how does this game differ from the first one?

[Jeba]

it looks exactly the same

[DeathRow]

that would be correct, its actually the same game

[Johnyfirst]

- Much better UI and menus
- Many more songs.
- More of everything (Weapons, skills, animations, sfx, ...)
- Additional mechanics that greatly improve gameplay skill + variety (Dodging, deflecting and catching weapons)
- More dynamic mob rounds with integrated bosses, throwing, and deflecting minigames.
- Better gameplay modes (Revamed survival for example)

[The A.W.G.]

Originally posted by Johnyfirst:

- Much better UI and menu's

I personally find the menu from this game way worse than the ones from the first one. This is the very first thing I noticed when I first started the game. It gives me a feeling like they had an intern with a 2 weeks experience in Unity (or whatever the engine is) do them.
The gameplay is basically as awesome as in the first game with some new fight mechanism, from what I can tell.

OFF TOPIC: English is not first language so you got to tell me because I don't understand: why do you use apostrophes to build plurals?

[AdApt*]

Originally posted by Johnyfirst:

- Much better UI and menu's

Originally posted by AWG:

OFF TOPIC: English is not first language so you got to tell me because I don't understand: why do you use apostrophes to build plurals?

Punctuation mistake is all..

[Johnyfirst]

Originally posted by AWG:

OFF TOPIC: English is not first language so you got to tell me because I don't understand: why do you use apostrophes to build plurals?

Mistakes were made... Pls forgive me

[paulkroll]

The single player for the first game looks trash, in this game its gotten a make over

[Silver Dollar Games]

There is now dodging, catching and deflecting projectiles. You can have 26 skills active at once. There are new boss type enemies. There are several different struggle moments that occur during combat. New dual color enemy types will be in the later levels. 13 different stage types that mix up the combat throughout the game. A series of survival towers give a better sense of progression through the endless mode. A couple of new game modes that will be in the final release. Polish to the game mechanics that make OFDP2 unquestionable better than the first game or any other similar game. But all that said, yes it is very similar to the original, however, I personally feel it improves on the original in every way it can.

[The A.W.G.]

Originally posted by Silver Dollar Games:

You can have 26 skills active at once.

This means ANY skill I spent at aleast one point on, is active by default? No more "pick only 3 skills"? That's AWESOME.

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

Originally posted by AWG:

Originally posted by Silver Dollar Games:

You can have 26 skills active at once.

This means ANY skill I spent at aleast one point on, is active by default? No more "pick only 3 skills"? That's AWESOME.

So far as I can tell, most if not all skills will occasionally activate even if you spend NO points in them. The gems are just to make your favorite skills appear more frequently.

[Darth Bokeh]

A change I like a great deal is that this game acknowledges but doesn't track perfect runs (no hits and no misses) and is much more forgiving for awarding top points (you get 5 stars for 4 or fewer misses).

In comparison, the first game awarded the top medal (platinum) for no misses, gold for 1-3 misses, silver for 4 to 6, bronze for 7-9.

Since the first game tracked it, I aimed for getting perfect runs on everything. With this game, I just aim for under 5 misses, which makes it less stressful, frustrating, and more enjoyable for me.

[The A.W.G.]

Originally posted by 1sot0pe:

A change I like a great deal is that this game acknowledges but doesn't track perfect runs (no hits and no misses) and is much more forgiving for awarding top points (you get 5 stars for 4 or fewer misses).

This thread is a gold mine, I literally entered the forum to ask exactly this. Again.

[The_Blog]

Originally posted by 1sot0pe:

A change I like a great deal is that this game acknowledges but doesn't track perfect runs (no hits and no misses) and is much more forgiving for awarding top points (you get 5 stars for 4 or fewer misses).

I can definitely see that argument and I personally would never care for perfect on a first playthrough. However I kinda miss atleast some form of recognition that you mastered a level. I went in fully expecting the red flag next to a level turning gold when you perfected it and was scratching my head when it didn't. Something to chase when you went through the game once. Everything else about the game is actually so perfect in my opinion, that a missing perfect marker is the biggest complain I have about the game. ^^

[Feormor]

I would go insane trying to do the retro or bonus cloud levels.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Brawlers are not matching sequences anymore. Now they just run a stream of lefts and rights with varying space and numbers, and you tap away until the brawler is gone. Brawlers are much harder to see among enemies now, which can cost you a miss here and there.

Light sword rounds feel entirely different and are little distinguished from regular rounds anymore. You can also get light swords dropped into regular rounds for a time. There is also a chainsaw which acts exactly the same as the light sword except with annoying chainsaw noises.

Abilities are even more about things happening to remove you needing to play, even to the point that quite a few of them take over and do things for you while you wait to be allowed to play again. You can turn all the abilities on at the same time too. There are no abilities that make play more interesting, and you get almost no decision on what the abilities do (a couple are telegraphed so you can point them the right way, which is at least something).

The rounds are no longer about precision. Enemies come faster and in larger numbers and you're basically just chewing through them with little interest in the pattern. The game has changed its core towards frantic processing and cinematic moments, and this removes a lot of the small variation and thinking that used to go along with playing.

I find the game's general charm significantly reduced. I also feel like there is a lot less in the way of fighting style animations, and everything feels much more samey and homogenized.

Enemy patterns are random now, too, so there isn't any sense of learning a round. This is particularly detrimental to multi-rounds, since you aren't repeating the same enemy sequence getting faster. It's just a long round with breaks and speed increases--like any other round.

There are some entirely new round formats (target, horror show, ball of death). Most of these don't really work.

The visuals are significantly harder to read as you play. Basically everything there is outright worse.

The dev mentioned "There is now dodging, catching and deflecting projectiles." More accurately, there are now colored projectiles that pass over the enemies at you. These are all dealt with the exact same way: hit the side they are on, like every other enemy. The projectiles have colors for whether a hit means the projectile hits an enemy on the same side, on the other side, or is caught and becomes a throwing weapon you have to throw (subject to abilities, so you can catch an bullet and be holding a gun with three bullets). The game generally blocks making mistakes with the after effects here, so basically you either catch and have to use or it doesn't matter. This system is almost a positive, but mainly just a distraction, because you have to try not to think about the colored enemy at the edge of the screen who is eventually (and I mean really eventually a lot of the time) going to throw at you, because you can't hit them.

"Bosses" have been upgraded with intermittent brawler sequences instead of just the renewing attack patterns thing. Mainly, this means an annoying slow pan back and forth several times a fight as you switch between slow, short sequences and the same thing but faster and more continuous in brawler format. I have points on the auto-kill bosses ability because they are just tedious and pointless multi-brawlers now.

There is a new enemy type with a minigame that is just QTE: you wait until it tells you to press a button, then you have a moment to press that button, then you go back to waiting. These are horrible, give you absolutely no option but to wait to be told what to do, and destroy the flow of the game completely. They are rare so far, but there is also no ability to auto-kill these.

There are significant gameplay downgrades, like the game deciding to drop your inputs sometimes, some of which is necessary since they won't apply after the game plays itself a bit, some of which just breaks things (you have to turn on "brawler expert mode" in the options or the brawler mini game does all kinds of weird wrong things), and some of which are totally wrong, like keeping you from intentionally missing to move, which results in a mistake happening or being dropped depending on whether the game feels an enemy is nearby. This is one of several cases of inconsistent and uncommmunicated input variations, and it subtly destroys the intuitiveness of the mechanics.

Survival modes have "towers" now which are tiered and basically let you start farther into the survival run, and you unlock each tier by reaching it, eventually making your way to the top.

You still can't rebind inputs, but there are a couple preset options on how things work.

There are a couple other modes I haven't looked at yet, and certainly levels I haven't reached. One mode involves some kind of local co-op, which sounds like basically tag-team style switching, so out-player heals while in-player fights.

Overall, ODFP2 is one of those games where getting it gives you more to do (and the price point is more than fair for what you get), but I do not find it superior or preferable to the original, and changes/additions don't follow what I liked or wanted from OFDP. The dev has been making a lot of small changes since release which have noticeably improved some things, though, so some of this will hopefully improve, but a lot of my concerns are clear design directions.

[Spunky McGoo™]

Significantly easier, significantly more random attack animations. Flashier.