Preliminary: Welp this look remarkably similar to the first one which I described as "Technically Not Good, But The Type Of Adventure Goal-Meeting That I Can't Help But Finish" . Not a good sign, since I'm trying to work on the idea of dropping games that aren't technically good so that I allow myself to really full delve into the fantasy worlds and adventures of high-quality games.

Yep I was sucked in all over again. Before I knew it I had already finished the first Stage and beat the boss without having to look anything up. Feeling good about my skills etc haha. These other stages start the old style where you get Passes etc so time to start my mapping and post-it notes! The part of the first game I so enjoyed!

Dang the Dungeon/Maze jingle is a jam! Tho I do wish it were Mom wishing me good luck again like in the first one :-p

Day 2

Lots of cute little secrets (I would've never found without StrategyWiki) like lots of Extra Lives and of course Konami Man (oh wow and in Stage 5, you can change the sprites of other Konami games!) Dang this game is going real fast, probly because I learned all the quirks of the first game. And this is basically the first game but with some better music and new levels. I'm enjoying the first-person dungeon crawling still, which is such a huge development for me with this and Phantasy Star, and tho it's pretty goofy gameplay, I enjoy having the projectiles to throw :-p It's also been a lot more forgiving, it seems, than the first one with providing Dungeon Maps early in dungeons etc. And whoa some of the dungeons are actual dungeons you enter through cave holes

And this boss for Stage 4 looks real familiar like something... so odd lol.

The collision masks are still pretty bad but I'm having fun and it's been hard to put down and I'm already a good chunk through the game.

I returned to it later, and still flying along. Like the first game, the platforming element isn't great, very evident on Stage 6.

Classism comes up a lot in this game. In the screenshot above, we are beating a Lord of a Castle who made a point to say he was in a much higher class than we :-p And then we went and distributed the wealth among the town like we always do ;) This game does add quite a bit more variety than the original, in that there are more bosses and not always just dungeons-or-underground-for-Passes-then-move-on, there are Castles and some stages without Passes etc.

It's kinda odd that the highest upgrade of the weapon feels worse than the basic-upgrade weapon (projectile). Welp, in my first night of actively playing (I played it a bit last night tho), I got to the last stage already! I prefer easy bosses over overly hard bosses, but these bosses have been very intuitive/straightforward and easy so far (especially thanks to the stun your weapons do to enemies, including bosses). Even the final bosses were quite easy but hey at least there's a proper ending, unlike the first one where it just re-cycles like an arcade game. It was cute that there was no treasure all along, but instead was a way for Ebi to become the woman she used to be butttt didn't exactly love the usual weird boy obsessed with the beautiful woman part that ensued. Still, overall a cute ending.

Look: 8/10 Functional enough, good Konami UI, and some good backgrounds. The detail, sprites from other Konami games, and neat cave dungeon (which only happened on one stage, shows care in the Look to have such niche parts throughout the game) boosted it .5

Sound: 8.5/10 This is where the game really shined compared to the first one. It really surprised me. All the tunes were good and I especially loved the underground and dungeon tunes. They didn't get old at all! Not sentimental necessarily, but top-notch. Especially for NES.

Play: 7.5/10 Full of cheap enemy spawning and terrible collision masks where it's just wherever the sprite is, regardless of jump or logic, yet can't help but get hooked. And this is now the second game of this series/format I played to the end, so I can't deny its hook for me. In sum, not great but oddly hooking and up my alley with the adventure elements.

Feel: 8/10 Apparently this is a series I like more than I realized ha. The Sound and fact it's a sequel I actually played to the end (and couldn't put down despite the Play flaws) boosted this up.

Attachment: 8/10 Apparently I wont forget these games and if I return to this era of Goemon, it'll be this one over the first one. Very flawed, but good and hooking.

Overall: 8/10

Completion: Main Story

Playtime: ~1h 30m