Aggelos 2

Aggelos 2 is a fantastic sequel crafted by someone who truly captured the essence of the Wonder Boy franchise and created something new and modern, while still honoring its roots. Intuitive, fun, and beautiful, it is a Metroidvania that excels at encouraging exploration and rewarding the player for it, without ever feeling exhausting, repetitive, or hollow.

There’s something to be said for new-school games that somehow capture the essence of the old-school while still feeling contemporary in the right areas.

Aggelos 2 feels like a Metroidvania I’d have played over and over again on my Game Boy Advance, with some great abilities and combat.

Aggelos 2 is an ambitious sequel that follows a visual style inspired by 16-bit pixel art, and which delivers a solid Metroidvania experience thanks to a balanced difficulty and a well crafted gradual introduction of the game's mechanics, showing that the genre's mantra is followed seriously. The light-darkness duality is very interesting, and the exploration keeps players engaged and eager for more elements to discover. Its plot is not as prominent as one would like, but the overall slick gameplay, visual design and performance, and quality of the exploration make Aggelos 2 a very interesting work.

Aggelos 2 builds on its predecessor with a larger map, dual forms, and two interconnected worlds. The appealing retro visuals and rewarding movement upgrades make for an enjoyable adventure, but an unintuitive map and missing quality-of-life features make navigation more frustrating than it should be.