YMMV / Axiom Verge 2

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• Awesome Art: Axiom Verge 2 represents a major upgrade in environmental design compared to the tunnels laced through Sudra, with way more environmental details and different looks within the same area. Nowhere is this more evident than with the background details of showing Kienger being tube shaped, which both homage the groundbreaking 16-bit SNES and scroll with player movement and even change by room. The beaches of Irikar having full scrolling clouds on the other side of the torus is a particular highlight.
• Awesome Music: Par for the course, the soundtrack of Kiengir is one of the highlights of the game:
  • "Indra Internal" is used much like "Trace Rising" in Axiom Verge, as the protagonist's personal theme, but is even more high tempo and energetic.
  • "Nephropidae" is an energetic and synth heavy remix of "Amnesia" crossed with "Indra Internal" stands out as one of the most frenetic and energetic tracks in the game.
  • "White Sand City" is a slow and haunting song, fitting the destroyed city and crater filled beaches of Irikar, which combines with the background details to make an almost dream like area.
• Contested Sequel: A low-intensity example. While the game is generally regarded as good, opinions range from "good but not as good as the first game", to "on par with the first game", to "better than the original".
• Good Bad Bugs: Using Gud An-Na to pick up a collectible allows the player to move around freely while the animation for the collectible plays and its message appears on screen, while also totally stopping enemies, until the message box is closed. It's a good way to get free hits in on enemies, until the message box pops up and obscures your vision.
  • In a boon for speedrunners, in the launch version of the game, a combination of oversights and bugs make it so the final two thirds of the game can be completely skipped. After playing the first third of the game normally, a precise series of jumps up a cliff and a drone toss allow players to skip Amashilama hijacking Indra's body and drop straight into Irikar, conveniently very close to the fast travel upgrade. A bug in the fast travel system allows players to fast travel to save points that haven't actually been discovered yet, letting players skip straight to the final boss. And since Amashilama hasn't even hijacked Indra's body yet, much less the Siuna, the final boss doesn't even show up, so so the player can set off the Breach bomb without encountering any resistance whatsoever. Immediate patches changed the location of the fast travel upgrade, fixed the bugs in question, and altered the cliff to remove the sequence break, though speedrunners naturally preserved the launch version.
  • Even better glitches have since been found, including ways to push Indra off-camera into neighbouring rooms, where the obstacles aren't loaded properly — you can't see what you're doing, but if you know what you're doing, you can beat the game in about ten minutes this way!
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The game noticeably trends towards the easy side, focusing more on exploration of Kiengir than combat, which is made even easier with weapon upgrades and hacking. Combined with the glut of save points, and some players have been disappointed, especially since Axiom Verge had quite a bit of challenge at points.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While deeply connected to Axiom Verge in a narrative sense, the world of Kienger and story of Axiom Verge 2 are very different in a lot of ways, some of which has disappointed fans who enjoyed the prior game. In particular, Kienger's more naturalistic world and the diminished use of the much praised aesthetic of Sudra, Indra's character arc being less developed than Trace's ( particularly given she doesn't get as much time as Trace to react to the things happening around her), the numerous changes to the gameplay, and less glitch-themed upgrades have all been points of contention.

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