Going through Early Access can really be the making of a game. Rough ideas get polished, feedback shapes a game’s direction, and the full game gets stuffed with extra worlds, levels and items. None of that was really a problem for Neon Abyss 2. It was already easy to like 18 months ago, but it did maybe feel a bit similar to the original. The 1.0 launch is now simply better in every possible way, both to that first Early Access release and the original game.
Neon Abyss 2 has you fighting through a world of cybermyth, which is basically cyberpunk blended with a mix of weird new gods like the God of Blindboxes, and old gods like Ares. You’ll get to fight them eventually, but you’ll need to work your way up, and here you have a choice. You can go for a more classical approach of working your way through rooms at your own pace, choosing where to explore and picking the rooms you want, when you want them. You can also jump into Storm Raid mode, taking everything sequentially as the game serves it up with no dungeon exploration, which makes the runs a little quicker.
As you beat different gods you’ll unlock other gods to fight, and your main aim is to take them all out, ideally while using a mix of different characters and unlocking more and more items. It’s a fun way to do things, and has a touch of Binding of Isaac about it, even with things like grenades and keys acting in a similar fashion. Of course, this is more of a platformer, so you’ll want to nail your movement in order to come out on top.
It all feels good, but the thing that keeps me coming back to it – and I will be doing some more runs after I finish writing this – is the weapon system. Naturally, you can get different artifacts to help you change how your specific play style wants to work, but weapons get affixes as you upgrade these. These can be simple, like adding flat damage based on the level of your weapon, but they can also be a lot more interesting. You can end up with extra projectiles for every three little Hatchmon critters you have with you, or extra range if you have more jumps. You can even get different effects that trigger as you hit using your weapon too, and all of those can upgrade as well.
I genuinely ended up with a build on one run where I had a cat that shot out fish bones which split into 12 projectiles, all of which were linked by lightning. It brought the frame rate down to single figures in a few rooms, and honestly, that’s what I want from over-the-top builds. I love to feel overpowered in a roguelite, and while it’s harder to do based on the difficulty you’ve picked, it’s always possible if you’re thoughtful about how you pick upgrades.
