From your grandma\u2019s 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\u2019t particularly difficult in terms of its combat, at least for 2D top-down action games like this, what\u2019s 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\u2019s no doubt it\u2019s in keeping with the light-hearted tone of the game.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s fairly easy to figure out where to go and what to do next. Off the beaten path you\u2019ll find NPCs requesting that you collect fish, flowers, and other objects for their collections; you\u2019ll 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s a clumsy solution to a problem that shouldn\u2019t exist. It really puts a damper on exploration and backtracking when getting from Point A to Point B feels like a slog.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019t have the pace to generate that \u201cleave-no-stone-unturned\u201d 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\u2019re likely to be happy with The Minotaur Prince. Just don\u2019t go in expecting the reinvented wheel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/www.nintendoworldreport.com\/media\/58504\/1\/3.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nintendo"],"yoast_head":"\n