Koli's Sorrow 2

My second review here on RMN. And my first one was actually a review of Koli's Sorrow, the predecessor to Koli's Sorrow 2. Let's start this off on a good note and say that Koli's Sorrow 2 is full of improvements and is such a better experience than Koli's Sorrow.

Improved story, dialogue, mapping, cut-scenes, an all-around better developed game and it shows.
Final Score: 3.5/5

Koli's Sorrow 2 is the second game in the Koli's Sorrow series. One should expect improvements and a better experience than the first, regardless if the first one was good or not. And that's exactly what you get. Koli's Sorrow 2, much to my surprise, doesn't start off as fast as the first one. Instead, the developer slowed the pace of the story down allowing the player to take it all in. Now, there isn't a huge pause but you do get to interact and catch-up with the characters from Koli's Sorrow. A brief introduction explains why some of the characters remained, why some left, and why the ending of Koli's Sorrow marks the beginning of Koli's Sorrow 2's story.

Right from the start, you're given your first main objective: travel to the city of Central City. Now, the city has seen it's fair share of better days. Due to unfortunate accidents like sky-ships crashing into the city, it's a lair of criminals, corrupted citizens, and rats. The developer does portrait a ruined city perfectly with plenty of ruined buildings, a lot of debris, etc. but I'll cover more of that in the mapping bits.

After wandering around, I got back on-track of the story and went to meet the king. However, I'm stopped just outside the castle. Apparently, no one is allowed through the front gates. So, the player must track through the sewer to come up on the other side of the gate. They're plenty of enemies, mini-bosses, and more that'll get you fairly leveled up and a good amount of gold. Before finally ascending from the sewer, you're given a plot-development scene, which also rewards you with the player being introduced to one of the villains.

After moving on through the story, mini-bosses and dungeon-crawling become a large part of Koli's Sorrow 2, just as in it's predecessor. The balancing in this game is superb. Some of the best I've seen. Most monsters have weaknesses, if not all of them. Battle strategies must be formed in order to survive certain bosses, while others you can just spam a certain spell and hope for the time to pass by quick.

The dungeon layout and general mapping throughout the entire game has much improved. Puzzles are more fun, certain areas have interactive items such as obelisks and other travelers which make dungeon-crawling less annoying than it has to be. The rewards from dungeon-crawling do have their perks. There is mostly a chest on every map and plenty of enemies to gain exp. and gold.

Some new features in Koli's Sorrow 2 are the obelisks that give short poem-like messages that provide some background story for an ancient tribe of warriors. Plenty of new items are avaliable such as the Remembrance of Home item, which returns you to your house. Teleport pads make a comeback in the sequel due to their transfer locations. Moving throughout the world now becomes easier and quicker with these. Most teleport pads pop-up at key points in the story or before boss battles.

My favorite character from Koli's Sorrow makes a return! Mishap is back into trouble, but always to the fact that it benefits Koli and his friends. Mishap, if you have no idea, provides items that'll help the player in battles and so forth. He also provides comedy-relief and is worked into the story fairly well.

However, a feature that was removed from the sequel was items dropping from bosses. Most bosses now drop gold, along with give the player exp. You can no-longer obtain a piece of a boss and use it as a weapon to defeat the next one, which I sadly miss but oh well.

There are some points of interest that bring down the enjoyment of Koli's Sorrow. Although small, these effect the story and atmosphere in the game, not making the story as enjoyable as possible. Music is still RTP, which is a drag now because it's so common and limited. Small spelling errors and grammatical mistakes don't plague the dialogue but does make it difficult to understand what's being said.

A title screen and new window screen finally comes with Koli's Sorrow 2. While the title-screen does have a minor flaw, it is better than the default one. The new window skin is very impressive and looks great. The dialogue is lined up perfectly without having words run off of the screen or sentences being cut-off mid-way through the conversation. These small things really help the experience of the game and doesn't ruin the story for us that enjoy it.

Overall, Koli's Sorrow 2 definitely brings justice to the original game and introduces new characters, locations, items, and general improvements to the entire game. And although minor mistakes are there, they neither ruin the game or the experience. And yes, the comedy is still there!