REVIEW -- Axiom Verge 2

Axiom Verge 2 is a Metroidvania video game by American indie developer Thomas Happ Games. It is the sequel to Axiom Verge and was released on August 11, 2021 for Windows (exclusive to the Epic Games Store client), Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4, with a PlayStation 5 version coming later. It received generally favorable reviews from critics.

Developer: Tom Happ

Release Date: TBD

Available on: EGS, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5

Promotional Website: www.axiomverge2.com

Mail: press "at" axiomverge "dot" com

Price: $19.99 ( Epic Games Store | Nintendo eShop | PlayStation Network )

Description

Axiom Verge 2 is a 2D “metroidvania” action-adventure. Though a sequel to Axiom Verge, is a completely new game: new characters, new abilities, new enemies, and a new world. You can play it before or after the original Axiom Verge.

The sole developer, Tom Happ, is responsible for all the music, art, game design, and programming in this game.

Features

• Expansive non-linear exploration of a huge interconnected map.

• Hack any enemy with unique and interesting consequences for each.

• Launch a remote drone with its own separate abilities and behaviors.

• Speedrun Mode – Play with a streamlined interface and additional features to facilitate speedrunning.

• Plus one other major feature players will be excited to discover on their own

Trailers:

Synopsis:

DECADES LATER… OR IS IT CENTURIES EARLIER?

Life. Afterlife. Real. Virtual. Dream. Nightmare. It’s a thin line.

It’s Axiom Verge.

Hiding in a cargo lift in Antarctica is what appears to be an ancient, alternate Earth, complete with mountains, lakes, deserts, and the ruins of a civilization. But you get the feeling that something else is lurking just past the fringes of reality, waiting to pull you in.

Description from PlayStation Network:

You may have played Axiom Verge, or heard it referenced as a benchmark for indie action-exploration games. This long awaited sequel expands on the universe with completely new characters, abilities, and gameplay.

Indra Chaudhari, the billionaire behind the worldwide Globe 3 conglomerate, heads to Antarctica to investigate the disappearance of her daughter, but ultimately finds herself in entirely different reality, infected by parasitic machines that both aid and confound her. Where is she? Who is the mysterious person goading her from the other end of the computer terminal?

Explore an alternate Earth-like world, replete with the ruins of an ancient, high-tech civilization. Hack machines. Battle monsters. Use your remote drone to enter the Breach, a parallel but connected reality that is filled with its own dangers. You’ll want to search every inch for the hidden items and upgrades you need to survive.

The Verdict:

Axiom Verge 2 released as a pleasant surprise from creator Thomas Happ during Nintendo's Direct livestream on August 11, 2021. I eagerly jumped at the chance to pick this up on launch day for $19.99 and as a whole, I have mixed feelings about the overall experience that we will discuss below.

Visuals & Graphics

In my honest opinion, I think the change to the visuals/graphical style of this game will be the biggest knock I think a lot of players who have played the original Axiom Verge will have with this sequel. The original game had obvious influences and designs akin to NES era gameplay, which was reflected in the visual style of that game. This sequel abandons that for a more pixelated look, reminiscent of early PC gaming. It has a natural charm to it in The Breach (we'll explain get to that in a bit) but struggles to consistently look appealing in the main Overworld that you will spend majority of the game exploring. Don't get me wrong though. There's a lot of sections and locales in this game that look gorgeous in terms of design with this pixelated style, but others that were simply painful to look at. I thank the stars that I went with the PlayStation 4 port instead of trying to squint my already bad eyes looking at my Nintendo Switch screen in portable mode while on the go. Maybe it was just me, but I found the in-game text hard to read at times too.

Combat & Gameplay

The biggest adjustment for players of the original Axiom Verge coming into this sequel will be adjusting to combat being primarily focused in close-range rather than the run and gun shooter gameplay found in the original. If I were compare the two games at this point, I would compare the original Axiom Verge to the Metroid series while comparing this sequel to the Castlevania series with the changes to more up close and personal combat. You will acquire a boomerang early on to aid you with dealing with airborne threats out of your normal range of attack, but it's nowhere as useful as Trace's firearms from the original game. I will admit that the recall tricks and ability to fix yourself stationary while throwing in various angles and manipulate its trajectory is pretty darn cool though. By the end of the adventure, you'll acquire a remote control version of this weapon that will widen the scope of how far you're able to control the boomerang and attack foes from afar even more. Indra also has the ability to hack enemies - disabling some of their stronger attacks/abilities while converting others into serving as your allies.

Indra's skills can be leveled up with skill points that can be acquired throughout the game by defeating the few (optional) bosses throughout the game or finding vases called apocalypse flasks that contribute a various number of skill points to Indra that can be used to power-up her various abilities. Hacking levels are pretty important early into the adventure if you want to access hidden secrets as early as possible, but you can't neglect upgrading Indra's health and attack upgrades either. It becomes a balancing act in terms of structuring her skills to your preferred playstyle. One would think that this addition of a skill progression system would make things feel overpowered, but to be honest, it doesn't really. There's very few enemy encounters that feel different than majority of the others and it makes the combat feel VERY boring for the bulk of this game. That's sad too when you're doing a lot of backtracking and aimlessly wondering around the Overworld and The Breach (once you get access to it) trying to figure out where to go next.

Speaking of The Breach, I should explain that the world of Axiom Verge 2 is split into two worlds that essentially overlap each other on the World Map. The best comparison I can associate The Breach with is with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past's Dark World. In specific points on the map, Indra can access portals/tears to travel into The Breach, a world between worlds, via your remote drone. As you progress throughout the game, you gain the ability to move these portals to access them from afar, reveal hidden Breach portals, or the ability to exit The Breach from any point without another exit portal/tear, but starting out in the game, you can only enter and exit them from an entrance and exiting portal with your remote drone. Traversing The Breach is a complete pain in the ass in the early portions of the game because you're essentially "locked-in" this region until you find the exit portal. Not to mention, you're limited to using whatever abilities that you have acquired for your drone (which is much more vulnerable than Indra in terms of its lower defense and health) in The Breach - its buzzsaw for melee attacks, hacking (limited to how many skill point levels that you have invested into this ability), and some powers that you acquire later throughout the adventure, such as a grappling hook, a Screw Attack-like spin attack that breaks through walls/barriers, and the ability to hover/glide throughout the air like an insect. The grappling hook was the bane of my existence early into the adventure as the game doesn't give you any clue that you can reel in the hook once it automatically latches onto a ledge to pull yourself up. It's hard to explain but some higher, seemingly out of reach jumps while in your drone state are possible by double-tapping the grappling hook button to quickly pull your drone up to the ledge. There's a section very early on when you first reach The Breach that stumped me like a lot of players given the feedback on Reddit that could use that knowledge prior to the fact.

You're going to get lost a LOT in this game if you're not taking the time to mark points of interest on the World Map (both for the Overworld AND The Breach) with the "Mark Point of Interest" feature to cite glitchy/distorted points in the game (these will be revealed to be hidden portals to the Breach once you acquire the ability to reveal them), items and weapons seemingly out of reach, along with Breach portals that you have no means of reaching or walls that you can't pass through. You don't acquire the ability to phase through walls, reminiscent to the Mist ability in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, until the very end of the game and by that point, there's nothing else to do outside of facing the final boss is backtracking to collect everything you may have missed. At that point, you have easily forgotten where all of that stuff was that you wanted to check back on later if you didn't tag it on the World Map.

The in-game compass gives you a vague sense of where you should be going but doesn't give you an idea of how to get there.

The compass tracks Arms, which show up as a blue glow. The glow grows more intense, and narrower, as you get closer to the target. Items such as apocalypse flasks and health spheres are NOT considered Arms and are NOT tracked by the compass’ blue glow. After you find DAMU, the compass will also start to track storm portals with a red glow. (Credit goes to priosprios' Axiom Verge 2 walkthrough over on Reddit)

Unfortunately, the compass is another tool in this game that the game gives you very vague details of how to use properly. In other words, the compass gives you loose idea of your next destination in terms of following the loose objectives of the game's story progression, but never points in the direction of how to get there. You have an idea of where you should be going, but never the means of how to do so in terms of what abilities you may need to backtrack for to acquire or what roadblocks that you may encounter along the way.

In terms of roadblocks, casual players will be relieved to know that almost every boss in this game, save for two story-driven encounters, can be completely ignored. You are encouraged to take these creatures down as they drop a huge apocalypse flask upon defeat with a hefty amount of skill points to use to upgrade Indra's abilities. My biggest gripe in this sequel is that none of these encounters felt overly challenging nor difficult, much like the combat in this game as a whole. Almost every boss has a major attack/ability that you can disable via hacking to trivialize these fights to some extent while hacking away at the boss until he's toast. Even the final boss isn't much of a threat when you can respawn right in the middle of the arena and can get right back into the action within seconds. It's a darn shame too because I loved a lot of these bosses' designs. I just wish this game didn't marginalize these encounters and regarded them as nonessential to the overall experience.

Save Shrines allow you to save your progress and serve as a checkpoint of sorts that you're automatically returned to upon death, much like the Rebirth Chambers in the original game. The best advice I can offer players is to always seek out the nearest Save Shrine upon your arrival to a new area/region on the World Map. That way if you die, you will always know where you will return to if you get in over your head and lose your progress or means of how you got to said area. You don't acquire the means to fast travel between Save Shrines until a lengthy portion into the game, so it would be extremely handy to have as many Save Shrines uncovered on the map as possible. This is also useful for backtracking at the end of the game too for secrets and hidden items that you may have missed over the course of the game if you seeking out to complete the game at 100% completion. That way you can easily teleport to the Save Shrine(s) that are closest to the point of interest and you can eliminate a lot of traversing through screens and obstacles to get there.

Speaking of traversal throughout the game, I have to admit that by the end of the game, I loved navigating throughout both worlds with the drone more than with Indra if I'm perfectly honest. Once you get the hang of using the grappling hook, combined with hover/gliding ability that you gain later on, it makes for some very stylish movements throughout the game's locales that Indra simply can't compare to. To be fair though, Indra makes up for that with her various melee weapons that are obtained throughout the game (if you go out of your way to find them anyway...). You start off with a pretty bare bones pick axe, but later get a bronze axe, a two-handed double axe, and even a sickle sword by the end of the game. The sickle sword and royal dagger both allow for dazzlingly fast attacks, but neither one doesn't hold a candle to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's infamous Crissaegrim though.

Some of the sound effects were bordering on ear-piercing (think energy/weapon refill sound effects from Mega Man 3-4 on the NES) no matter how much you turned down your television or adjusted the audio settings in the Options menus. There were far too many occasions where I was playing and going, "Goddamn that is loud as fuck..." for my liking when encountering certain enemies or performing various attacks. I haven't played the game again since I cleared it about 2-3 weeks ago, but I wouldn't be surprised if the issue was cleared up in a patch/fix since I saw a few people bring it up on Reddit as well.

My personal favorite track of the entire game was from reaching one of the final areas of the game and you hear the start-up/opening theme to the original Axiom Verge building up to a crescendo. Goddamn, that was such a great moment to serve as the appetizer for the plot revelations that followed soon afterwards as the main course.

Closing Thoughts:

As a standalone game, I think Axiom Verge 2 is decent game in its own right, but as a sequel to the original Axiom Verge, a game that I went on record to say that it ranks as one of the best Metroidvanias that I have had the honor of playing, it falls a little short of what made that game great. There's a lot of great ideas here, especially with the constant breadcrumbs to continue expanding this universe's already expansive lore, along with the gameplay concepts from hacking and juggling both the Overworld and The Breach with various environmental puzzles. By the time the credits roll, I was left with the same feeling of "that's it?" that I had at the end of the original Axiom Verge. Once again, I felt that this game was only getting started where it ended, especially when Indra herself isn't too enthusiastic throughout the game to reunite with her daughter - the main reason she went to Antarctica in the first place to put these events into motion.

Indra herself is a massively less interesting character in comparison to Trace, but I think that could have been avoided altogether if this game didn't limit the amount of narrative beats to flesh out her character and motivations. Seriously, you wouldn't even know why she's out to find her daughter if you didn't allow the game to go idle for a few minutes at the title screen for the intro to play. Indra doesn't even reveal her identity to the player until she crosses over into the world of Kiengir and converses with a random person she runs into there after the first 5-10 minutes of gameplay.

I found myself just following the story progression as the game lead me along, but I admittedly didn't feel too attached to this story as I was with Trace in the original game. This is a world where there's more people to interact with and talk to in comparison to the original, where you were intentionally left in the dark about what was going on behind the scenes until about halfway through that game. Here, it feels like next to no one cares about being stuck in this world with these hostile drones and machines attacking anyone who comes into their general vicinity without any rhyme or reason, but nope, let's just ignore all of that and just follow the breadcrumbs that Dr. Hammond left behind to hopefully see my daughter again. I'm not going to lie, but throughout the entire game, I was doubting that Indra really cared about her daughter at all as there never was a sense of urgency to find her again. I was under the impression that she was one of those neglectful parents that wanted to make amends after her daughter cut her off and out of her life once she came of age. I can't knock Indra too much because she genuinely bonded to DAMU and his plight of being forced to become a living weapon. By the time the credits rolled, "Drone-Indra" had abandoned all concerns about returning to Earth and fully devoted herself to restoring DAMU back to being human. It gave me a sense that Indra knew that she fucked up her relationship with her own child, but sought out to make amends by doing right through this estranged child. It may not have been the message that Thomas Happ was intending with Indra's story, but that was the vibe that was communicated through me by the time this adventure was over.

To his credit though, Thomas Happ has a knack for keeping players like me in suspense, anxious to wonder what's going to happen next. I don't say that as a knock of his work here either. I have seen the amount of love and care that he has poured into these two games singlehandedly from his behind the scenes and making of videos on YouTube. That degree of passion makes me eager to see what's next, eager to put down another $19.99 when he surprises gamers with the impromptu release of Axiom Verge 3 in a few more years.

At the end of the day, Axiom Verge 2 did what it set out to do as the newest entry into the Metroidvania genre of gaming. It gave players essentially not one, but TWO brand new worlds to explore while simultaneously serving as a gateway for newcomers and veterans of the original game to enjoy. It gave us a new means to approach not only exploring but combating the hazards along the way in a manner that turned the gameplay that we thought we knew from the original completely upside down - in some ways for the better and others, not as much, but enjoyable nonetheless. Players like me may have been expecting more out of this sequel, but Thomas Happ gave us enough for right now.

Play It or Don't Bother?

For newcomers, I have no issues with suggesting Axiom Verge 2 as a formal introduction to the Axiom Verge series, but for fans of the original, I think that they should be mindful that this is a brand new world, with a brand new protagonist with an unique set of abilities that set her completely apart from Trace's adventure that we fell in love with. Indra's gameplay takes a while to adjust to, but by the end of the adventure, players are going to find something to enjoy here more or less. My biggest gripe with the game is that the game never feels overly exciting once the "new" feeling wears off. You have all of these new means of approaching combat, yet its rarely mandatory with bosses all being optional, or you can hack them into becoming allies to attack other enemies; thus eliminating their threat levels altogether in a lot of scenarios. There's very little sense of urgency or drama with the story, outside of the short period where Indra is cut off from her human body and the Metroid-esque escape sequence after defeating the final boss.

At the end of the day, Axiom Verge 2 is a great new addition to the wide array of Metroidvanias that comprise the genre, but it falls a little short of being able overcome what made the original Axiom Verge so great. That's not saying that this is a bad game - it's one that doesn't feel good enough, meaning that the adventure is over before it could truly be a better experience than its predecessor.