There were certainly visceral thrills to be had smashing my way through each roomful of robotic hordes, and the fighting is certainly fluid, but I wish I’d felt as inspired to cave in heads as I was figuring out ways to head into caves. I never stopped to ponder if I should be using the bronze axe or if I should switch to the sickle sword because the right tool for the job always seemed to just be whatever I happened to have equipped at that moment.
AXIOM VERGE 2 FULL MAP UPGRADE
But despite the handful of additional melee weapons to find and the inclusion of a skill tree to upgrade basic attributes like attack speed and power, my simple slash-’em-up method for fighting didn’t ever change – because it didn’t need to. Indra begins with a pickaxe for close-up attacks and a boomerang for ranged assaults, while her drone – which she must pilot remotely through the Breach zones – can swing a tethered spinning blade and use a grappling hook to launch itself at enemies like a pinball. There’s certainly a healthy variety of enemy types to contend with in both maps, with mechanical kill-bots of all shapes and sizes in Indra’s world and a gaggle of more amorphous organisms in the breach, but the arsenal you’re given to tackle them with is surprisingly conservative compared to the the two-dozen or so different projectile types that could be bolted onto the original game’s transforming Disruptor rifle. However, compared to its clever dual-world exploration, Axiom Verge 2’s combat is fairly one-dimensional. Meanwhile, Indra only grows more fun to control over the course of the journey, consuming a steady diet of power-ups that transform her over time from humble platforming heroine to shapeshifting Swiss Army Knife equipped to scale almost every structure in her path. Any backtracking I did was typically with a clear purpose, to return to that suspiciously fragile-looking wall after I’d unlocked Indra’s shockwave power, perhaps, as opposed to pacing back and forth across multiple rooms because I had trouble distinguishing one from the next. Each area of both maps feels far more distinct in terms of terrain, and a compass found early on subtly steers you towards your next objective.
Orienting yourself in two places at once inspires a degree of non-linear navigation that's a consistently absorbing challenge as a result.Įven with double the map to cover, I found Axiom Verge 2 to be far more intuitive to explore than the original game.
AXIOM VERGE 2 FULL MAP TRIAL
Not being able to see exactly where you’re going does introduce some trial and error, but the ability to fast-travel to any previously discovered save point gave me the freedom to experiment with blind leaps between worlds, knowing that I could beam back for a do-over if I accidentally blinked into the wrong spot. Initially, you can only shift from one world to the other at predetermined Breach gates on each map, but eventually Indra is given the ability to both reveal hidden tears and also manipulate the placement of a tear in order to crossover to more precise areas. It’s also a mechanic that continues to evolve over the course of the journey.
Orienting yourself in two places at once inspires a degree of non-linear navigation that’s a consistently absorbing challenge as a result. Not only do you need to puzzle your way to unlock gates and uncover hidden power-ups within each separate world as per the tried-and-tested Metroid template, but you also use interdimensional tears to hop back and forth between realms to circumnavigate obstacles in one dimension by finding an alternate path in the other. This contrast doesn’t just make for appealing shifts in aesthetics, it brings a literal extra dimension to navigating your way through Axiom Verge 2.
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