Twin-stick shooter. Despite NOT being a roguelite, you have a time limit to do what you want/need to do and get back to the start point, having to restart there again for each run and even being given the option to re-fight bosses you've beaten. The only part of the level design that's actually random is which side-areas each elevator takes you to, and even that is consistent for the first couple runs.

Most problems with the game are minor ones. Level design is pretty good, though there are some parts where you'll hit a dead end and HAVE to go back to buy an item to progress--an item that IIRC wasn't available in the shop until after you spoke with the NPC who asks for it. The randomized elevators only serve to make finishing sidequests annoying. The upgrades for how much money you can carry back to the start point are comically expensive compared to the increase, especially since you can regularly find items worth much more money than you could ever carry at once anyway, and they don't even count towards your carry limit! Granted, their locations are also one of the few things that are semi-randomized, but once you get past the first boss, they start becoming frequent enough that you'll always find at least a few of them per run. The fourth boss's attacks are very hard to dodge, and I'm pretty sure a couple of them are impossible once the boss gets low enough on heath and spawns the invincible chasing enemy.

The worst part is the final part. First, the game makes you beat all four bosses in a single run (though you do have a much more powerful weapon at this point to make things go by faster). Then, you'll find that the final boss is immune to your attacks just like the previous game's final boss, only this time, it can fly in front of you, blocking your vision and making it harder to distinguish destructible debris from indestructible debris (something that's already hard enough as it is). Plus, the game makes you go back to each of the boss rooms again, but even though you don't have to re-refight the bosses, the map has brand new chasms that block certain shortcuts, so it's not even a test of your foreknowledge.

Still, though, the game is okay overall, and worth picking up on sale.

It's mostly more of the same as the first game (which I could've sworn I made a post about, but I can't find it), but there are some changes and new gimmicks that make things more annoying. One-way doors don't look that distinct from regular doors or other one-way doors that only go in the opposite direction. There's more waiting on moving platforms, as well as sliding doors that close automatically after a while and can only be opened from one side, making me think the game took the wrong lessons from Overcooked. Some doors have roof barriers so you can't drag tall objects through them. I also swear the game has WAY more movable objects in each level that AREN'T supposed to be taken to the truck and just serve to distract you or get in your way. Speaking of, when you throw objects, it's now possible to overshoot the truck, meaning you can't safely throw fragile objects towards it to save time anymore (and you may even need caution with non-fragile throwable objects). The candy world has required objects stored within breakable objects, but never tells you that you have to break them out of said objects first before they'll be counted. The most baffling decision, though, is that there are a couple levels with roofs, meaning you can't really see anything during the level-preview camera panning (same with fog). It comes across like a user-made level trying to get around initial developer restrictions rather than an actual professional design choice. There's also, like, NO difficulty curve.

On the plus side, it's kinda neat that the Moving In levels get their own stages instead of being a bonus mode to existing stages like in the first game, though there's barely any indication when the game suddenly has one of those levels instead of a regular Moving Out level.

They also kept the part where you don't get to see the levels' optional objectives until after you beat them, but they also made it worse by making some of them vague and almost riddle-like, dare I say. Thankfully, you don't have to replay levels since you'll get enough stars to unlock every level just from a single casual playthrough.

Overall, if you liked the first game, you'll think this one is okay. Wait for a sale, though.

Puzzle. Once again, we get another forced-multiplayer game that could absolutely work just fine if it had a single-player mode. Thankfully, the game has something it calls Duo Mode, which lets one player control two characters (so you only need one controller and one keyboard). However, the only place it's mentioned in-game is in the "controls" part of the options, letting you know that it's mapped to Y (on both keyboard and controller), but why would you think to look there when the only controls the game has are move and stomp?

Also, you don't get to choose levels individually; the most you can do is choose which world your level is randomly selected from. Plus, you're never told how to unlock levels (done so by buying gacha objects to fill out enough stamp cards). I'm not even sure I beat all the levels; I just kept playing each world until I got an obvious repeat that wasn't their competitive "Special" level. I will say, the game got an update right when my Game Pass subscription ended, so hopefully these issues have been addressed (but don't count on it).

The first few levels are an easy version of tangrams since you only ever have four pieces, with the only reason they take more than 10 seconds to solve being the fact that you have to slowly lumber around other players and walk into each other to rotate yourselves correctly. Once everyone is in stomp mode (which automatically orients your character to the nearest 90-degree angle) with all the goal tiles covered, the stage is clear. Eventually, the game realizes that this would be boring even for a multiplayer party game, so it adds other gimmicks, such as having to push a ball into a hole to form a bridge to the goal, or having color-coded blocks that can be picked up by stomping next to them and let go by stomping again. These blocks also always need to be part of the goal, but you don't have to put them on the unique multicolored goal tiles; a player can be on them with the carry-able block(s) being on an ordinary goal tile and you'll still clear the stage.

Even with the gimmicks, though, the game's just way too easy at first, and the only real reason I kept at it is because there just wasn't much else interesting on Game Pass. Plus, even the other worlds after the first one have levels that are just the tangram segments without any gimmicks, so there isn't really much of a difficulty curve, either. Still, I admit the game grew on me after a while as there were a few levels that were a bit tricky, and I can see its appeal. Wait for a good sale, though, and keep in mind it can take a while to get going.

Turn based tactics. It's built on the same rock-solid foundation as the first Wargroove, so you can expect quality mechanics and reliable strategy--except for sudden reinforcements, which do unfortunately return in this game without their initial restrictions (fog of war also technically returns, but only for two levels in the entire campaign). In the same vein as Advance Wars 2, a few new units have been added and all commanders have been given a second tier for their powers, as well as having a few new commanders entirely added to the mix. Sadly, the build on Game Pass doesn't have controller support, so I might've been stuck playing an outdated version.

Despite the original Wargroove being built on a fairly strict no-randomness foundation (even going so far as to have a puzzle mode), this game decides to inject randomness into various places. One of the new commander's powers targets 3 random enemies in a five tile radius. One of the levels has you kill a certain number of enemies, but when they die, they respawn…on a random side of the map (and I know it's random because I restarted the level on turn 1 and killed the same two enemies as before, only for them to respawn in different places!). But the biggest one of all: Arcade mode and Puzzle mode are gone--replaced with Conquest mode, which is…a permadeath roguelite (I played one run and it didn't change my opinion on the roguelite genre). Can you tell this game was made by a different developer? Oh well; at least it still has Campaign mode.

The campaign also has a much heavier focus on story, to the point where some levels are JUST story, where all you do is go around and talk to NPCs or examine highlighted tiles. Despite this, the ending is suuuuper rushed. The game only recently introduced a bombshell plot twist and has only had the new octopus unit available for a grand total of two levels, when suddenly the final level comes out of nowhere and the game has to scramble to pretend like this is totally what it was building up towards the entire time, with the ending leaving several plot threads either blatantly unfinished or entirely forgotten about (Rhomb never gets closure for….whatever his backstory is supposed to be; you have to look in his codex entry to learn anything at all about it). It's not even really a cliffhanger ending or an open ending as much as it just…doesn't finish the story.

The final level also sucks from a gameplay perspective. On paper, it sounds good that you get a one-turn warning before its shockwave attack that pushes your units two tiles, but in practice, the other enemies that get randomly spawned are in such varying places combined with various tiles collapsing into pitfall tiles as the battle progresses (including formerly-safe wall tiles) that there's no way you can avoid casualties--and the game knows this, because when one of your units dies, you get a cutscene that lets you pick another unit to replace them. The only thing it does better than the first Wargroove is that you don't have to grind for stars to unlock it.

The AI can also make some really dumb decisions sometimes. I've seen archers go right up against melee units before attacking them, allowing themselves to be counterattacked without gaining any attack or defense bonus from the move. I saw full-HP ultra-powerful Giant units run away from my already-fleeing army, towards nothing (not even a village or a stray unit or anything; just a dead end). I've had half-baked, super-risky strategies pay off because the enemy didn't attack my also-in-range more-threatening units. I even saw enemy armies with massive amounts of gold choose not to buy any new units at all on their turn (with other rich ones only buying low- to mid-cost units). Something I never saw, however, was the AI reinforce a unit, not even commanders (and this ubiquitous healing move has been around since the first Wargroove). Granted, if you go into the level editor, you'll see that you can choose which type of AI to give the CPU, but your choices are things like "aggressive," "defensive," and "balanced," not "dumb" and "dumber." It all results in the campaign being too easy--easier than the first game's campaign and maybe about on par with the first game's free DLC or Arcade mode.

One last thing to point out is that the campaign adds two bonus objectives to each level, and unlike Moving Out 2, you can actually see what they are before beating a level--as soon as your first turn starts, even! Although they're mostly pretty good, they do still get fumbled sometimes: one early level asks if you want two free cavalry units or four free spearman units, but if you know Wargroove, you know the cavalry units are the better choice, so why would you ever want to pick the spearmen? Because one of the bonus objectives is to beat the level without using cavalry, and you can't check until after you make your choice. Also, some bonus objectives are unnecessarily vague, such as the one that tasks you with beating the enemy commander "with a bird." You'd think this is referring to the ostriches in the newly-introduced Sky Rider (EDIT: Whoops, I meant Air Trooper) unit, right? Nope; I beat the boss with that unit and didn't get the star. What other unit could it even be? Aeronauts are harpies, Sky Riders are witches, Dragons are, well, dragons, and the land units are all people or machines. Ugh, at least the bonus objectives are optional.

Overall, if you enjoyed the first Wargroove, you'll think this one's just okay, especially if you're not a fan of rogue-lites such as myself. Wait for a sale, and if you haven't played either game and you don't currently have a Game Pass subscription, play the first game first.

P.S. Due to lack of interesting games on Game Pass, I played a lot of custom maps--and even made one of my own (I won't go into how difficult the editor is to work with). Thank goodness you can filter by 1P levels to reduce the 180+ pages to just 7 pages or so. A lot of levels--including many that have clear effort put into making interesting dynamics with varied strategic choices--end up being brought down by the game's dumb AI and are overly easy and boring as a result. However, after playing all of the 1P Scenario levels (and a bunch of Puzzle levels), I can confirm these levels are at least a little bit challenging and worth trying out:

Scenario:

• Engineer's Contest
• [CA] Ultimate Faction Battle Royal (honorable mention to the [FL] and [HE] variants as well)
• whatever this level is called:
  

(there's also my own level, Predictable Consequences, but I may be biased for that one :D )

Puzzle:

• 2024 Championship Sedgehun vs.
• 2024 Championship Warble v Dinferno
• Dawn of the Hunt
• Gloomgate Forest
• Frozen Encounter

Part of the reason I didn't play all the available 1P levels is because some of them gave the error "Halley exception on UI" and wouldn't start. As for why I didn't beat all the puzzle levels…I admit I wasn't able to solve some of them, so I can't discount the possibility it's like the first Wargroove where some puzzles require some obscure mechanic that wasn't properly conveyed in the campaign.

The reason I didn't play all the custom campaigns, though, is because I simply ran out of time, but I can confirm that most of the challenging user-levels are here, not in the stand-alone Scenario levels. Disappointingly, you can't filter custom campaigns by player count; you just have to leave that slot blank and scroll through the 10 pages, skipping the 2P, 3P, & 4P campaigns. Another frustrating thing is that some users leave up outdated versions of campaigns, so make sure to click More Info > More by Creator so you can see if you're about to get the latest version or not. This feature is easy to overlook because if you're browsing your downloaded campaigns in the Story section (where you have to go to play them), the More Info button just straight-up isn't there; it's only available in the Share menu of the Custom Content section (where you go to browse and download them). Plus, its the same color as all the other buttons. What's worse is that the More Info button is the only way you can see their entire descriptions, as they get cut off if they go longer than the preview window (which many do).

Anyway, out of the custom campaigns I was able to finish, these are the ones that have decently-challenging levels and are worth checking out:

• The Journey of Lytra
• Heavensong's Unfortunate Update (has two versions available; I beat the first version and thought that Mission 9 went overboard in difficulty, but it's still pretty good overall)
• Cherrystone vs Blackstone (once you get past the initial surprise gimmick of only being allowed to buy a few basic unit types from bases, it's a fair challenge. The third level is almost puzzle-like since you have to do very specific actions to win in just the first few turns or you'll get hopelessly overwhelmed…then the fourth level went super far down in difficulty)

Oh, and don't play these campaigns for their stories; their stories suck.

Lastly, if you like a custom level or campaign, remember to go back to the Share menu and rate it! Almost all of the ones I liked had zero ratings until I gave them each an upvote.