YMMV / Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced

• Awesome Bosses:
  • Fake Crash subverts the usual trend of Crash bosses being "wait for them to attack, then attack while they are stunned" by being a genuinely creative Puzzle Boss.
  • Awkward controls of the helicopter backpack aside, using it to spin N. Trance into a trap controlled by Fake Crash made for one of the most intense final bosses in the series.
• Contested Sequel: The game got reasonably good reviews at launch, albeit lower than Huge Adventure. It was praised for bringing more originality in its level design, a better plot and an impressive multiplayer mode. However, it also received criticism for the abundance of Marathon Levels, Fake Difficulty in enemy placement and obstacles, situational power-ups, and other elements like needing multiple games to fully access the multiplayer content.
• Goddamned Boss: N. Tropy isn't the hardest boss in the world, as his projectiles are rather simple to dodge once the pattern is memorized, but the Screen Crunch makes memorizing that pattern a bit of a chore. What is problematic, however, is that N. Tropy is a Marathon Boss. He has three phases, each having him take three hits and having a long load time between them, and if you die in any phase, you're sent all the way back to phase one.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: While getting reasonable reviews from critics and fans, a recurring complaint towards the game is that, much like The Huge Adventure before it, it is essentially just a 2D recreation of the PlayStation titles.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The multiplayer mode is quite expansive and fun, but unfortunately the fact that it requires two copies of the same game to play, plus a version of The Huge Adventure for certain extras, meant only a few people got to try it.
  • The inability to pick the order to play the levels in each world, a staple in the series since Cortex Strikes Back.
  • The Gems and Relics in this game serve no purpose, as the good ending is tied to the colored shards hidden in certain levels, so there is little incentive to break boxes or attempt the time trials.
  • The flying carpet sections, due to the placement of obstacles verging on Fake Difficulty, and the helicopter jetpack, because of its sluggish movement and slippery controls. Made even worse by the fact three of the bosses are fought with them.
  • Climbing ropes in the Arabian levels. It's unintuitive that you have to spin to change ropes, jump to climb them and press down to slide. To make matters worse, Crash will not stop sliding after you let go of the directional pad, usually leading to a death in a bottomless pit below.
• That One Level: The space levels with Coco. Since you are controlling the satellite and not Coco herself, there is a delay to her movement, which is problematic considering tne screen is usually cluttered with fast moving enemies and projectiles. To make matters worse, your only means of attack is a laser bullet with a painfully slow fire rate, meaning it's preferable to just dash through enemies instead of trying to shoot them down, and that is actually encouraged, as Coco is being followed by a fireball that will cause instant death if it reaches her.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Once you free Crunch and Coco from N. Trance's mind control, they're playable! But Crunch is relegated to two Atlasphere levels (of which there already was one where you played as Crash), and Coco to the two space levels. Made even more egregious by the fact that Coco was playable in a more traditional sense in The Wrath of Cortex, which released prior to N-Tranced.

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