hamzik said:

Just got past the trainchase. Running around on rooftops under a huge full moon to get to the train was awesome. Some nice resistance too from the faster ninjas. But even on ninja difficulty I am getting past them without too much trouble. I'm not saying that the game is too easy, cause it's not. But I am getting quite good with my katana and the feeling of actually evolving as the kusagari is great. Ubisoft really nailed the learning curve. So far I am really enjoying this game. It has, without a doubt, the best and most immersive swordfighting in a game ever and for that I lift my imaginery hat off to Ubi for pulling it off.

With Endless Ocean 2 followed by Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and now Red Steel 2, Wii is on a unprecedented winning streak. And just think, we'll get both Other M and SMG2 in just a couple of months. Right now, it's my 360 that's gathering dust.

 Not only am I right with you in sentiment, I'm at the same point in the game too  

No More Heroes 2 end of April as well along with Monster Hunter 3. 

My no sleeping let me catch up on Red Steel 2, as I can't sit or lie down. 

Before I was like.... yeah it's good, great graphics and controls, gameplay. But not blowing me away or anything.

Then I hit the night town followed by train fight, new enemies, old dusty town and new enemies and set pieces. I got new moves, upgraded my suit. Finally got into the swing of things, control wise in terms of doing special moves. Suddenly they throw you into a few new setpieces, have these damn chain gunners with sheilds. And fuck

So much fun. Throwing someone up in the air, dashing up above them mid-air and smashing them down is so cool. I was in the groove last night, taking down fools left right and centre. And the smaller, twisty turning ghostown somehow felt better and more appropiate to the game compared to tech heavy caldera.

The aiming is sooooo smooth. I really don't like western movies but this game really gives you this kickass feeling of being a gunslinger, holding the remote at your hip, the way the gun twirls in your hand and you get that pinpoint accuracy. I was grinning the whole time.

It might be handy to be able to retry and practice moves in the dojo. I learn so many moves I forgot half of them. I have to look at the moves on the crate and try and remember how to do some. 

Reticule glitch seems to have been sorted out. I cleaned the sensor bar, one side of which had about 3 years worth of my smudged fingerprints on it. Seems to have worked. 

gamingeek said:

I have to look at the moves on the crate and try and remember how to do some. 

 What? Seriously I can read the the words, but the meaning is lost on me!

gamingeek said:

Reticule glitch seems to have been sorted out. I cleaned the sensor bar, one side of which had about 3 years worth of my smudged fingerprints on it. Seems to have worked. 

Ravenprose said:

gamingeek said:

Hey, the whole thing is black, I guess I should have been lifting it from the center part and not the edges where the light points come out from.

I didn't notice. Only RS2 had major problems with it. 

 You know when you purchase kusergari moves, the emblems are on that crate? Or hidden moves in the shelf area?

You can just read the moves description on your pause menu. Why don't you do that? Did you realize that you can upgrade your special powers? And you can even upgrade, your ammo for all guns by clicking on the ammo box. 

P.S. I tried the earthquake on the ninjas with naginata's and he jump in the air and stands on his stick. How awesome is that?! 

Dvader said:

Has anyone finished this game. You guys are SLOW.

I did, yesterday! And I could not play this game from Monday to Saturday because of a broken WM+. 

Iga_Bobovic said:

You can just read the moves description on your pause menu. Why don't you do that? Did you realize that you can upgrade your special powers? And you can even upgrade, your ammo for all guns by clicking on the ammo box. 

P.S. I tried the earthquake on the ninjas with naginata's and he jump in the air and stands on his stick. How awesome is that?! 

 I knew about the ammo, not the rest. Will check the moves on the pause menu. It has the directions of how to do them right?

hamzik said:

I haven't been able to play the game for a few days. Too much work and I spent the weekend with my family. But I will get my fix later today.

 Same here, damned family. 

Okay, the moment you guys have been waiting for. The event that will give some meaning to otherwise mundane and useless lives. It is time. Time for my final verdict of Red Steel 2. Are you ready?

Okay, here it is, it is awesome!

What you want more?! Okay, you soul sucking succubus, I shall give you more. 

Let's start with the style. Like I said previously the style can be described as a clash between the Wild West and the East. More specifically samurai meets cowboy. This is not the only clash, there is also the clash of the past vs. the future. Dusty town and futuristic robots, old western like trains, that run on electricity, old revolvers and force fields. When you think about it, it does not make a lick of sense. But that is not important. Important is that it looks cool, and oh boy does it look cool.

The theme is the same for the whole game, there is always the desert backdrop. But within the theme, there is plenty of variety. After Caldera, you explore a train, then a abandoned western style ghost town and finally a canyon with some Indian (Native American for the political correct) motive. But we all knew the style would be awesome the moment we put our eyes on the game, but what about the gameplay?

Luckily Red Steel 2 does not suffer from the same style over substance syndrome like No More Heroes and Madworld. The battle system actually works, and the more moves you get, the more flexible the system becomes. For instance enemies with armour. Normally you would need strong slashed to get rid of the armour before you can brutalise the enemy. Well later in the game you get two moves, the crush and reaper that do that for you. You can also knock him in he air, jump after him, repeatability slash him in mid-air to knock off his armour and finally plunge a sword to his chest to finish him off for good. Or fully upgrade your shotgun and just shoot him once. One shoot will remove his armour.

The same is true for enemy defence. Three strong slashed will break their guard. A horizontal attack will break a horizontal guard, a vertical slash will break a vertical guard. The ram move will also break a guard, the dragon will push enemies away, the bear will knock enemies on the ground.

The battle system is just so much fun to use. I was playing on the ninja difficulty and it was really challenging. You really need to know what you are doing. Sometimes you can dodge, sometimes you have to block. You need to participate in crowd control. Kill the right enemy at the right time. and do not go wailing on single enemy, while the rest is raping you from behind. You will die lots of time when you do this. The enemies on ninja difficulty are not damage sponges, they do not take lots of hits to finish, but they will surround and kill you if you do stupid things. Once you survive a brutal encounter a feeling of pride will overcome you, a good feeling it is.

Last thing about the battle systems are the enemies. Oh boy are they cool. I mean you have ninjas and samurai with machine guns, what more could you ask for?! (Foolz if you answer pirates I will kill you) Once a special ninja, actually knocked off my sword once, I had to retrieve it, how cool is that?! Different enemies require different strategy, the hammer guy needs to be taken from behind, the minigun guy needs to be knocked on his ass with the Bear, etc.

I mentioned upgrading your shotgun before, well the upgrading system is quite robust. You can upgrade your guns, RE4 style with the final upgrade giving you a special ability. Like the aforementioned armour removing ability of the shotgun. You can also upgrade you bullets for each gun, so they deal even more damage. And lastly you can upgrade your sword, sword powers and you can buy new moves. These upgrades cost money, sometimes lots of money. Money can be found by smashing all kinds of objects and by doing missions and side missions.

Which brings us to the missions. I already explained the mission structure in my previous hands-on. I will focus more on the pacing. The game goes really quickly if you only do the main missions. The pacing is really quick then. It transforms into Metroid-lite when you do the sidemissions, because they require exploration of the interconnected map. Explorations yield one thing and one thing only, money, lots of money. Which in turn can be used for upgrading. On ninja difficulty this is vital. Exploring is nice, because of the beautiful levels, but the side missions are mostly meh. Go destroy 10 cars, find 3 ammo dumps, take down wanted posters. It is usually find this, find that. But like I said before, the missions are just excuse for the real meat of the game, and that is the awesome battle system.

I already mentioned the meh, let's go with mentioning the bad.

First the game is  bit short, especially if you do not do any side missions. You can probably blow through the game in 6 hours if you race through it, 12 hours when you do proper exploration and upgrading. 

I compared this game to Okami in my previous impression. In a way this game is also the opposite of Okami. Okami goes on and on and on, way to long. Red Steel 2 never overstays if welcome. 

But the real problem is not the shortness of the main campaign, no the game lacks content. After you finish the game, you do not get a new game+, where you can keep all your weapons, you do not get a secret weapon you can play around with, no cheat codes, no new game, you get a big fat nothing. If you start the game again, you can only fight the last boss and that's it. The last level has lots and lots of money you can find, but for what? There is nowhere to spend it, why are there hidden tokens that give you $5000,- when there is no store to spend it on? Or even a new game+, so you can fully upgrade the rest of you weapons. 

But surely the challenge mode will offer some replayability? Well the challenge mode is not a RE4 like mercenary mode. It is exactly the same as the campaign mode. It is an section of the single player campaign, big section sometimes, that will end up with the game scoring your performance. The reward is money, money that you cannot spend. Oh great! The challenge mode is basically pick your favourite scene, you usually see in DVDs. So if you quickly want to replay your favourite scene, pick it and play. It is not really suited for high score attacks, because the levels go on for too long and is missing the "just one more time to break my high score" feeling. But luckily you keep all you weapons and moves you earned in the campaign. So you are able to pummel the fist boss with all you advanced moves in the challenges.

There are also codes for extra weapons, but they are nothing more than skin changes. You do not get new sword moves or something. There is not even a sound test, so I can listen to the music. I did not really pay attention to it, busy not trying to get killed, but what I heard sounded good. 

Another negative point is the story. Don't worry about spoilers, everything you are curious about, won't be answered in the game at all. There are all these awesome characters, but nothing is explained. What is the story behind Shinjiro. He trained with the Kusagari, but then what? Why did he betray them? Why does he have ninjas all suddenly? Tits get shot in a cutscene, what happened to her? Did she die? Did our hero motorboat her delicious looking chest? Who is this Okaji fellow? The leader of Kataraka clan? Why is the Kataraka clan working with Shinjiro? What happened to Jian and that business man? Why was our hero banished? Why does he not have a name? How much wood would the woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck would chuck wood? Seriously nothing is answered at all. There are even plot holes. Why does Shinjiro needs the hero's katana, while he has one of his own? And why did Payne not give it to Shinjiro while he had it? 

The last bad point is the map. You have this Metroid like minimap in the corner of your screen, but you cannot press the pause button to see the whole map. You only see a small section of the map. Why? It does not make sense.

So in conclusion RS2 is an awesome game, with an awesome battle system and cool enemies and bosses. It is not perfect though, it could have used a better map, better side missions, better story and more unlockables. It is like a horny supermodel, nice to look at, nicer to fuck with, but it could use more meat on her bones. 

Rating range 8.5-9.0