Pixeljunk Monster 2 Review

[tiberx]

After rainbowing all levels on fun, tricky, and mayhem, I reached the conclusion that Pixeljunk Monster 2 is inferior to its predecessor. It feels like they took The Tomorrow Children Engine and did a Monster 2 conversion in a very small time window. Stick with the original game if you can.

Read my review of the demo as most of it applies to the full game except the japanese text has been replaced with english (thank goodness for icons)

What I like

• Art style is like The Tomorrow Children which I adore.
• The diverging enemy paths. I'm one of the few people that enjoy restarting a run for the 5th time.
• Boss now spawn enemies. Awesome!
• Mines have been replaced with fruit. Smokey = ???, Sugglish = Ice attack, Bomby Fruit = replaces the mine.

What I dislike

• The background music was very bland. I only liked one track in the game and hated another. It shows how much of an amazing job Otograph did with the original game.
• The tension of what tower type to spend your gems on is gone as you are given every tower from the get go.
• No local co-op leaderboards or score tracking. I do want to beat my orignal score. The original game had it, why can't Monsters 2 have it.
• Tikiman was invulnerable while dancing in the original game. This what used in high traffic areas to collect coins and gems. Not so in Monsters 2.
• No player indicator in local co-op mode.
• Tower menu does not pop up near your character in local co-op. You need to shift your focus to see your tower menu. This is so disorienting when you are on the left side of the screen and the menu is on the right side.
• Fruit was only used on the last two levels on mayhem. Mines in the previous game were used more often.
• There no mask to pick up after the boss is defeated. There's a cloud of dust, very anti climatic.
• Bonus coins are granted immediately after the last wave enemy dies.
• No upgrades at home base.
• Level 5 towers do not have the same feel of achievement as the original game. Something about having a black flag and gold trim that giving you a real sense of accomplishment.
• In local co-op, the 2nd player cannot change the look of their tikiman.
• There is no indication what a tower will upgrade to, e.g., firepower, rate of fire, range.
• Bumblebee enemies no longer have a "irock" death sound effect.
• Players are unable to see all experience bars for all towers.

We can only hope these things get fixed.

We are currently working hard on rolling out the cool features you all asked for:
- Zoom out to see the entire stage
- Hide the UI & Pause the game for screenshots
- Option to reverse the camera control on "both" axis
...And much more!
Stay tune! #PixelJunkMonsters2 pic.twitter.com/h7y2Sg8HGc
- Q-Games (@PixelJunkNews) June 6, 2018
As of 2018-06-28, I rainbowed the core game (45 rainbows) by playing couch co-op and there is no option to zoom out to see the entire stage yet.




Changelog
2018-06-09, added another what I don't like.
2018-06-15, removed a negative
2018-06-18, added another what I don't like
2018-06-20, added another what I don't like
2018-06-28, added more what I like and what I don't like. Updated the review to reflect my final thoughts on the game (nothing changed, surprised!~).