There are several issues here. The biggest problem can be summarized as the game is simply a bit of a jerk. It feels like a DM designed the encounters wanting to kill their players (that is NOT the goal of a good DM, his role is to make fun). A great example is an early encounter of your lvl 2 party involves running into a spider swarm in a cave on a fetch quest. In Pathfinder rules, spider swarms can only be hit by splash weapons. If you don't have splash damage, you'll do a lot of 0 damage to the swarm with your swords or arrows and get killed. Most players will die fighting. You were given splash flasks, you probably didn't put them in your quick slots though. So, you'll have to reload after you get team killed. That kind of design simply is not fun. You don't save scum the tabletop game. Some other general problems: - Lack of direction for low level party, many places you stumble upon are too hard to win against. - Lots of loading and some levels are extremely small housing just 1-2 encounters/areas. - Encountering enemies you can't possibly deal with early on (i.e. you can run into a random fire elemntalwhile just travelling about). - Stupidly buffed enemies. I played on normal or challenge at the time and randomly stumbled upon 2 goblins vs my 5 person lvl 2 party. This should be a stomp per rules, one had 25 AC. That's dumb, took like 40 attempted hits to kill him. - Poorly designed NPC companions, while many enemies have buffed up stats and bonuses your companions are not min-maxed instead being more designed around flavor. For example, the barbarian has only +1 dex (basically a joke), there's 2 wizard companions, one is an evil melee caster build and another is a wizard/rogue that has 8 con (basically guaranteeing no HP) . It is inconsistent that your companions be so non optimal relative enemies. - Following above, designing your own team is expensive costing lots of gold unless you do it at level 1.
I'm sad to give this game a poor review. I loved the second game, Risky's Revenge. There are many bright spots. The music is great, the characters and story are fun, the writing is amusing and the pixel art is amazing like the first. All these things are of high quality. There are 3 major problems related to gameplay. 1) Tedious Backtrack In the previous game the world was one big map like Super Metroid. You got around with statues that connected to each other and rewarded exploring with shortcuts. In this game there are no shortcuts. Each island is its own contained area cut off from each other. You WILL have to backtrack as often a key item to progress is on a previous Island. For example, let us say I need an item on Island 2 (abbreviated I2) to continue on I4, but I could only get it after a power up on I3. To proceed I would: 1) Travel back I4's port. Pirate flare's can teleport you to port but are consumed (cost money or enemy drop). 2) Talk to Risky, take ship to I2. 3) Travel from I2 port to the area where key item is. 4) Travel back to I2's port. 5) Talk to Risky, take ship to I4. 6) Travel back down from I4 port to where I started. 7) Continue with game. This is tedious and not optional. 2) Spongey Enemies As you go on, enemies require more hits to kill. At the moment, a common enemy takes up to 8. Your weapon never does more damage except by a consumable power up. This seems to have been done to slow down screen traversal. They also do vastly increasing amounts of damage punishing you if you make an evasion mistake. 3) I Got You Moments These moments can best be described as the designer using your expectations against you. For example, there is a section in this game where you must make a jump. The ceiling is very low, I expected it to be just below a normal jump. Instead I hit spikes on the ceiling and killed myself losing 1/2 a heart. There are several other examples I can't go into due to char limit. Overall, I'm just dissapointed.
