Adventure Island II (1991)

Beat. I definitely recall playing this back in the 90s but no idea if I beat it then. I instantly recognized it from the island graphics with little animated boss on each. I love that design though I wish the stages and links between them actually showed. It was pretty easy up until cave island, other than the occasional stage that didn't have much fruit, which required rushing and save stage scumming. I am not a fan of time limits though here it did prevent simply flying past everything on the pterodactyl. On cave island I found the warp to the next island and was so bad on time that my only options were take the skip or fail the stage. Up until here I had been mostly using the blue and red dinos, and sometimes going in on foot. The best way to play was to save state at the dino select screen before each stage (an awesome mechanic) to be able to switch if 1 attempt did not work out. A guide said riding a dino caused the time limit to deplete faster, the blue dino was immune to ice slip, the red could walk on lava, and that there were different paths through the islands. I never noticed any of that. For the rest of the game I used the purple Plesiosaur for water stages and the pterodactyl for the rest. Took some save state scumming to get past certain tricky spots but overall flight negated much of the challenge. The biggest problems were flying enemies, the ice falls from penguins, and volcanoes. The most difficult part was during the final stage where there was red water with shooter enemies on the ceiling. It took very precise movements to go under the shot fast enough to avoid the 2nd shot and not go low enough to lose the dino in the water. Probably should have taken the aquatic. The bosses seemed to shoot at the pterodactyl half the time but not sure if they were aimed or random.

This game was clearly inspired by Super Mario 3 but did not have the same quality as that legendary masterpiece. The inventory select before each stage and dino riding stood out as the best aspects, though Super Mario 3 had the same as costumes. Cute graphics, fun gameplay and relaxing tunes made this a NES classic.

8.0/10

I started off really enjoying the game. The improvements over the original are immediately obvious, but I started to sour on the game by world 4 and especially so when I got stuck in the last world for 5+ hours (skill issue). I ended up needing to look up a map for the last world and using saves states on the last level.

Pros

• Great music and visuals.
• Variety in level themes and layouts.
• Inventory system and multiple mounts. It blows me away that this game has 4 mounts when SMW on SNES just had Yoshi with color variants.
• Unlimited continues by default.
• A lot of levels and alternate routes. There's a lot of different pathways you can take after beating a level (e.g. you don't always have to go to level 2 after beating level 1). Adds replayability and variety.

• No level checkpoints. This is less of an issue in the early stages of the game where levels are shorter, but later on it becomes noticeable with how long and difficult the levels become.
• Hitboxes are horrendous. It feels like everything has a huge hitbox and will kill you on sight.
• Similarly to the first game, stage hazards and enemies seem to be placed at the most inconvenient places towards the end of the game.
• The game starts to not be generous with its items at the end, which is a shame considering it's taking away the mechanics that drew me towards the game to begin with.

Ultimately, I think this is the kind of game I'd revisit to play for a bit, but set down to play something else once I get to the point where I'm hitting game overs. The difficulty takes away a lot of the charm and makes it hard for me to recommend to other people.

When I started playing AI2, I was always hoping (dreading?) that the game will show me the same brutal difficulty of the first AI. So, when I got through the first few worlds I was a bit confused as the difficulty increase was slow, even unnoticeable at times. The dino mounts gave me a sense of security, as they at least give you an extra hit but also have different abilities that allows you to easily beat most of the levels up to world 4, maybe 5.

It was only in the last world that I felt that the game was getting really complicated, and I resorted to savestates to avoid dying in the last stage. In world 8 the axe becomes pretty much necessary, and losing it means that you are practically doomed to start the world again and go through the same stages over and over.

The new underwater and vertical stages are fine additions. The bosses are still very simple, although this time with a little more variety, but the fact that they escape to another stage if you don't beat them in the first try was quite frustrating.

In short, a good sequel that adds new stuff while maintaining the essence of the previous game.