Guild Wars 2

1st off let me state that I love[d] Super Adventure Box with a passion. The first one had me putting in some nearly 100+hours into it in a single month (insane, I know!). But there are issues with the 2nd world implementation that I just cannot see as enjoyable. So much so, that if repeated in World 3 (W3), it’ll make me just skip that content entirely. So, my feedback…

• -Shortcuts that are real shortcuts: Shortcut Worm is funny, cute, and entertaining for it’s purpose. Shortcut Eagle is obnoxious ‘sting’ in the rear that is better to skip it than use it to skip content in front of you. Boils down to the ability of the shortcut to still have small chance of fail (like the green acid blobs), but not an extreme failure rate (like 1-hit bees that knock you off the bird for instant fail).

• -The looks: One thing that’s great about W1 is that every section of it has a great backgrounds and surrounding colors. W2 lacks that in Z2 particularly. The clouds are blindingly white, and when looking at rainbow bridges (Infantile Mode) from an angle, the colors completely disappear in the blind. A bit more blue would have been much appreciated in this crazily white area. Or, even more hills to have.

• -Jump puzzles = great :: Inch Precision jumps = not-so-great: When there’s a jump like the Lilly pads in W1-Z3, which was hop-hop-hop, those are fun, challenging, and enjoyable. In W2-Z1,Z2, and possibly one or two in Z3, they require that you jump at the right angle, the last second, in a perfect spot…or you fall to your death. Those are not enjoyable. If instead they had more disappearing cloud hops (something Z3 does well towards the middle), it would fit much better for it.

• -Ninjas/Hillbillies/Bears&Bears: Snakes, monkeys, spiders, and frogs make up W1’s main enemies. They’re somewhat simplistic, somewhat not…but they are fun, enjoyable, and possible to master. W2 has ninjas that do random jumps, kicks, and knock players off the very small 3ft size platforms rather often. Hillbillies are an enemy that has that conic damage and immunity. They’re not too shabby, but they’re not great with that immunity either. Bears such as the Smokey-the-Bear mockups are…okay, though their overlapping AoE fields last 2x as long as normal player AOE’s do; the ice bears are the real problem with their claw and throw pushbacks mixed is just killer when right next to a cliff (which is all the time in those areas.

• _-Z1 = 1.5x; Z2 = 2.5x/3x, and Z3 = 2x: _ Those are comparable W2 zone sizes to the previous W1 zone sizes. When they’re that long, it pushes players off. I know the goal was to have 3 zone splits to each world, but if the world set to be that long, it wouldn’t kill it off to introduce a split and have an extra 1 or 2 zones. In W2-Z2, it could have split just after the Mystical Palm ninja boss (yes, that’s a boss!) as a break end that and right after is the start of Z3; that would make the ice section Z4.

• -Unlocks in proper place: I know I’m not the only one irate with how the Torch upgrade was mid-way through W2-Z3, right before it was required (Bog Otter’s rant on GBTV was quite funny). It’s not just that, though. There’s also the nun chuck, which would have made fighting ninjas far easier had it been right at the end of W2-Z1, or the beginning of W2-Z2. They’re in such obscure places that makes it frustrating for players to both obtain and/or use.

Things I liked/loved:

• -Multi-layered pagoda w/ block moving puzzle

• -Pagoda with arrow puzzles and giant moving gong

• -Fish feeding to squid puzzle(s)

• -Mystical Palm ninja boss fight

• -Sucking frogs (no, that’s not a curse against them…it’s the frogs that suck you in and try to eat you)

• -New mechanics to zone end-bosses

• -Racoons (both their zany way of stealing from the Hillbillies and their mafia style boss)

• -Bananas on ice

• -Secrete Rooms

• -Gator rapids

• -Speed planks (used very seldom in W2-Z1 only, then missing the rest of the world)

Well, that’s my idea, thoughts, and feedback. Hope it helps with future SAB development. Again, I love W1 (norm and Trib mode), but W2 is just a headache that I did as minimal as possible.

Wanted to make a similar thread, but I guess I’ll just use this one.

For some clearness, I’ve done normal mode, all achievments (except W2-3), and done Trib mode until W2-3 (whitout guides – yes, I am proud of that). As soon as I get home from work, I’ll attempt that too.

And I know we may not get responses, but I hope Josh and team are still reading these nevertheless.

Normal mode:

It is true, the difficulty has increased a lot in world 2. Even after the patch, I think it still may be too hard for some, which is not the goal I think. This difficulty should have been saved for world 3, as there is a large gap between world 1 and 2.

Mostly because:

-World 2 is unforgiving – Ninjas knock you off, dart traps even after many runs, you tend to forget them

- Some very hard parts in World 2, that should have been for later:
Gong run (if you don’t cheat), the waterfall with the logs (Lion king reference?). Well, I tough there was much more, but there isn’t any I can think of at the moment.

- The Zones are longer. Which I personally like, but I see many casual players don’t.

While I loved the normal mode, the above things can put many players off. It is something to consider (also what the OP has said).

Tribulation mode:

Oh boy. I was literally facepalming my self, even swearing and yelling out loud at parts, but with that said I had fun. Furstrating and painful fun, but at the end of the level, it felt great. I even had more fun (after completing it) watching my guildies die at the very same traps I died 20 times before.

With all that, here is a breakdown of the traps and why I like them or not:

- Exploding flowers – I had no idea what was killing me for a lot of time. I finally noticed after observing very closely. I like this one, it makes you want to observe your surrounding very closely. I sometimes notice myself avoiding flowers in normal mode too now.

- Lava floor -The same as above, took a little time to get what was happening, but after that, they were fine.

- Normal spikes that are visible on the floor – ok

- Huge strom clouds – can be annoying sometimes as nothing is indicating the, but I guess that is the whole point of them. I don’t mind a trap like this, but definetly not my favorite.

- Jumping rocks – Annoying, but as they are visible and guessable, I have no issues with them. Only problem I have with them, is that they seem to be a bit random – perfect example for this is W1Z1 between the 3-4 checkpoints. I do that run every time the same way, yet I only succeed 30% of the time.

NOT visible spike traps – These I have issues with. There is noting indicating them, you just die-die-die until you get the pattern right. And even then, you still die. There should be at least some very minor hint at them. I don’t think these traps are fair, at all. The only way you could evade these are guessing what the developer was thinking. I honestly think these traps are sucking the fun out of Trib mode, because at the other ones, the only one you can blame, is yourself. Here, you just got ‘unlucky’.

- Flying hand – Same as above, but becouse it only happens once, I’m ok with this one.

- Checkpoint – Genius

I think I covered all the traps, now for some general things:

At first I thought the ramp up in difficulty would result in more harder jumps, not traps everywhere (although there are lot of hard jumps). I would prefer the the more harder jumps, becouse:
1. No guide can help you if the jumps are hard (that’s a good thing)
2. Lots of traps can make the experience very annoying

A lot of time I felt like (mainly becouse of the jump-up spike traps) that I wasn’t playing a hard jumping game, but a trial and error game. Which you’ll learn eventually, but doesn’t really require skill, only patience.
In terms of old school, me, personally would have loved to see a difficulty more like Super ghouls ‘n’ ghosts, Megaman, Castlevania, Zombies ate my neighbours (wow, great game!) and such, and NOT Cat mario.

The gong run for the above mentioned difficulty is a perfect example. Make it unskipable and BAM, you got Trib mode. Here are some other ideas for good difficulty increase (imo): add more stormy clouds, a timer at certain sections, poison cloud that chippes health away, double dodgejump, disappearing platforms.

All that said, I enjoy(ed) Trib mode (Yes, I’m that kind of person, don’t judge me!), and looking forward to the frustration that W2Z3 is gonna cause.

I do hope my ‘review’ was helpful and you get a chance to read it. Go go SAB team!

Ps.: Just a little something. I have some new guild members, who joined after SAB was released back in April. When they went in, reactions were like: “What is this sheet?” – “Yo, I ain’t playing this carp”. Yet, when I’m online I often see them inside SAB, still swearing in guild chat, but enjoying it nevertheless

Shortcut eagle is actually cake when you get the pattern down. The rear bees come at the same exact intervals each time. I believe it is 4 from the back before the front bees attack, then a wave of 3 from the rear, then 4 again. If you know that you can just time when you need to get behind the eagle head. Additionally, standing behind the eagle head prevents you from being knocked off from the rear bees.

It’s really difficult to fail once you figure it out, so if you are having trouble then methinks you have only attempted it a handful of times.

As for the looks, that I really never noticed. I’m going to look around now that you mention it, but I actually thought it was a relatively unique look (sorta Asian-ish)

I don’t remember any particular jumps needing absolute precision. If you can dodge jump (space + V at exact same time while moving forward) then no jump is difficult in SAB. The W2Z3 rock tower has the hardest jumps IMO because sometimes if you miss a small ledge you fall all the way back down.

I disagree with you completely on the monster difficulty. The snakes, monkeys, and frogs in the first world were painfully easy. They really were just obstacles to side step around. World 2 finally gives monsters that you need to be wary of when jumping as many have ranged attacks. All of the monsters are pretty easy if you just bomb from a distance. I’m looking forward to more difficult monsters in the future.

Agree with length being a bit on the long side. In particular because this is World 2, there’s no reason I would need to commit an hour to a World 2 zone (W2Z2—for the first run through—once you know what to do it’s much faster obviously).

No opinion on the upgrades as I had 2500+ baubles from April SAB and was able to buy everything I needed when I came to it. I understand why it would be frustrating though.

You will not see indications of spikes. It’s tribulation mode, not challenge mode.