Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django

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Notes

Boktai 2 is the sequel to Boktai, which I've already played and reviewed in the challenge. Boktai 2 is a direct sequel picking up from where B1 left off.






The basic gameplay of B2 is much the same as B1. The only thing that's significantly different is that the game is now melee focuses instead of ranged focused (since the Solar Gun is gone, replaced by the Sol Del Vice which is a glove that enchants the weapon it holds with sunlight power). You can still stealth around, ambush enemies and so on. Most of the enemies seem to be returning from the previous game, which is a bit disappointing.


The sunlight-based aspects of the gameplay have been shaken up. Midway through the game you get turned into a vampire, and are hurt by sun. This is kind of a non-issue as, even in the original game, you can just turn off or block out the sun. However to restore energy you have to sleep in your coffin which takes ages and is kind of annoying. As vampire django you also get a health restoring attack which somewhat trivialises resource management, since you can heal and recharge energy relatively easily. Eventually you get to switch back and forth.

The game gives you too many abilities, and you only get to quick switch between 4 of them at a time. This only gets worse when you get the power to switch forms as the powers of one form are unusable when you're the other form, and they don't get switched out automatically. The menu to swap powers is also quite awkward. The game also lags constantly when there is more than one enemy on screen. It's particularly terrible during boss fights.

My biggest complaint with the game is that grinding and upgrading your weapons is basically mandatory for bosses. You can happily progress through the rest of the game, but then hit a boss and find you're doing barely any damage, making the fight frustrating. This is what made me put down the game, as I couldn't be bothered to grind and had experienced crashes with the side-dungeons. To be fair to the original game, this may have been to do with the emulator and/or sunlight sensor patching rather than the original game, but still stopped me playing the side missions.


Overall B2 rehashes a lot from B1, and what it does add is not particularly well thought through. I bored a lot of the time playing this game, and eventually got frustrated and gave up.