Tobari 2: Dream Ocean

If you ever thought to yourself "I kinda like Kirby, but I wished it was actually challenging", this is it. It takes all the core ability absortion mechanics from Kirby along with some design philosophies from other stablished schools in platforming and delivers an uninterrupted string of very challenging and dynamic stages. Character movement is a bit on the loose side, but it's still very reliable; stages can kick your butt but the game is pretty generous with lives and each stage has at least a couple checkpoints; there's some demanding platforming, but it rarely feels like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and you always know that things are doable with a bit of focus or persistence. It's all around a very well designed game, I feel like if it were released by a major company or a more well-known developer it might be considered one of the standout platformer games of the past few years. It's still at its core a hard doujin game, but its difficulty is a tool to deliver fun interesting stages instead of being hard just for the sake of it. Really good stuff.

Nice Mario-styled platformer with a copy mechanic similar to Kirby's. Visually, the levels look quite underwhelming, but the gameplay and level design are very enjoyable. Difficulty feels right and it's rarely frustrating. Finding ways to collect every star in each level keeps even the easiest ones interesting, and it's fun to explore stages to find different endings, which lead to different stages in the map. There is a much harder version of the game called Tobari 2: Nightmare. It's sold separately and it's only for kaizo enjoyers, so if you're into extremely hard and precise platformers, maybe try that version instead.

a sequel to a rather obscure platformer, its better than the first in every way. its really good, a true hidden gem

That. Final boss. Was horrible...

Tobari 2 - Dream Ocean impresses with much more precise controls than its predecessor, even more magic for Tobari and equally beautiful, great soundtracks. Super cute girls in a challenging platform adventure game! It's Tobari 2! Tip: Use Xpadder! 1. first set up your gamepad in the game menu 2. then go to the menu again with the gamepad you just set up, but now press the desired keys on the keyboard! 3. now you can use the Xpadder to map the keys multiple times (simplifies navigation in the game), or map LT / RT (which is not possible otherwise) or use the Xpadder Turbo function. So Tobari is MUCH stronger, for example the Aqua Bubble! As an example I have attached a picture. Many thanks to desunoya for this great game! https://abload.de/img/tob2xpaddxdjql.png

I played the first game and loved it, and so far I'm loving the second game. Nice platforming. The videos don't indicate how difficult it can be to get some of the stars. Completing a level is easy, but if you want to collect the 3 stars hidden in each level you have to be prepared to redo a section over and over until you land it right. What is nice about this game is it lets you choose the difficulty and how much you get out of the game is up to you. It also has a nice setting, and the ability set can be interesting and with fun puzzles that also require reflexes. Update: Having beaten the game I'll say that it's fun and chill until you beat the last boss. But once you find (all?) of the stars you unlock a hidden world where the dificulty quickly rises to hellish levels. Deep in the late game, it gradually became unfun for me as the death traps became more and more punishing, requiring incredible amounts of time to practice enough to finish short segments of an action puzzle. And as if it's still not hard enough, the developer has created another version of the game called Nightmare Mode (which is as of this writing still unreleased on Steam,) where he drastically edited the…