Aggelos 2

Although this is a sequel, there’s no need to know anything about what happened in the first game, as this story takes place centuries later. As is often the case, peace never lasts, and a new threat hangs over the world, requiring the aid of the Aggelos, an angelic warrior. However, while flying toward the mortal land, a fireball burns his wings and causes him to lose all his equipment. Thankfully, this is only a minor setback because you get everything back after ten minutes. Instead of starting with the usual sword, your first weapon is a bracelet that fires projectiles. There’s no energy, ammo, or other restriction, so you can fire as much as you want. The projectiles travel across the entire screen, but that’s where their range ends, meaning you can’t hit enemies that are off-screen. Shortly after, you gain access to a sword, but it never becomes your main weapon because the ranged attack is simply too useful and lets you avoid unnecessary risks. Its main advantage is that it can destroy light projectiles, which are easily recognized by their bright pink color. Everything else passes through the sword and needs to be avoided. The final offensive ability is magic. You’ll gain four spells throughout the adventure, but casting one requires a full energy bar. Energy replenishes slowly by attacking enemies or instantly when you pass a save point. Save points also restore all lost health and refill empty health bottles. Certain save points are slightly different, but the only difference is that they allow fast travel to other similar save points. Wings are also part of your equipment. In basic form, they let you lock your height, either from a normal jump or while falling from an edge, and hover in a straight line forwards or backwards. This can only be done for a limited amount of time, represented by a bar at the top of the screen. Going upward becomes possible later when you obtain a grappling hook, which lets you grab onto any flat wall and climb up or down once you find the necessary upgrade, and finally with free flight wings. The big twist comes later, when you gain the ability to instantly switch between two characters at the press of a button. The wings and grappling hook are shared, but some abilities work differently. The second character has a dark affinity, represented by his dark hair and demonic wings. His sword can absorb dark projectiles, while his spells cover a larger area. Ranged attacks are still unlimited, but they have a much shorter range, making them considerably less useful than the light character’s projectiles. Instead of healing, he also uses potions to increase his speed. The gameplay is primarily action adventure, but there are more than enough Metroidvania elements to comfortably place it in that genre as well. The most obvious example is the classic map, made up of squares and rectangles representing rooms. The layout is accurate, and the map expands in smaller sections, meaning an entire room doesn’t appear on the map the moment you enter it. This makes it easy to see where you’ve already explored and where there are still black areas and gaps, which indicate exits. The map shows save points and shops, but for everything else of importance, you’ll have to use a limited number of beacons to mark locations or treasures you can’t reach yet. As far as I can tell, there’s no quality of life feature that shows collectibles on the map. So, while there are no hidden walls, you’ll have to thoroughly re explore the entire map if you miss something. At certain locations, portals allow you to travel between the light and dark worlds. This effectively gives you two maps to explore, although they have different layouts rather than simply being copy pasted versions of each other. Neither world is exclusive to a particular character, but the dark world is considerably harder, especially the first time you enter it. Up to that point, the experience feels like a fairly standard and accessible platformer where you probably won’t die even once. Then you reach the dark world and suddenly find yourself dying several times in a row. Part of the reason is that enemies deal a lot more damage, but another factor is the requirement to quickly switch between characters and use their respective ranged attacks. Certain traps and devices can be activated or disabled by shooting them with either a light or dark projectile, but the effect only lasts for a few seconds, so you need to move quickly. Most of these challenges require you to chain several mechanics together. You might need to jump, activate your hover, shoot with the light character, switch characters, shoot with the dark character, and hope you still have enough wing power to reach the other side. Until you become comfortable with the controls and develop some muscle memory, it’s easy to mistime an input or press something you didn’t intend to. Rooms contain enemies, environmental hazards, and the occasional collectible or treasure. Enemies are varied and colorful, and most shouldn’t cause you too much trouble. Naturally, the sword kills them faster than ranged attacks, but the ranged option at least lets you deal with enemies from a safer distance. There are also bosses, announced by unique doors so you know what you’re about to face. They require character switching and gain new attacks as their health decreases. The biggest annoyance is that there are never save points directly before a boss. If you die, you’ll have to walk back for a while, potentially losing health and wasting healing potions along the way. To be fair, you can refill potions before a boss fight for a few orbs. An enemy’s health bar appears in the corner after your first attack, similar to what you’d see in a beat ’em up. Defeated enemies only drop orbs, which serve as the game’s currency. Fortunately, grinding isn’t necessary because there’s a limit to how many orbs you can carry. Stronger enemies drop more, and enemies respawn when you travel between rooms, but once you’ve reached your limit, there’s little reason to fight them unless you come across orb containers, which increase your carrying capacity by 100. Orbs can be spent on useful items such as additional hearts, health containers, an amulet that attracts nearby orbs, and similar upgrades. However, some items are expensive, and because your orb capacity is limited, you won’t be able to afford them until you increase that capacity first. Most collectibles found throughout the world are used in the village. If you’re an achievement hunter, you’ll have to be incredibly skilled or play through the game several times. Compared with most games, the achievements here are genuinely earned. They include the usual requirements, such as exploring the entire map and finding all collectibles, but also more demanding challenges such as completing the game without dying, speedrunning, playing on hard, which I absolutely don’t recommend, and finishing with the best possible rank.