The first Axiom Verge was this awesome Metroidvania, with the first Metroid having the largest influence for a lot of the game. It had lots of cool movement abilities, cool bosses, a fun map to explore. It kinda did everything well.

So when a sequel was announced, I was pretty hyped. I liked the first one, Tom Happ was obviously also making this one, clearly it should be pretty good. I saw it getting lots of negative comments in different places, but people tend to have wrong opinions about games. So they should be good, right?

Let’s go and talk about it!

Developer and Publisher: Tom Happ
Release date: August 11th 2021
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4 (PC version played)
Genre: Castleroid

I honestly barely followed the story. You’re playing the CEO of some company. She heads to a base in Antarctica from a company she acquired I think, where she’s transported to an alternate dimension. She’s there partly in hopes of finding her daughter. She finds these spirit-like creatures from an ancient civilization that give her powers, as well as different weapons and stuff to fight enemies. She ends up finding all sorts of stuff about alternate universes and the history of this specific area in regards to superweapons they built and such, as well as hints as to the location of her daughter. It’s somewhat part of the same storyline as the first Axiom Verge, but it seems pretty vague to me. The dude from the first game is mentioned a couple times in lore text you can find. I didn’t find this to be a particularly interesting story. First, so much of it is in optional text you can find laying around that no one wants to read, but also that the story literally doesn’t end. You get a semi-boss fight kinda thing, nothing is resolved, but the game ends. Without resolving any of the story. Without answering any questions. Without the main character finding what she was looking for. I don’t get what the point of this game was.

So this is a Metroidvania. The game consistently tells you where you need to go by putting an icon on the map, and there’s a compass that gives you directional hints as well. You don’t have guns, unlike the first game. Instead you find a pickaxe which you occasionally find upgrades for, a boomerang you’ll never use because it sucks, and a double axe which I think is optional, and I think there was a shitty dagger? In the world you can find, alongside some of these weapon upgrades, powers, health upgrades, skill points and lore.

Progression is a bit lame. Basically you get these powers that have these really specific uses. The one power that returns from the first game is the drone, but it sucks here. In the first game it’s a really cool speed option since you shoot it far and can teleport to it. Here, at first you throw it not far at all, and can’t transfer to it (which is a later upgrade), but eventually that’s not even what it does anymore as you just transform between Drone and non-Drone modes. The one ability that’s actually kinda fun, when it works, is the one that enables to drone to latch on to corners to launch itself, it kinda is an okay-ish speed option. Everything else is just “use this in this specific spot to progress”, with either no, or useless, alternate uses. Yeah you can hack robotic enemies, but why would you do that? Or the explosion power… it breaks certain blocks… You CAN use it to damage enemies, but why? You don’t need to kill anything, so just use it to break the few things you need to break, pretty much (you stop using it not long after you get it). Progress is more that some gates are closed that you just have to get to the other side on to open, rather than actually using the few powers you get to advance in more interesting ways.

The one exception to this is the Breach. Basically, the drone can enter the breach, which is an alternate dimension. You’re stuck being the drone in those segments. The 2 things you get that make this more than just walking from point A to point B are 2 powers ups you get. One allows you to move breach entrances to your location (so you can try to get to the breach from a different place), and the other gives you the ability to exit the breach from anywhere. There may be a bit of figuring out on that end, but… not really. Because one of the powers shows you what spot you are in the breach compared to the real world, so… whatever. And there’s usually very obvious “use this on this block” areas so it’s not like you even need to think. Unless you want to get 100% of everything, but why would you? There is a bonus end scene if you get 80% of the items, which is pointless so you can absolutely avoid getting it.

There’s no bosses. The first game had really cool, kinda-difficult, fun bosses, and they were a big highlight for the game. For some reason this game decides that bosses are bad actually, so instead there’s occasional slightly-bigger enemies, they give you skill points if you kill them. They’re brain-dead easy (literally you can die against them and their health doesn’t reset so you don’t have to care about trying to be good). Even the final boss isn’t a boss. So normal enemies are basically entirely skippable, minibosses can’t do anything to you, the final boss isn’t a boss… It’s dumb. There’s no challenge, thus no fun.

Overall

This game is actually crap. I really loved the first game, but this one feels… less. Just… less. An unreasonable amount and level of “less”. Less fun, less challenging, less well-designed… less everything. It’s not just inferior to the first one, it’s genuinely not good. I wonder what happened to the game dev between the first game and this one that he just forgot how to design games. First game was amazing, this one is not worth thinking about.

The very basics of the gameplay, like the jumping and hitting shit and such is fine (though not as good as the first due to the reliance on kinda-useless melee), but that’s about it… everything else sucks. There’s no bosses other than the last one, which is hardly a boss. Not having bosses in a game like this is fucking stupid. There’s optional minibosses that… suck and are too easy (a legitimate strategy to beat them is to mash them down and not care about dying, because you can just get back to them and they’ll have the same HP you left them with… extremely stupid gameplay design). The progress feels kinda random, weirdly enough. Like, the map tells you where you need to go next (which is lame), but I’d just travel around randomly and just happen to find progress/power-ups, without really intending to (I kinda forgot about the map and compass most of the time). In a Metroidvania I’d usually remember where spots that I may need to use power-ups are and, you know, go back and do that… here you kinda… don’t really need to care about that, unless you want to find everything. Which… why would you? There’s no challenge so… whatever. Hey you get a pointless secret scene at the end if you have over 80% of items and press start, it’s dumb. The game as a whole feels weirdly like a straight line despite having a pretty complex map.

Also the power-ups here are boring. The first game featured lots of cool things that improved movement and added interesting movement, puzzle-solving and attack options. This one has nothing really important other than “use this at specific obvious spots” stuff, nothing has interesting alternate uses.

And the game just kinda ends out of nowhere, without any of the kinda-meh story being resolved at all, and without you feeling like you accomplished anything because this game has no challenge.

I don’t recommend this one. In fact I recommend to actively avoid it. Buy the first game, completely ignore that this one exists.