joke fight that you were not meant to win at first, I didn't struggle at all with that fight once I figured out how the bullet-hell segment works. Even pre-patch the fight was basically a breeze after that.