A Sequel, For Better.....or For Worse?

Review by moolatycoon on Saturday, April 28th 2012

Hey everybody, Imma back for my 5th review, lol. I don't really right much, but enough of my rambling on about how much I bleep at reviewing, let's get on, shall we. In an earlier review of the prequel to this game, I stated that Crafty Castle was good, but highly overrated, and I stated what I would like present in the next game. Now that I finally get around to reviewing this game, let's dive in, shall we?

Before I say the following, I would like to note that gamethomas did a fantastic job in making his game, but there were a few quirks. I mine as well start with the positives and get to the negatives later, as my great grandma said "Positive numbers are higher on the number list for a reason!" Crafty Castle 2 included a whole array of new puzzles, "boss battles" and playable characters. Thomas had several cool aspects using the different characters, thinking up clever tricks to make it look as though you are tied up, or that you are confused, impacting the game-play, such as confused makes the character reversed whilst jumping over pits of...."lava". Game of Thomas also included many tricks of the trade to create new innovative things like water that have a resistance adding to the game-play, because as we ALL know, it is extremely hard to master the art of good water swimming controls in a game. Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess swimming....~shudders~ Gamethomas was able to think of clever backgrounds, enemies, and puzzles to make this game much more enjoyable than the first, and I think that he did a great job. Certain enemies brought in some good puzzles. Gamethomas also made it more exciting to jump over pits, and avoid traps, as the enemies were more fast paced, and the game was much more intense than the previous one. Personally, I think that Gamethomas did a pretty good job. Unfortunately, as the laws of math say, there is always a negative number, let's go take a look at those now...

Gamethomas may have made this game better than the previous one, but there were still some things I still found unsuitable, and some new things I personally did not like. Lets start with the boss battles. They were pathetic. Maybe the first or second try they seemed intimidating, but none of them required you to attack anything. For the boss all you had to do was survive, and for most of the bosses, there was a spot where you could be completely immune to the attacks. I even found this in the final boss. I wish he could have had some sort of combat in the game. I can understand if it wasn't meant to be that way, but I was still a little disappointed about that. Now, as I said earlier, Gamethomas did a nice job making the playable characters more abundant and fun to use, but that doesn't mean I find them creative. They are just smiley faces. That is like saying Mario's character is creative. He is just a freaking plumber from Brooklyn. Smiley also comes in many different colors, meaning one of two things. Gamethomas ran out of ideas, or he is obsessed with smilies. While he did have the many forms of smiley in skittle colors (taste the rainbow) I found that they were kind of unoriginal, and boring. As I stated he did a nice job incorporating them into game play, I just felt that the graphic design itself was bland. The last problem I had with the game was the difficulty. The game may have been harder than Crafty Castle I, by a lot mind you, but it was still ridiculously easy. I'm not even that good of a Ppg player. While the obstacles were very creative and fun, I found that they were rather pathetic, the bosses posed really no threat to me the second time around, and the game overall was pretty easy. There was ONE spot in the entire game that gave me a challenge, and the level that this challenge in wasn't very hard at that. The puzzles, while cool, were easy, and I found that it hit the overall quality of the game.

Ratings

Puzzles/Traps ****/***** The Puzzles were pretty good, lost that last point for being too easy.

Difficulty **.5/***** - While harder than the previous game, I still find it easy.

Scenery ***/***** - Okay I guess, It was cool in some parts, bland in others. Not bad.

Enemy Concept ****/***** - I didn't really talk about enemies much. They were pretty cool and well placed, that's all I will say.

Block Placement ****.5/***** - I think things were placed correctly to make the game more enjoyable, most of the layouts were really fun and cool.

Creativity ****.5/***** - Pretty cool & creative game, however, I would have liked to see different playable characters rather than just skittles with faces.

Overall

Final Thoughts

Well, I think that Gamethomas did a nice job, but he still has some things to work on. I think the game definitely deserved it's feature (from me) and it definitely surpassed its prequel. For Crafty Castle 3 (Whenever that happens) I hope to see increased difficult, better boss battles, and better designed playable characters. Overall, nice work Gamethomas, I bid you ado.