Ok this game has good mechanics, as a sequel from the first one the narrative is a good answer to that cold ending. The game has some interesting implementations and despite they are incompleted, they have potential.
I like the free roam option, it makes the game feels more alive. And the new curse having a benefit which can become a drawback looks really nice. No longer chests? Loot here is really limited (once you find a building, car or chest interact with it while facing north), unlike CO1 chests can't be constantly farmed, there is a point where you have to fight for money and loot so you don't have the option to avoid combat and build up yourself first. It doesn't help neither that the limited loot we already have is just random but is passable.
About the new combat system. Honestly right now is pretty bad, that infection mechanic keeps forcing me to play casual unlike the previous game meaning the curse here due the free roam mechanic is even more aggressive, which is nice but more punishing when you want to go to fight things. Due the low accuracy of low tier guns is likely alot of players are gonna save, try a headshot and load if it misses. Ammo is also pretty expensive considering the loot of the enemies so unlike the previous game, missing a hit will not only cost you hp but also money in ammo. Let's state too how unlike Aredhel, Nahel will always charge you money for healing you back.
When i saw the combat system in the which you could pick which body part you wanted to attack, the first thing that came to my mind was "Fear and Hunger", where the logic is: go torso=long fight, go limbs=punishes their attacks and makes a behead easier, go head=finnishes the fight almost instantly but has high chances to miss. Here however the leg mechanic is weird in gamer terms, you can shoot the opponents legs with slightly more accuracy than head but lower than torso and it is just gonna deal damage with the same logic... this is weird? because we are used in games that the zones of damages that deals the least amount of damage to an enemy are the limbs. Adding the possibility to attack the legs and arms as a way of preventing an attack in the next turn or increasing the accuracy for the head would be a good answer to that one small accuracy issue which i previously mentioned.
The art style. Is well done but is a risky decition. Is a great art style and is unique too, but changes in the body proportions and face drawing are drastic. And considering this is a sequel, some players may be already used to the former art style (i mean the 1 even showed us a mona and namah version that we don't have here). And this is risky in general for any game of any genre when you are making sequels because the audience may end not liking the final product because is different from what they had before and how the game is connected with the former one (and this happens even with minor details like changing colors). Also the h scenes are more vivid here.
About the infection, there are certain things that doesn't make alot of sense to me. It is visible how damaged body parts are noticeable on the infected's bodies with Eliza's mouth and Kahlua's vision, but were not they suppused to be freshly dead when infected? What about the girls from the one? they were skeletons and despite Nailah lost 1 arm and 1 leg on the last fight what about the wound on her belly and eye? How did she regenerate her whole body from being an skeleton but not those body parts? her arm and leg are acceptable because she lost the bones there too but how? And maybe they were resurrected by Necrona but unless she is weakened, i don't see how she could not regenerate them perfectly because Necrona just passed from an skeleton to an alive state with no visible wounds in the 1st game. This means Marice will be missing one arm too? and and along with Djemma both are gonna have wounds on their chests? I'm not sure if tuuli would be resurrected properly because she died to Ishet's mother, which is way stronger to the point she caused a permanent wound to the main character so how is she gonna look like? I don't think Necrona has alot of implications with the infection because it seems as if the emperor in the 1st game already knew about that incoming future so he knew something before hand and could not fix it?
Also what happened with Hikari? In the ending from the 1st one she barely makes any intervention so it leads me to think that canonically she died due her illness before the battle even started. Her tombstone is not arround neither.
And the magic, Why does the Shen da Kion spell no longer works? it was suppused to be the mc's magic. But heh being honest if the dev adds it now they are gonna have to justificate why you can't just simply call Necrona throught it...
Finally there are a couple of annoying bugs but they may be fixed for the final version so it's just fine. (Run and you end in the main screen, don't skip dialogues with Kahlua and scene is gonna loop in a softlock, Kahlua is suppused to upgrade your claw's attacks but is it really working? and killing one enemy has a chance of killing all enemies of the same kind at it's surroundings)
Posdata: Of course i would not let pass that Kuchisake-onna reference.
Viewing post in Cursed Overlord 2 [NSFW] comments
Thank you so much for such a detailed review. As for the bugs, to be honest, the game didn’t turn out very well—I’d even call it a failure—and I wasn’t able to fully implement everything I had envisioned. I’ll fix the bugs that I can, but there are many other issues that, unfortunately, I can’t resolve. I didn’t cancel the game because I want to finish it as it is; this is the final chapter of Cursed Overlord, and I had been thinking about a third part, but seeing that support for the second part among players is weak, I don’t know if it’s worth tackling a third part. If I’m wrong, please correct me.
Compared to Part 1, yes, this game turned out to be much more hardcore, and it doesn’t forgive mistakes.
As for the combat system, I tried to make it interesting, but as always, it didn’t turn out great :D If you shoot someone in the head, it’s 5x damage, and in the legs, it’s 2x damage. At first, I thought shooting someone in the legs would stun the enemy, but something didn’t go according to plan, and I don’t remember why I abandoned that idea.
In the Patreon poll, people voted for this art style, but I have a feeling I should’ve just stuck with the old one and not even held the poll, so the current art style is an experiment, and I don’t think I’ll use it in my games anymore.
As for the infected girls, they are experimental subjects, and each of them was infected in her own way.
As for the girls who died in Part 1, yes, they will appear as resurrected versions in Part 2, but not all of them—only those who have at least some combat value. As for their wounds and missing limbs in the game, this is explained. Necrona is alive, but unfortunately she is now a traitor and not on your side. However, Necron isn’t actually the strongest necromancer—she can perfectly restore her own body, but not those of others. so to prevent the resurrected girls from becoming skeletons, she took the bodies of living girls and experimented on them, but she was only able to resurrect them in the form the girls from Part 1 were in before their deaths.
As for Necrona, Hikari, and Djemma, you’ll see them soon; as for Tuuli, I don’t know when, but I’ll add her too.
I’ll add that, according to the lore, Hikari survives, but she’s also a traitor.
As for the main character’s magic, he can use it, but he doesn’t, because for it to work, the summoned girl must respond to the call, and the main character doubts that his magic will work.
Oh that's a shame. Yeah we can expect these things to happen when we try new stuff. Honestly the new art style is great so i don't think you should let it down forever as it may still work. About stuning the enemy i think it is more about the design of the attacks, for coding that some developers decides to make the attack itself as an status triggerer attack but it oftenly causes bugs. Renpy is a tough option for RPG like games so i acknowledge you may have been struggling for building that roam, and not gonna lie, it is well done.
For what Cursed Overlord game was, it is so far one of your best games. People likes these kind of games where there is way more gameplay than just depending on the H from that game. RPG games are already hard to make and you do a great job into popping those dopamine shots at the right moment before the game becomes boring from a grind. It is one of those games that i would say "damn, i'm gonna kill some time completing this game again" and that makes a game worth buying.
All the changes respective of this game as a sequel are not just mistakes in the process. Experimenting with a sequel instead of another game or spinoff is already too risky. Making sequels is already problematic because it is doomed to be a failure if you don't make it same as good or better. That's why many creators prefers not making sequels of their game, even in the cinema world Jim Carrey oftenly refuses to make sequels of his movies due the same reason. Yet in this case the free roam was an ambitious and good choice for a sequel, despite everything else.
Keep the good work!