Stick World 2 by Zaole is a game about stick men battling evil throughout a variety of colorful environments. It plays like an action-RPG such as Secret of Mana, where your stats are only half the battle as you're required to move around to deal with and dodge enemies.
Well lets get right down to it!
Fun Factor
Was it fun? It wasn't too bad. It gets a bit repetitive as you start encountering ever stronger monsters that always seems to come in the same three classes: warriors, archers and mages. There are quests to complete which adds some variety, and there's a decent chunk of territory to explore given that this game is still in alpha as of now.
I should also point out that as an alpha game, there definitely ARE some bugs. At one point, my character ceased being able to equip items after unequipping them. I had to resort to save file hacking at one point, and having to put up with potentially game-crippling malfunctions definitely puts a dent in the fun factor.
Control and Gameplay
I found the controls to be clunky and inconsistent at best. When you first start out, the only way that you can learn what your controls are is by using the "Macros" option on the menu bar. After that, most of the actions can be done through the keyboard, although you'll probably still find yourself using the mouse a lot especially when you can't remember what the macro for something was. If you want to interact with NPCs, the way to do that is by double-clicking on them, which is extra-difficult because they're stick men and they're hard to click on! You'll also likely need to use the mouse if you want to work with items in your inventory.
I was also appalled to find that at one point in order to pick up what seemed to be a quest item, I had to double-click on them instead of using the typical "get" macro. It would also have been nice if gold were automatically picked up when stepped on.
Aside from being all over the place, I found that most of the controls worked well when you wanted them to, so there was never the frustration of not being able to do what you want when you want to. Unless, of course, you couldn't remember which button you needed to press.
Graphics
The graphics in this game resemble one of my "look at me, I'm learning to code!" projects. But given that the game's theme has been twisted to work with its lack of visual luster, I guess that's acceptable. On the plus side, your character's icon changes with what they have equipped, and there are plenty of nice visual touches, even if the game itself is not an artistic masterpiece.
Sound
I don't actually recall a whole lot of sound effects, but there definitely was some music to listen to, even if it was the very cliche Square RPG music. I also noticed that the music typically didn't play until after you switched areas, so if you logged in somewhere besides the start, there would be no music playing.
Replayability
Would I play it again? Not really, no. Unless there was a notable chunk added that stuck me as being worthwhile to explore, I feel like I saw and did everything worth doing on the first run through. I finished most/all of the missions and found all the treasure that I was aware of, which doesn't leave a lot of reason for me to revisit this game.
Conclusion
Having played through all the available areas that I could find (I'm assuming that I've reached the "end", but I haven't verified it), I'd say that the first half of the game was decently fun, but it lost some of that towards the end, and the last area that I visited (the one with all the buttons), was just downright obnoxious.
My biggest complaints are the bugs, such as being unable to re-equip weapons halfway through the game, the music (oh no, not Chrono Trigger: battle with Magus again!), and the lack of cool items to discover or buy in the shops. I found rather early that I had more money than I could spend.
Still, it was fun to explore all the areas, talk to the NPCs, and complete missions. If that's your thing, it wouldn't hurt to give this game a try - just don't expect anything groundbreaking. This game looks and feels like a beginner project, so don't expect anything beyond a rudimentary RPG.
