Recent reviews by DoublePLayer

yeet

Shoot some demons and slam said demons and then do some more of that, what's there not to like?

Huge design issues that will make you hate the game after the first 40% of the game is done.

Just don't bother, try anything else from Koei Tecmo, they dropped the ball on this one.

This is a fantastically made game. It's a very good entry to the BIT.TRIP series and it's also a great example of how the sequels should look like. Even though this game is more of a spin-off to the original BIT.TRIP series, but that's a small detail. One thing must be said, if you didn't enjoy the first RUNNER, do not fret, as this game's difficulty curve is much more sane. The difficulty is controllable with three settings to choose which change the amount of obstacles in levels by quite a bit, unlike its precedessor, where it only removed gold bars on easy and enforced perfection on hard.
BIT.TRIP RUNNER 2's story takes place right after RUNNER 1 as Commander Video gets zapped into a different dimension while chasing after the vile Timbletot. All of the cutscenes that expose the plot to the player are narrated by one and only Charles Martinez, the legendary voice of Mario, as such they're done quite well both visually and in terms of voice acting, though they're not the main focus of the game.
The player's objective in BIT.TRIP RUNNER 2 is to guide the ever running Commander Videothrough quite a number of levels, 70 plus 25 secret levels. You can't stop the character in place whatsoever which is part of the challenge as you have to deal with obstacles thrown at you on the fly. Asides from such prude actions like jumping and kicking you can also dance which is a neat risk-reward action as when you dance, you can't do any other actions for half a second, but every time you do it, you get points. All of the levels, asides from the secret ones, have their own leaderboard and you can compare yourself to the world's finest and your friends which is a cool feature that makes you replay the levels trying to get the highest score. There's a tiny issue with this though, as the leaderboards from all the difficulties are combined. This causes a problem as on some levels you can get a much higher score by perfecting it on the hardest of difficulties while on others it's better to just choose 'easy' and dance through most of the level as there's a nigh negligible amount of obstacles.
I mentioned gold bars earlier but there's also more collectibles to find such as + thingies that look like the core from BIT.TRIP CORE that make your mode go up. You start every level at Hyper and ascend to Mega, Super, Ultra and finally Extra. The modes change a couple of things, first of all the music changes a bit every time from getting more instruments to a very mellow and melodic state on Extra. Secondly, the character will start getting some stars going from their back finishing on a cape on Extra, as Commander Video gets a 'Rainbow' cape which doesn't have the necessary seven colors but it's pretty in its own right. The least visible change is the scoring as the modes work as a multiplier system.
The game's difficulty is done in a very good way, some levels are not linear as you get to choose if you want to go the easier or the harder path and all of the levels have a checkpoint, that you can go through to do its job of becoming your new starting point when you slip up or you can jump over to get a hefty score bonus but at the risk of starting the level all over again if the player makes a mistake. The secret levels are much better done in terms of difficulty than in RUNNER 1 as they never use patterns that are either first shown in later levels or just plain don't appear outside of a singular secret level. Every single one of them tests what you should have learned by playing the regular game. Not to mention you have three tries as opposed to one and you can go back to it from the world map at any time.
The worlds are littered with gold bars which allow you to access some of the harder levels and possibly unlock Commander Video's friends or costumes. They don't bring any change to the gameplay, but they're there to enjoy the levels. Like I mentioned before, some of the levels are totally skippable as you only have to go down a path that's shown to you on the world's map. Every world has its own boss too, which are quite cleverly done as they never change the rules of the game but bring their ways of hindering your progress.
The graphics are quite stylish and very well done, although I can see why someone would just avoid the game due to its uniqueness. The backgrounds with their little details, the little faces on the stop signs which you have to kick, RUNNER 2' numerous details are quite amazing to look at if a bit hard considering the nature of the game, some of the details you might be able to see only by looking up videos from the game, as BIT.TRIP RUNNER 2 doesn't have a replay system. Some might complain about the animations as Commander Video instantly goes from running to sliding or kicking but I assume it's done in that way as to not confuse when you're in the necessary state to overcome the rapidly incoming obstacle. The secret levels themselves are done in a 16-bit style including the Commander Video that's known from the earlier games in the BIT.TRIP series.
The music is fantastic in this game which is not a surprise considering it's a BIT.TRIP game although it might get a bit repetitive to some people as there are two tracks per world that the game switches between so on 1-1 you'll get Track A, 1-2 gives you Track B and then Track A makes its return in 1-3, and so on. This is alleviated through the mode changes as you get more meat out of one track. The secret levels get their own tracks per world which are made in a retro way, just like their graphics.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game to the point where I would buy any DLC with new levels the moment it came out as I seriously would want more. Seriously though, if you're scared of this game because of RUNNER 1, try it out at someone else's place as the game unfortunately doesn't have a demo that I'm aware of.

Don't buy this game. It thinks that making the joke/referece over and over again is a good idea, instead of just pointing at it a little and be done with it. You even have to buy an item to reduce the loading times for quite a hefty sum of gold.
Evoland has the problem that even when they use a tried and true formula, it's still really boring and while I was determined to finish the game, I bumped into a game-breaking bug and was never able to finish the game. The bug was initiated backtracking to the very beginning of the game after getting the Bomb if you still want to pay for this game. I strongly advise not to, if you want to relive the quirks of old games, just pop a ROM into an emulator, you'll get much more from that.