Wario Land II

Wario land 2 is a game that was probably very good when It came out, but did not age very well.

Each stage ask you to find the exit, with some stages that have more than one. There is also a treasure hidden in each levels.

There are a lot of problems with the game. One of the most frustrating part are the minigames. In each level, there are 2 minigames, one to get the treasure and one at the end of the level to get a map part. Both minigames are fun the first couple of times. The problem is that these minigames are the same in each levels. So you get to play the same boring two minigames aproximatly 50 times.

Another part that is kind of outdated, is the game punishing your mistake by having you replay parts of a level. For example, during each boss, if you are hit even once, it makes you replay a part of the level to get back to the boss. It makes the use of save state kind of necessary to not feel like your losing your time.

With all that being said, the game still have some entertaining values and was probably great to play on the go. The gameplay is great and there is a lot of creativity. I just wish those problems would not get in the way of the game being good.

I think Wario Land II is easily the weakest of the 4 main Wario handheld games. After a 5 year break on handheld, Wario Land II released on the Gameboy Color, which had just replaced the Game Boy. I get that early Game Boy Color games were often very basic and very few were great, but I expected a huge improvement in the series since they had 5 years between the last game.

Wario Land II changes a lot, the game no longer has an Overworld map and you just progress through levels in a linear fashion. There are something like 5 chapters and each chapter has 5 segments, with the last segment being a boss fight. You can no longer die and when enemies hit you, you just lose coins, and coins are really only used to play the mini games to collect treasures. Each level has a hidden treasure and a game you can play at the end. Levels are pretty open and not very linear, and you mostly are going between rooms finding which path leads you to the exit.

What frustrates me most about Wario Land II is when enemies hit you, they knock you back super far and its super annoying, why couldn't they just make it when you get hit, you just start blinking without getting pushed back. I found it super annoying and it just slowed the game down since some enemies were tough to avoid. The other thing is platforming is still awkward since Wario feels bulky and there are segments where you need to platform exact. The other thing is Wario Land II gets super repetitive, I felt every chapter had similar objectives and the enemies were boring and didn't feel unique. It was kind of cool how you could get the enemies powers if you let them hit you, but that novelty wore off pretty fast. And the bosses in this game were just annoying, if you got hit once they would knock you out of the arena and you have to make your way back. I almost wish they brought death back as a mechanic.

The most annoying thing is for all the hard work you do, finding every hidden treasure, completing every hidden chapter, doing every mini game, you are rewarded with one hidden level which is so short and forgettable with a shitty generic boss. All that work just for a terrible hidden bonus.

Wario Land II mostly felt tedious and overly long and the design or enemies weren't that well done. I felt the series would greatly improve as it went on, and this game just feels a bit too repetitive and annoying.