Sequel to an indie darling that has a revamped look and overly familiar gameplay.
After finishing Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King at the end of 2017, it became my go-to recommendation for friends and family who would go on to pick up a Switch of their own. I held it among the likes of Celeste and Shovel Knight in terms of just how well it managed to balance the nostalgia thing while also feeling fresh. Five years later comes Blossom Tales 2: The Minotaur Prince, and it would seem initially that not too much has changed. After completing its 5 to 7-hour story, my impressions are a little more mixed than I had hoped. The Zelda-inspired action-adventure stays true to its roots, but the sluggish movement and overlong final dungeon hinder the overall enjoyment.
As in the first game, the set up involves young Lily and her brother Chyrs sitting by a campfire as their grandpa tells them a tale of heroism and adventure. It just so happens that the tale is again about a young knight named Lily, whose brother is kidnapped by the Minotaur King after she makes a wish to never see him again. And so the young heroine sets out to collect three key pieces and eventually breach the bovine villain’s fortress. The siblings who are listening to the story often chime in with their thoughts and even get to make some minor decisions, such as which magical instrument you earn: a guitar or an accordion. The latter seemed, to an old soul like me, the apt choice.
From your grandma’s house in the village, you start out with just a sword and shield but quickly grow your arsenal to include bombs, a hookshot-like yo-yo, and even a teleporter that allows you to create a fixed point to warp back to. Every major dungeon contains a miniboss part way through that awards a new item for use in the second half of the dungeon, as you make your way towards its main boss. While the game isn’t particularly difficult in terms of its combat, at least for 2D top-down action games like this, what’s very much welcome is that losing all of your hearts never sets you back only to the beginning of the room or area where you fell. The lack of a real punishment for dying may seem to void some of the challenge, but there’s no doubt it’s in keeping with the light-hearted tone of the game.
Where Blossom Tales 2 can be a little tricky is in its puzzles. These include genre staples like sliding blocks and activating switches, but the sequel mixes it up with a neat spin on the walking-a-path type puzzle and throws in another fun one involving pillars and lasers. The tile-based world map always highlights the exact tile where your next objective is, so it’s fairly easy to figure out where to go and what to do next. Off the beaten path you’ll find NPCs requesting that you collect fish, flowers, and other objects for their collections; you’ll usually earn a decent number of coins for your efforts. Caves unlocked through well placed bombs can hold pieces of heart to help build up your health meter, and shops in towns and other places sell energy crystals to boost your energy (stamina) meter and empty bottles you can fill with potions. Shopkeepers drive a hard bargain, demanding hundreds of coins for their wares, but there’s no shortage of coins to be found in the world. Given that basically every item uses energy instead of ammo, most treasure chests you come across yield naught but coins.
Blossom Tales 2: The Minotaur Prince, on the surface, can be distinguished from The Sleeping King in two key ways. First, the visual style has been changed slightly, with the sequel having more of a smooth appearance compared to the original, which is a bit more blocky or pixel-ly. More importantly, though, Lily moves much faster in the first game; the standard walking movement in the second is slow, frustratingly so. You can press X to roll, and this is somewhat faster, but it rapidly drains your energy meter. Funny enough, you can actually craft a potion to temporarily increase your walking speed; however, that’s a clumsy solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist. It really puts a damper on exploration and backtracking when getting from Point A to Point B feels like a slog.
It can be difficult to follow up something great with something greater because inevitably what comes after lives in the shadow of what came before. 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.
