Spelunky 2

Great but just way too hard especially for someone like me who has never played the first one.

Took me 180 hours to reach space.

can't play this shit thats fuckin hard

I can say that Spelunky 2 is many things, a perfect sequel, or even my favorite game ever, but if I had to sum it up in a review, I would describe it as one of the last stands of true roguelike progression.

Roguelikes have been incredibly popular over the past decade, but as the years pass, people have grown to dislike certain aspects of the genre. They enjoy the infinite replayability but resent the loss of progress. To follow this, modern roguelikes have increasingly introduced permanent progression systems. It started with additional item unlocks, like in The Binding of Isaac, and has now evolved into upgrades that are essential to beating the game.

Spelunky 2, however, ignores all of that. No forward progress is guaranteed, if you fail, you go all the way back to the beginning. And I love it for that. In Spelunky, progress is entirely dependent on your own skill. To ensure that players improve at a steady pace, the game needs exceptional design, and Spelunky 2 delivers it perfectly.

Some of that progress comes purely from skill, while some comes from discovery. The game is filled with hidden mechanics that make your runs easier, and uncovering them is incredibly satisfying.

Overall, I can't find a single complaint about this game. It was love at first sight, and I will always come back for more runs.

It's a fun way to pass the time.

this shit makes me so mad

For my fellow roguelike enjoyers (aka masochists), this game is fantastic! As the sequel to an already extremely tight 2D platforming roguelike, this game takes the beloved formula and expands upon it in an amazing way. The main movement and general mechanics remain intact for the most part, which is a very welcome thing. Visuals have been overhauled in the best way, and overall, the presentation is super clean. Music is also very very good (I’m partial to the lava world music, personally). Now onto the meat: everything new. Spelunky 2 takes the first game’s mechanics, worlds, bosses, and difficulty, and expands upon them perfectly. Almost every single world from the first game makes a return, yet has evolved to fit this game’s new flow. On top of this, new, unique worlds adorn the game’s branching paths with brand new enemies and perils that still perfectly preserve the game’s brutal yet fair difficulty. One of my favorite things about the first game was that 99% of deaths were the fault of the player, leading to a true sense of skill progression through failure and creating a satisfying gameplay loop. Spelunky 2 keeps this idea as its central focus, even as it introduces new ways to challenge the player.
This game’s secret routes and endings are also really cool incentives to hone your skills. Without saying too much about them, I feel like the first secret world is a natural (albeit bizarre) replacement of the first game’s Hell world. The vibes of it are a lot more mellow, like a brief exhale from what came before it. Really cool stuff, especially with all of the quest steps involved in getting there. A perfect ending, in my opinion. As for its second secret ending… masochism. This ending was the subject of my ambitions for at least 250 of the 300 hours I have in the game, and chasing it was a mix of every human emotion possible. It’s safe to say that achieving it is the most difficult and satisfying thing I’ve ever done in any video game. Yet after achieving this feat and reflecting upon what it took to get there, I understand how repetitive and monotonous the endgame really is, and have since never aspired to reach that ending ever again. That was my magnum opus, and what a beautiful painting it was, but one I will never desire to create again.
In conclusion, this is a masterpiece in the roguelike genre, and any fan of these types of games would be doing themselves a disservice by not checking it out.