Alruna: End of History

Incredibly frustrating level design. Wonky controller mechanics. Sometimes the crouch dash just doesn't work. Complicated jumps for the sake of being complicated, I guess. It's clearly not for me.

A little disappointing after I enjoyed the first game. More elements have been added to the gameplay mechanics (eg. elemental powerups) and that made exploration a little more "involved". I'm not sure if it's me or if there's a bug (I think the only way forward is through a rotating path that I accidentally locked in the wrong direction) but I just can't find my way to the next new area after re-treading the entire map (so far) at least 4-5 times. Unfortunately, I reached my limit in terms of "caring" to continue because I get frustrated after so many attempts. While not horrible, this is something like a 4 or 5 / 10 while the first is easily a 7 or 8.

An improvemnt in some ways over the previous game, and a regression in others. First of all there's no more ♥♥♥♥♥♥ whip, now you have a gun which is way easier and less clunky to use. You can fire the gun downwards while in the air to get a boost, which can be done about 5 times before you start losing height. These boost jumps make traversing the world a lot easier because you're no longer constantly charging super jumps. Speaking of super jumps, I still don't know why they're in the game. Just like last time, the number of situations where they're required is few and far between. Why wouldn't the normal just just have a variable height by holding or tapping the button? Would make the game so much smoother. Still on the topic of traversal, getting around might be much faster but navigation is way slower. Gone is the warp that let's you easily travel to the central point of the map. Instead you pretty much have to walk everywhere, which takes forever, and is not always straightforward due to many one-way paths which required you to go around or loop back through them. There are warp points in the game, but they're basically useless as they're not linked together, they both…

It's a delight! A "small" Metroidvania with 5-6 hours of exploration and challenge. Visually, quite a few things are reused from the first game, but the gameplay has evolved significantly. It's fast-paced, it's vast, in short : Amazing work !

short, fun.

Surprisingly unambitious for a sequel. Most devs seem to go bigger and better for a sequel. But this game is roughly the same size and level of complexity as the first game, and if it is at all better, then the improvements are so marginal that you hardly notice. However, the original was fun, and more of the same is not necessarily a bad thing. One major point in this games favor as opposed to the original is that it does not lock your save after you finish the game, allowing you to go back and 100% the game if you wish. This point is the one reason why I’m giving this game a thumbs up where I gave the previous a thumbs down (the original was particularly egregious because there was a good and bad ending, and you could only fight the last boss in the bad ending). Honestly, both games are worth playing, but I just couldn’t give the first game an upvote because there were numerous complaints about the save file locking and no one in favor of it, but the dev chose not to change it.