Rivals of Aether II

I really enjoy this game. I love that the netcode is really good for online, there is also a lot of cool mechanics that make it a great platform fighter as well. I currently main Zetterburn, and it is satisfying to get a good forward strong attack.

I think this game tries too hard to be melee sometimes, from including all the mechanics like wavedashing and all that to some of the characters being SUPER similar to melee characters. That being said, it has way more polish than melee, but I often find myself going "why don't I just play melee" while playing this. This is also coming from someone who isn't the biggest fan of melee either and has less than 100 hours in it. The first game had more of an identity, especially with the workshop stuff which even though they added to this game, was a bit late, and I'm assuming way harder to implement than it's previous entry. Don't get me wrong, this game is really well made, but why play this over melee? It's also very unfriendly to beginners, and while melee is similar, I feel like it's easier to get further ahead in melee than this game for some reason. I feel like hits feel off, almost like Multiversus, where you hit someone but you don't really feel the feedback, idk. Overall, it just tries too hard to be melee, and while it has a lot of polish and nice visuals and some other nice aspects, I'd much rather play melee. Yeah idk what it is with this game but the controls feel truly awful

yeah

peak

Coming from RoA1 as pretty much an exclusively offline/single player/co-op enjoyer, RoA2 lacks pretty much any of the stuff I actually liked doing in the first game. No story mode (this HAS been promised down the road though, so take this one with a grain of salt for now), no abyss mode (my absolute favorite way to spend time in the first game), and no Sylvanos to play as (but there's a really sick skin for Maypul that looks like him at least...?) I really like what I see going on in RoA2 overall - the seasonal events are around permanently and can be selected at any time in the shop to unlock the skins and other items from past events, which is absolutely fantastic. There's a new arcade mode in RoA2 that's like classic mode in Smash Bros Melee, which is a welcome addition of single player content to enjoy and it even has unlockable 'palettes' (colors) if you beat it fast enough on medium or hard difficulty. There's also a 'target test' mode which is fun to go for fast times in. I have gripes with the hard mode arcade though since there are achievements locked behind that difficulty specifically. They only give you 1 single stock for 8 stages and your damage carries over every single stage so it's basically impossible to win without having to use continues, but you at least don't actually get punished for it. With enough getting brutalized and continues spent, you can eventually get the achievements... just gotta have perseverance, so this complaint is more on the minor side. (Yes, this is me admitting I'm bad.) Another positive is the recent 'fun for all' update which added casual-oriented stages and items, which gives a whole lot more room to cook up item combos considering they never existed before. At the end of the day, I would definitely recommend RoA2 if it had just one thing... bots for the online private lobbies. Me and my brother love fighting AIs and not having to deal with humans that know every single little thing about the game, we're casuals - we don't want to deal with sweats. If we could do team battles against the AIs in the online lobbies together, that's all I really want. The review will definitely be flipped to positive if that ever gets added, they've got a mostly good thing going.

Needs more optimization

Fun