Blossom Tales II is absolutely brilliant. There's a ton of secrets to find, some great post-game content, and it's clearly been made with an abundance of love and care. The first game was great, and this one is even better. Blossom Tales II is not to be missed! [Issue #62 – November/December 2022, p. 20]
Blossom Tales II does little to hide its Zelda inspiration from the player. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Nintendo’s legendary franchise, it does smooth over many of the early-‘90s design conventions present in games like A Link to the Past to deliver an adventure able to be enjoyed by players of all ages and experience levels. Blossom Tales II is a better game than its predecessor, and I hope we continue to get more adventures from Lily, Chrys, and their grandpa in the future.
it almost seems like this is getting review bombed, since i can't see how it's had so many 0 or close scores, or any at all. this game is great, and includes a lot of modern features from the zelda series while sticking to the 2d presentation. it's significantly longer than the first game even if you don't partake in the grindier aspects, has more complex dungeons and more detailed maps, cute music, and way more minigames + more dynamic settlements that change depending on your progress. yes, the game is shorter than a full zelda game, because it's a 15 dollar indie game. it's significantly longer and larger than A Link to the Past regardless, and the first one has been on sale for very cheap lately.
i actually agree with some of the criticism of the first game, and wouldnt give it higher than an 8 for a lot of little reasons, mainly that it lacked depth and was very short + easy. this title has improved on those issues, to the extent that it's more detailed and larger than the overworld for link between worlds, for instance. keep in mind, there is no dark continent or lorule to visit, though, which makes the game a little more than half as long as link between worlds. at 15 dollars, i simply have no issue with that.
Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince is a superb sequel to an indie darling that begged for a follow-up. Needless to say, I'm glad that Lily and Chrys' grandpa still has plenty of imaginative tales to tell.
Blossom Tales 2 is certainly a fun and satisfying 2D Zelda-like, but it doesn’t impress in the same ways that the original did. The final dungeon is about 30 percent too long, and the minute-to-minute traversal of the map doesn’t have the pace to generate that “leave-no-stone-unturned” momentum. Fortunately, the dungeons are largely well designed, and the world and its inhabitants have their charm. If you love a good top-down Zelda game or enjoyed the first Blossom Tales, you’re likely to be happy with The Minotaur Prince. Just don’t go in expecting the reinvented wheel.
Despite the restrained application of its central narrative concept, Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince is one of the better indie Zelda clones I’ve played. Even if it hews a bit too close to its predecessor and lacks an identity to call its own, this is a solid action-adventure game, one that makes great use of those Legend of Zelda building blocks in crafting a satisfying journey.
If you love Zelda, you’ll find it hard to resist The Minotaur Prince. Yes, it’s obvious when certain items or ideas from elsewhere have been pinched, but does every game need to straddle the bleeding edge of innovation to be worthy of our time? Castle Pixel knows what the people want and is willing to give it to us: a fun, lighthearted top-down adventure game with smart puzzles, playful writing, and a colourful world to explore. Given that Nintendo isn't doing it, we might as well let someone else have a crack.
"In a year where Nintendo failed to bring us another Legend Of Zelda game, Blossom Tales 2 is a welcome experience. Not only did they improve the “Zelda formula”, but Blossom Tales has also become its own game. This is the break-out game for this series, I believe anyone who even somewhat likes the “top-down action adventure games” will love this one. In a time when a lot of companies won’t even release full games, it’s refreshing to see that some dev teams and companies still care about quality. I believe we as gamers should reward that dedication by buying their games and supporting them. I truly enjoyed Blossom Tales 2."
Read the guest review by NemA Gaming here: ****/2022/08/20/blossom-tales-ii-the-minotaur-prince/
Suffers a bit of sequeal-itis. This next story is so-so. In the first game you'd find random treasure chests that gave heart and energy pieces. These were either in random caves, or on the overland where you had to figure out how to get to them. But, since the reward was good, it was fun and exciting figuring out how to get to them. In this game, many of the heart and energy pieces are awarded through annoying scavenger hunts: find 6 statues in each land, find a bunch of macguffins for some character, etc. Meanwhile, all the chests you see on the overland are just filled with coins. Random caves? Yeah, like 90% of them are also just coin chest caves. Digging? Coins. There are so many coins thrown at you, you are swimming in money towards the end of the game with nothing to do with it all. And, the excitement of seeing a random chest or finding a random cave is gone. Oh, wow, a crack in the wall! A cave! Cool.. oh, it's just more gold coins. It literally feels like a waste of time after a while opening chests and digging holes, because you know it's just gonna be coins. But, you keep doing it on the off-chance it's not coins. So, the game has exchanged fund treasure hunts and activities to get hearts and energy for long-winded "explore every corner of the map to find dumb stuff". And all the chests are just let downs. This feels like they fell into the modern AAA lazy dev trapping of padding out games with "find X objects!" scavenger hunts. It's boring, and time-wasting. But, it gets you that "this game takes 30 hrs to complete!" bragging right when really 1/2 that time is just players wandering aimlessly around looking for the last mcguffin to complete some set of something for a small prize. The most annoying one is fishing. You have to bring some guy every fish in the game. I don't know why every game has to have a fishing mechanic these days, but it's annoying. You have to stop, drop line, wait, click at just the right time.. oh, look.. not the fish you needed. It's an amazingly annoying little time-waster that I quickly gave up on. If you stick to the plot, though, most of the game is entertaining. The end part of the Minotaur maze is annoying, though, b/c it requires a lot of boring back-tracking to hit switches to open another area, to backtrack again, etc, etc. Also, they have you collecting gems from the start. They don't say why. But, you eventually find out it's for this one specific reason... and that's it. Got spare gems? They're worthless. How do you get gems? You can trade for them with a salesman, but mainly by digging for them. So, every spot that's diggable you're compelled to dig. And... oh boy.. more gold coins. Whoopee. The puzzles and challenges were just hard enough to make you think, and feel a sense of accomplishment when beaten. The bosses tended to be pretty easy. But, I play for the adventure, so didn't mind so much. Some had insane bullet storm tactics that you just seem to have to stand and get hit with while you wail on them. So, there wasn't too much strategy other then "wail on the boss until he dies". A bit lackluster. Like the previous game, when you turn it on again it gives you a recap of where you left off, letting you know what to do next. This is a great feature that more games should do, since a lot of us have busy lives and may go weeks before picking up a game again. So, extra marks for that. Overall, it scratches that old-school Legend of Zelda itch.
The first thing that immediately annoyed me seconds after I started it was that unlike in 1, your sword is now locked to B instead of A and I don't like it. Especially since you have to press B to talk to people but have to continue the text by pressing A. That is so unintuitive it hurts. Admittedly I also played 3D Zeldas which lock the sword to B too so it's not that much of a hassle to get used to but this doesn't change the fact, that you still have to interact with B while continuing with A while 3D Zeldas have interaction and continuing on A while canceling with B.
The stamina system wasn't changed much but now you get a dodge roll on X. Sadly, while you can get more stamina commonly used items seem to use percentage of stamina because I wasn't able to use them more often as the stamina bar increased and as it grows bigger, it takes longer to recharge.
While deaths remain mostly pointless since every room is a checkpoint and you start from it's beginning it's just bad game design if you have invisible obstacles while swimming because of a water level mechanic. You also are defenseless while swimming and while you can use a swim boost, it doesn't help against homing projectiles that come from enemies that are often close to or even in the water.
There are other unfair situations where you are defenseless because the environment doesn't allow you to attack like when climbing on vines towards a small plattform with enemies where the enemies can charge at you and block your way onto the plattform.
It also is pointlessly annoying that there is no verticallity when using items. It might look like you can throw a bomb down from a ledge or a stair but it doesn't work. It will explode as if they were walls.
Something they did improve is that now you can pick up items with your sword since in 1, it could happen often enough, that items landed on tiles that can't be walked on while right next to the player character.
It also is better that falling in holes doesn't make you start at the room entrance but at the hole border.
Unfortunately even progression puzzles became way to convoluted and complicated as soon as the second dungeon to still be fun. Thank god though they mostly got rid of the "Simon says" puzzles. I didn't find everything (because frankly the game is not good enough and some annoying mechanics discourage completion). And don't, please just don't put enemies on puzzles where you have to move around a lot, it's not challenging just annoying.
While the enemy spam has been reduced, there still is an issue with tank-y bosses, even with double damage and bullet hell fights and now even regular enemies take way to much of a beating. Further in close quarter fights ground based attacks reached over pits, can hit you and you can't do **** about it because you lack movement space.
Other issues include:
1. You still can't reorder your inventory and the inventory isn't that good so you can't make it more comfortable to use. It would also help if you could get an item description as a reminder of it's functions but mainly for key items to recall what to do without the need to search and talk with related people again.
2. Due the new crafting system and the limited number of bottles, money gets useless even earlier than in 1.
3. The map is bad so it won't help you find something specific.
4. Game 1 gave too many hearts at times and 2 now went wrong the other direction and gives too few hearts.
5. When you transition between screens, chances are you run into an enemy you couldn't possible see and get knocked back to the previous screen or worse killed because you didn't have enough health to take that hit. Similarly you might end up stun-locked in tight areas because of that.
6. The "choose your own adventure" part is utilized slightly more but still barely notable
Still, it's a good game that improved some things to the first entry but made other things worse. It's still worth playing if you liked one and if you haven't played 1 it really won't detract much.
Very unhappy with blossom tales 2. The first one was great. Really gave a sense of Zelda adventure. This new one seems like they ran out of ideas. Plus it's wayyyy to short for the price tag. Took less than 8 hrs for me to finish
SummaryThe Minotaur King has returned...and it's all your fault! Lily's back for a new "classic" action-adventure set hundreds of years after The Sleeping King! Grandpa's latest tale takes you on a journey through haunted forests, pirate shores, and other mysterious lands across a vast open-world! Charming towns, terrible enemies, tricky puzzle...