Welcome to our review of Teslagrad 2, the successor to one of the best games to be available on the WII U.
Lumina, a young Teslamancer, finds herself stranded after her airship crashes in Wyrmheim, a remote and treacherous land to the North. Embark on a dangerous adventure, exploring a gigantic, abandoned tower looming over a fjordside valley, on a quest to get Lumina home and back to her family. Use electromagnetic powers to survive the dangers of a wild and untamed land. Defend yourself against Viking raiders, face gruesome beasts inspired by Nordic mythology, and triumph against epic bosses! As your journey progresses, you’ll discover new skills and equipment needed to uncover the secrets of the land and delve into the dark past of Lumina’s ancestors.
Teslagrad 2 is the follow-up to the hugely popular physics-based game where electromagnetic powers are at the heart of survival. With improved visuals, a bigger world, and new puzzle-solving tools, Teslagrad 2 delivers a fresh and immersive puzzle-platform experience!
Scandinavia Meets Metroidvania. The world’s first ‘Scandivania’ – a grandiose Steampunk-meets-Norse adventure accompanied by an orchestral soundtrack inspired by Nordic folk tones and electronic tracks. Magnetic Gameplay. Test your logic skills with perplexing puzzles based on real electromagnetic physics and enjoy a new twist with curved magnets! Master Fluid Motion. Perfect new and returning skills and use them to move quickly and skillfully through the world, combining Lumina’s abilities such as blinking, sliding, and magnetizing to build extra momentum.
Epic Boss Battles. Use your skills to overcome boss fights which unlock new abilities and additional areas to explore. Visual Storytelling. Teslagrad 2 unfolds through what you see, with no text, voiceover or loading screens to interrupt gameplay. Explore an Abundant World. Discover rich and beautiful 2D hand-painted environments set in a wild and ravaged world full of hidden collectibles, secrets, and lore.
Teslagrad 2 is a game that has very big shoes to fill, from being an indie darling to a much bigger project and that always comes with the needed scrutiny while playing. Making us ask ourselves that age-old gaming question, is bigger really better? Well, it is both a yes and no to answer this. First, I will mention some of the downsides so you can see why I ended up giving a 7/10 because Teslagrad 2 is a good game, it is just not a great game. You die a ton more than in the first game or at least that was my impression from the couple of hours I spent with the game.
A lot of that comes straight from my only gripe with the game, at times the mechanics behind solving the “single screen puzzle” just don’t make sense and even after solving some of those, you still just want the higher-paced parts of the game instead. As much as I love puzzle games, the small puzzles of for example how to cross a certain gap, they will not make sense, you magnetism locks you to the bottom and you need to visually cross at top, … Logics dictate another path and it kind of sucks at times.
But that is about it, the high-paced action, at times reminiscent of a runner game where you try to stay out of the grubby reach of your enemies or just the parkour of things, Teslagrad 2 does do many things right. The atmosphere is just right and well, it is fun despite the sometimes challenging side of the game, but that is fine, this is just a little tougher, nothing like that horrible souls genre 😉
In conclusion, Teslagrad 2 does a lot right but falls short on the overall experience, but it does make me want a third game already!
