Score: 9
"A truly excellent game."
date: November 19, 2009
I enjoyed Medieval Rampage for many hours, and I was delighted to see the sequel had improved upon the original. Fresh enemies (with a thorough beastiary and some additional challenges in the form of new projectiles) created fresh challenges and enjoyable gameplay. The addition of a melee weapon was welcome, though it was not always convenient to switch between the two- better to stick with one or the other.
I'll say this. I completed 139/170 of the challenges, planning on getting the full 170 but it was taking too much time. It seemed unfair that to buy every item in the game, I needed to start over so I could get the Level 1 armour or the earlier items I did not buy. While I could have very well repeated certain levels in order to max out each individual bow, it just wasn't worth it. I could have spent hours grinding in order to get enough magic kills (requiring mana potions), but again, there would be so little reward for getting just one achievement. Perhaps for the newgrounds medal, rather than separating them in to 100 and 170 complete, offer a smaller amount of newgrounds points for smaller amounts of in-game achievements. For example, offer ten ng points for completing ten achievements at a time.
Points for improvement!
I notice that you've changed the health recovery system! Excellent to see, but a change I exploited. As the price of health potions began to rise, i realised they'd keep getting more expensive while healing the same percentage of health, so I just stocked up on several dozen of them while they were cheap, saving me thousands of gold by the end of the game. I think the health system you're looking for should be based on amounts. Eg. Heal 100 health for 20 gold, 1000 health for 180 gold, as well as health potions. So amounts, rather than percentages (though the system could work either way).
Another thing that greatly annoyed me was it took equal amounts of upgrade points to upgrade the shortbow as the compound bow+. It wasn't worth upgrading *any* of the bows because they'd be replaceable in a few levels when a new bow became available. I think that the higher level bows should require more points to upgrade, so players can choose between getting efficient, weaker bows, or saving up their points to max out the best bows in the game.
Also, the cheats menu says 90 achievements are needed to unlock them all, but doesn't seem right.
Certain bugs also bothered me: enemies could move through the blockades caused by killing certain characters. In normal terrain, you could shoot at them with your bow without their reaching you, but they somehow squeezed through the gaps that weren't there and continued attacking me.
Certain achievements couldn't be unlocked for reasons unbeknownst. Specifically for me, buying 1000 arrows, visiting ArmorGames (I tried clicking every link that might have lead to it as well as typing in the url), using mana potions etc.
In summary, an excellent improvement on the first Medieval Rampage, with new ideas, enemies, items, levels and gameplay in general. However, earning some of the achievements is difficult to the point of madness, with little satisfaction or glitches in the way. Though not worth 100%'ing, certainly worth an hour or two (or more if you're so inclined). An overall addictive and enjoyable addition to the MR series.
~VelvetDarkRocks~
