Axiom Verge 2

 Switch
User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 58 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 34 out of 58
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 58
  3. Negative: 9 out of 58

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  1. BigDaddyHondo
    Aug 13, 2021
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Really disappointing, especially when compared to the first game. This time around the game is trying to be more vania than metroid and falls flat on it's face pretty much out of the gate.

    The biggest and most unforgiveable issue is the combat. Unlike the first game where you had a wide variety of weapons you're limited to two weapons here with three upgrades in total (two for the axe, 1 for the boomerang). These weapons never feel satisfying to use which results in a lot of time spent running away from fights. The developer seems to understand how broken the combat is since they removed collision damage for almost all enemies and made all boss battles optional. I honestly thought that something was broken with the game when I was able to just run from one side of the first boss room to the other to get past it. This is intentional and is the best strategy for all but two bosses. For the two bosses that you're required to fight a respawn point is placed in the boss room so you just have to keep hacking and dying until you "beat" them. No skill, no sense of accomplishment, just mash the buttons until it's over. The worst part is when you get to what looks like an awesome giant bug boss and it just sits there. I guess the dev just wanted to you to look at it which is a huge shame since it looks like it could have been the coolest boss in the game.

    That lack of accomplishment feeling spreads throughout the entire game. The majority of upgrades that you run into just upgrade a very basic skill tree that is pretty much pointless unless you're trying to sequence break. The weapons never feel any stronger even with all the upgrades, and health upgrades don't seem to matter since the character can't take many hits until the end of the game when they get damage reduction upgrades. The only upgrade that matters is hacking and really it only matters if you're trying to sequence break doors early.

    There are some upgrades that are fun like hacking but they're only fun for the first half of the game. Eventually you realize that almost all of the upgrades are meaningless beyond a handful that are required to get you to the end of the game. It becomes very obvious very early that the gameplay loop is simply run to the next dot. The path is almost always pretty linear and all of the upgrades you need to make it through are plainly presented. If you're expecting to have to work towards the goal like every other metroidvania this game will let you down. The amount of useless upgrades is better than the first game but it's still an issue and almost all of the extras aren't worth finding.

    The worst "upgrade" of all is the drone. When you get the drone upgrade you're introduced to the breach. This is a secondary map that is used as a warp map to get to points that you can't access on the main map. The problem with this is the breach itself looks like a cartoony mess and the drone is horrible to play as. It gets even worse when the character has their body taken away and you now have to play as the drone for a good 3rd of the game. The drone has no health and a weak attack so expect a lot of frustrations as you work through this section. Thing is this whole drone section is really just a very drawn out tutorial on how to use the drone and by the time you get your body back you'll wish you didn't have to play as the drone again. Unfortunately the drone becomes a critical piece and you're stuck dealing with it for the rest of the game.

    Even the art is a complete letdown compared to the first game. Did you like all the creepy stuff? The weird heads? The surreal colorful graphics that looked like they would be right at home on an NES? Well guess what? All of that is gone. Now the game is bright in a realistic world setting that often looks disjointed and washed out. I feel like the art just doesn't know what it wants to be and the mix of Greek, tech, middle eastern, and sci-fi is a huge mess that never really satisfies. The game looks like every other pixel art indie game now and it's a huge disappointment. Even when the art is cool (the underwater levels) they manage to screw that up by making these levels pitch black until the very end of the game. Hard to apricate the art when all I see is a circle 1/6 the size of my screen.

    Plot is also a complete disaster and the main character makes you want to hate them the more you play. The story reads like it was written by someone in junior high and the main character is a rich jerk who things juvenile quips and comebacks are cool. I really just wanted the main to shut up so I could get on with it. The ending is particularly horrible since the main character learns nothing and just becomes more of a greedy jerk.

    Music is also pretty bad and vocals shouldn't be used in music this short that loops. I felt like I had the Survivor intro on loop and had to turn the music off to finish. Levels really need to be adjusted on sound effects as well.    … Expand
  2. Daisuk
    Aug 16, 2021
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I just cannot fathom why you're limited to using melee weapons in this game. The awesome weapons was such a big part of the fun of the first one - yet here you're stuck with a bloody pick-axe and a boomerang against high-tech enemies - makes no sense. I only played for 3 hours, but could simply not get into it - very uninspired game - a complete letdown from the first, which I really liked.… Expand
  3. WatsonDynamite
    Aug 13, 2021
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Axiom Verge 2 is almost a complete inversion of the first one. The combat-centric, hardcore metroidvania with loads of weapons and movement upgrades to choose from was followed by an oddly paced game, where even the most basic mechanics feel like they weren't thought out, making the game feel half-baked.

    The game starts you off emphasizing the main combat difference between it and its predecessor: In an approach resembling Symphony Of The Night, your character can carry both a ranged and melee weapon and use both at the same time. However during my gameplay I only found 2 melee weapon upgrades and a single ranged weapon upgrade, which play nearly identically to their base forms I'm not sure if there are more weapons scattered around the world, but most of what I encountered in terms of exploration rewards were health boosters and skill points that you can spend on a very basic skill tree.
    Most enemies in the overworld feel very similar, they're just floating drone type enemies and have very little variation in terms of attack patterns. There's only 2 bosses in the "traditional" sense, but you can infinitely respawn during their fights which removes all challenge. Overall, fighting enemies and bosses in this game is a very dull experience.

    The map is also much less interesting than the prequel's, it's all aesthetically connected by the same Mesopotamian-esque style which is unique, but unexplored since the abundance of "cave" areas makes a lot of the areas feel similar. There's also a lot of sections where the map is padded out by large yet completely empty areas and corridors with only a couple enemies.

    The Breach is another mechanic that feels unfinished: it's essentially a parallel map only accessible by your drone form in specific portals, stylized in an 8-bit retro style, which conceals several of the game's upgrades. However, it is extremely small and its traversal is very linear, rarely requiring any backtracking after you've gotten the upgrade you needed. Overall, this could have benefitted from being expanded upon considering how big a deal the game seems to make of it.

    The Story simultaneously feels like the game's focus (very few metroidvanias have you actually interact with speaking characters this often) but at the same time severely underdeveloped. Ignoring the occasional spelling mistakes, the protagonist is rather unlikable and seems much less fazed by her predicament than one would think a mother would be after potentially losing her child to a parallel world and her body to a sentient human soul weapon. The lore is also very weak this time around and it's all mostly explained to you by the characters rather than the more cryptic (and in my opinion more interesting) approach from the prequel.

    The upgrades, arguably the most important part of any metroidvania, also feel very weak and unimpactful. You will never get any upgrade that gives you the same feeling you get when obtaining the Gravity Suit or the Speed Booster in Super Metroid. You'll be able to get the ability to climb on walls and use a grappling hook to latch on to ledges, but overall, the way you traverse the world will never be any -faster- or smoother, even though you will be able to access areas you couldn't before. The developer attempted to remedy this by giving you the ability to fast travel to any save point, which only makes the map feel even smaller. Combat upgrades are rare and movement upgrades even rarer. Instead, most of the upgrades are intended to be used for puzzle solving, but I found that most puzzles involving a single upgrade are very simple and similar and rarely required me to think outside the box or combine upgrades in interesting ways. All of the powerups you get feel like buildup, just specific and unwieldy enough to make you think you're gonna get a very satisfying upgrade to them that will make them feel REALLY good, but just when you think that moment's about to happen, the game ends.

    I finished the game in around 6 hours, and I honestly felt like I'd only played about 4. After the final Metroid-esque escape sequence (which was only 2 minutes long) I was seriously expecting the game's map to change dramatically, since the game makes it a point to show you the effect of the explosion you triggered, and for the second half of the game to be focused on re-treading the destroyed map and finally wrapping up the game's plot and the characters' story arcs. Instead, I was met with the ending credits. The ending is extremely anticlimatic and feels like someone pulled the plug on your game.

    Overall, this game feels like it's trying a ton of ideas at once but just didn't have the time to truly explore any of them. The idea of a metroidvania that eschews combat in favor of puzzle solving is great, like turning Zelda into a metroidvania, but it needs a lot more work and thought than this game was willing to put into it. It's still a fun game, but definitely inferior to its predecessor    … Expand
  4. giannis2001
    Aug 21, 2021
    6
    I lost interest really fast. The game technically isn't bad, but the melee focused combat and the lack of weapons (in the first 2 hours at least) makes it inferior to it's predecessor.
  5. Zski
    Aug 30, 2021
    6
    I was very much excited to play this game, as I was a huge fan of the first game, which was easily a 9/10. I started seeing the mixed and negative reviews pop up thinking that people were probably just nitpicking because it wasn’t quite as good as the first. Unfortunately, I think the mixed reviews are correct. The gameplay feels very off and not very well thought out, for example many ofI was very much excited to play this game, as I was a huge fan of the first game, which was easily a 9/10. I started seeing the mixed and negative reviews pop up thinking that people were probably just nitpicking because it wasn’t quite as good as the first. Unfortunately, I think the mixed reviews are correct. The gameplay feels very off and not very well thought out, for example many of the enemies are flying drones and most of your weapons are melee, so you’re constantly trying to time jumps with attacks - all game long. It’s not bad for small segments of the game, but it made me dislike the combat pretty early on. The plot was fine, but much less interesting than the first game. The graphics are excellent and the music is fantastic. I am truly impressed with the design of the game and music. But beyond the beautiful presentation, it just felt like a very disorganized game that lost the spark that the original had. Even the map was a little confusing as far as where to go next, even with the compass. It brings a lot of cool improvements like the upgrade system. Unfortunately, this was a hugely disappointing game. It’s not necessarily a bad game, it’s a pretty decent Metroidvania, but it is not the same caliber as the first game.… Expand
  6. synthenoid
    Aug 15, 2021
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Axiom Verge 2, from the front cover to the game itself, is a contrast to the overall vibe of its predecessor. Bright colors, daylight skies, energetic, upbeat vocal music & now, melee combat, all seem like opposites to the original game's immediately presented hostile alien world, sense of dread and mystery, & plot that easily puts us in the protagonist's shoes. From the moment Axiom Verge 2 opens with our billionaire CEO protagonist landing on the scene in a helicopter, and the player can access an ice pick melee weapon just a few meters to the left, in mere seconds this sequel is practically begging you to say "wow this is so different!"
    Sadly my good impressions of Axiom Verge 2 stop at "wow this mechanic/song/level/enemy/upgrade is neat" because the game presents you with flashy, notably different new mechanics, level designs & plot points, but seems to fall short or give up on trying to hit it home with everything new that's presented. After picking up the first melee weapon & boomerang, there seemed to be only a few (literally three?) melee upgrade pickups, and one of those three is its own weapon for a seperate button; a slightly stronger but slower axe with a ground slam attack I barely had time to make useful, and (one?) boomerang upgrade, that felt like 20 minutes before the end of the game. The levels look decent and I loved the music, but once you've spent 30+minutes in a given area or get lost, the visuals can get tiring, which saddens me because the first game's art & levels were more memorable on first impression. Some areas look like semi-generic themed levels from a Sega Genesis game (grass level, ice level, desert level, water level, etc) & this isn't dissing the work itself; the game generally looks quite good. Giger-looking things are my favorite designs+ credit to some of the cool trippy backgrounds, & neat environments/structures.

    Enemies, while some are cool-looking or need interesting strategy, unfortunately are either very samey or non-threatening even into the last hour of the game; drones with scan vision, intimidating turret walkers that… run away when they spot you? And can't hit the player if you rush and stand inside them? You can thrive without a ton of trouble at all, often being able to tank enough damage to eventually kill your target, & health isn't hard to come by, not to mention insanely abundant save points that refill your HP and, well, game seems to lack consequence of failing combat or dying. On the other hand there are foes like the giant laser-ball-thing, that barely even seem possible to complete without taking most of your health bar (on my first playthrough I had 20 deaths and at least 1/3 of those were the giant-laser-ball alone)

    In terms of challenge, past trying to get your bearings on combat & how enemies work, the game sorta fails to establish stakes or engaging challege, whether due to combat being trivial due to the hack powerup, or due to the abundance of save points i.e. if you die on a boss, you literally just respawn either within the fight like nothing happened, or seconds away from the boss room (a couple times I've walked through doors to be instantly met with unavoidable damage, specifically the laser-ball miniboss.)

    Bosses are scarce (only 2?), but there are repeating minibosses scattered, w/ the exception of a couple unique ones, with no boss music, rewarding you with a 'skill point' or two for the minimal skill tree which boosts damage/hacking range/health etc; disappointing because you can already find these laying EVERYWHERE or at least enough to have well boosted abilities, so these cool looking minibosses seem squandered. While visually awesome & almost tough at first, they slowly steadily lose charm when you realize that your handy hacking ability makes an absolute joke of them... huge awesome beast =minor inconvenience.

    "The Breach" is a new mechanic where you pilot a drone similar to first game, and navigate through a retro, 8-bit 'alternate dimension' to re-emerge somewhere you couldn't reach before. I thought the Breach was getting good when I got the "leave the Breach at any time" powerup, but just like the earthquake ability, goes underused or just didnt have enough time to shine before the game ends, and both just seem like a "this upgrade unlocks this door".
    More on the Breach, frankly I was confused when I stumbled upon what looked like an easter-egg (like the first game's hidden worlds), as part of the main path. To its detriment seems more like an afterthought than a recurring, fairly large part of the overall game. My first playthrough took roughly 8 hours (4 hrs shorter than the first game) & I've seen people claim they beat this game in 6,
    The fact that the Breach takes up so much time of the overall game while seeming more like a joke or easter egg than a primary mechanic, def took me out of it.
    No chars left to go into the story but nearly no payoff for all the new plot. More like a DLC side story.    … Expand
  7. silverjoey
    Aug 31, 2021
    5
    This game had a lot of potential with the new mechanics that weren't in the first game, but wasn't large or long enough for those mechanics to really flourish. Combat and the skill tree could've been so much more than what they are. Boss fights were so underwhelming I didn't realize they were supposed to be bosses. Used the last two major abilities of the game a total of 2 times, makingThis game had a lot of potential with the new mechanics that weren't in the first game, but wasn't large or long enough for those mechanics to really flourish. Combat and the skill tree could've been so much more than what they are. Boss fights were so underwhelming I didn't realize they were supposed to be bosses. Used the last two major abilities of the game a total of 2 times, making them feel like they were added as an afterthought, only to serve as a final roadblock to extend the game. It was a lot of fun to play in the middle part of the game and the soundtrack is also very enjoyable though. All in all I wish I had bought a different 20 dollar game… Expand
  8. rushiosan
    Aug 27, 2021
    5
    Axiom Verge 2 is the living proof of how important good combat and exciting boss encounters are in a video game. Sadly, it's a great example of how you should NOT do it.
  9. Rtheom
    Oct 21, 2021
    6
    This definitely feels like a sequel we would have gotten in the old 16 bit era. It does borrow a lot from the first game, but it changes a lot too, and not necessarily for the better. Mapping has gotten worse, the enemies are much less interesting, and most disappointing of all is the arsenal. In the first game you were given a lot of fun toys, far more than you needed, that let youThis definitely feels like a sequel we would have gotten in the old 16 bit era. It does borrow a lot from the first game, but it changes a lot too, and not necessarily for the better. Mapping has gotten worse, the enemies are much less interesting, and most disappointing of all is the arsenal. In the first game you were given a lot of fun toys, far more than you needed, that let you approach enemies in a huge number of ways. In this, you get a limited selection of lackluster items and a skill tree to power them up. Perhaps worst of all, the story doesn't grab you nearly as well as the first game's did. You're given hints in the same fashion, but the first drew you in right away with the giant mysterious creatures and the absolutely bizarre environments. This one doesn't have that. I had high hopes for this game after the first one (which I played several times through), but this one I may not even finish. I'd recommend it if you really liked the first, but wouldn't suggest it to just anyone. A bit of a letdown overall.… Expand
  10. maniaque
    Sep 30, 2021
    6
    This game is inspired by its predecessor Axiom 1 and also Metroid and Castlevania games using similar gameplay sometimes but on the cheap side. For me the first episode of Axiom was better. Some say that Axiom is a nes style game. Im sad to say that some old NES games actually look better. The Axiom games look more like cheap mobile phone games to me. The Axiom 2 graphins really feel cheapThis game is inspired by its predecessor Axiom 1 and also Metroid and Castlevania games using similar gameplay sometimes but on the cheap side. For me the first episode of Axiom was better. Some say that Axiom is a nes style game. Im sad to say that some old NES games actually look better. The Axiom games look more like cheap mobile phone games to me. The Axiom 2 graphins really feel cheap and outdated already even before its launch.… Expand
  11. Elite_Institute
    Mar 5, 2022
    6
    "Despite my gripes, Axiom Verge 2 is not a bad game, but rather a disappointingly mediocre one. It starts out well, with the great visuals and epic soundtrack, but as you progress things start to fall apart. From tepid combat, to dull NPCs and enemies, to a sometimes confusing map, the game starts to frustrate in different ways. The beautiful aesthetics of the world and the nifty drone"Despite my gripes, Axiom Verge 2 is not a bad game, but rather a disappointingly mediocre one. It starts out well, with the great visuals and epic soundtrack, but as you progress things start to fall apart. From tepid combat, to dull NPCs and enemies, to a sometimes confusing map, the game starts to frustrate in different ways. The beautiful aesthetics of the world and the nifty drone help save the game from mediocrity, but the game could (and should) have been better. You won’t have a bad time playing the game, but there are far better Metroidvanias on the console you could be playing instead."

    https://theeliteinstitute.net/2021/08/18/axiom-verge-2/    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

35
#35 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2021

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 20 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 20
  3. Negative: 0 out of 20
  1. CD-Action
    Nov 15, 2021
    75
    Axiom Verge 2 offers an extraordinarily beautiful, coherent and original world, but sometimes exploration gets tedious and some mechanics and design choices get in the way of experiencing this intriguing setting. It is a unique game in a way, but I feel that it shouldn’t have sacrificed some elements on the altar of originality. [11/2021, p.46]
  2. Eurogamer Italy
    Oct 12, 2021
    80
    Axiom Verge 2 is an unexpected and greatly enjoyable evolution of the first game, more focused on exploration than combat. It's the second step in Thomas Happ's ambitious sci-fi universe.
    Read full review
  3. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Oct 7, 2021
    95
    Axiom Verge 2 is amazing. Many have tried to make games that can work as light entertainment and heavy, honest stories about their own lives at the same time. Few have succeeded as well as this one. [Issue #55 – October 2021, p. 19]
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