Super Adventure Island II

I like the style and format of this game quite a lot, and it had the potential to be pretty awesome. But it doesn't quite get there. For one thing, the action gameplay is a bit dull; a lot of the enemies are dead simple to defeat, as many of them, at least in earlier levels, seem to just sit there not even really trying to attack you before you walk up and whomp them in one hit. A bigger hindrance is that it feels a little rushed and undercooked on the technical side. The load times are unusually long for a cartridge game (especially one on the Super Nintendo, which usually had near-instant load times) and oftentimes the game abruptly cuts to black when you'd expect it to do a scene transition or play a special animation. For example, when you defeat a boss, the boss's death animation plays, then the screen cuts to black with complete silence for a second, and then returns with the boss dead and your reward dropping from the sky. The game is full of these abrupt silent black screens in-between cutscenes and level transitions, and combined with the sometimes-stiff player animations, it creates the feeling of a game that needed a few more months of development time.

But even still, I am a fan of the ways this game tries to expand the Adventure Island gameplay, and the exploration is actually pretty fun. I have a lot of fun in the regular action stages, which are kind of like small Metroid areas. The RPG elements are very cool as well. Well, the random encounters aren't so great, they're kinda boring in fact, but they do give you an excuse to rack up gold. But the feeling of grabbing a stronger weapon and killing enemies in just one less hit than before is still infectious, and I like that we get to see Master Higgins actually wear some clothes. Considering he's almost naked in most media, it definitely feels like he's getting a lot stronger as he gets all suited up in this game. The graphics are charming as this series ever is, and the music is great too. This really is a good game and probably my third favorite in the Adventure Island series (behind 2 and 3 on NES), it's just too bad they couldn't iron it out a bit more and make it great.