izigame.me

It's a fine enough game, I just can't really recommend it in good faith to anyone. Platformers are my absolute favorite genre of games and I absolutely love me a good 2D platformer, but Gimmick 2 is kinda just. Just okay. It definitely does feel like Gimmick, the physics and the star bouncing feel as clean and fun to utilize as the original in my opinion, but that's kind of where the Gimmick-isms end.
At it's core, Gimmick 2 is just a very safe game. When Gimmick 1 is so bombastic and full of energy in it's environments and soundtrack, it makes it very hard to look at Gimmick 2 and feel like this is supposed to be a true sequel. The aesthetic of Gimmick is kinda what made it stick out to me so Gimmick 2 having absolutely none of the sauce is upsetting. There's a few times where they do remix music from Gimmick 1 (the intro did make me smile), but having these songs here honestly detriments the game by just showing how BORING the rest of the soundtrack is. It's all serene soothing environmental tracks that all just kinda blend into one another, I can't say I remember a single track, but every song in Gimmick 1 stands out in my mind. I think the closest this game got to feeling like Gimmick 1 in personality was the lava factory level. David Wise is an excellent composer but he just wasn't the right pick for something like this. It's a cult classic and very niche game that's most known for how far it pushed it's soundtrack on limiting hardware. The peaceful music is good it just. It's not Gimmick. It's not.
Spoilers for the true ending too but the ending just reuses the intro theme? If were remixing tracks from 1 why not do the ending theme or something? Just feels kind of lazy...
But the OST of this game kind of represents everything that's wrong about Gimmick 2. Like I said, having songs from the first game kind of hurt the rest of the OST, and the same can be said when you just compare 2 to its NES predecessor. The environments in 2 are just the boring grass jungle ice fire etc etc. The fish factory and the final level were pretty interesting visually though I'll give them that, but the rest kinda just lacks any originality. There's a lack of any flair or twist to stages that made basic environments in Gimmick 1 feel fresh (especially with it's soundtrack backing these locations up). It all feels safe, derivative, and that's everything but Gimmick.
There's only a handful of levels too which for $25 is like... okay... but they're all like 20-30 minutes long on your first go. I wasn't expecting them to be so long given the fast paced nature of the first game, but I get that this game wanted to try something new. It just. didn't land for me. The levels are tough, but there's a lot of cheapness to it. A lof of rooms with tiny blocks with really annoying enemy placements or like "this enemy auto aims at you have fun" (it's not fun!). The last level is especially guilty of small platform jumps it's just so cheap of a solution to making "difficulty." I think Gimmick 1 had a lot of cheap moments like that too but at least those levels are short. These levels being long was just not the right call for a game like this. Not to mention there were a lot of leap-of-faith moments which are also never fun. A hard platformer needs to let you know what's coming up, Celeste even gives you binoculars in bigger rooms to give you an idea of what's coming up. Gimmick 2 feels like it actively hates you.
The best part of the game are the secret bonus/treasure rooms. They use a song from Gimmick 1 so that's a plus but good luck finding them. I played before any patches so it may be different now but it still soured my experience that so many bonus rooms were just impossible to find. A lot of the time they had no hints, no changes in the environment, and placed somewhere you'd avoid (the pirate ship was especially guilty of this, those secrets were total garbage to find). I'm sure now with the updates they're better, but that doesn't save you from the rest of the game just being kinda whatever. It's just not super fun, I can't seem to play more than a level at a time because I feel so slogged or whatever by the end of one. It's insanely different from Celeste where it's longer level format has the levels evolve and change and grow (not to mention, it just has a good OST and presentation). The levels here feel like you're just playing a really long. hard level. that's it. that's all there is to it.
It's kinda sad when the most this game has going for it in sauce for me is the menu UI. I like that a lot. I thought it was also cute that to pick the difficulty setting you had to make a bunch of tight jumps too, But.... yeah...
It's just a very forgettable, very safe game, I applaud Bitwave for caring so much about a cult classic but it REALLY shows that they didn't reach out to the original developers of the first game or anything. It doesn't just not feel like GImmick 1, it just doesn't feel like anything at all. I can't say I got anything out of this game. It's fine enough platforming there's definitely worse out there but there's nothing special I can really say about this game other than that "wow we really have Gimmick 2 now."
I'm happy that many people seem to enjoy this game, I just don't think it's something I can recommend when a game like Celeste is like $5 and infinitely more valuable of an experience.