Europa Universalis IV

Leading the resistance opposing an evil demon lord requires both strategic brilliance and personal heroism. Fortunately, The Valley Without Wind 2 gives you all the time in the world to make decisions in the turn-based strategy portion, and magical immortality to deal with frustrating side-scrolling battles against the demonic hordes. Sadly, neither advantage alleviates the tedium of dealing with the repetition endemic to the limited random level generator.

A Valley Without Wind 2's story conceit is as brilliant as the ideas behind its weird mix of action and strategy gameplay. You're a double agent planted years ago in the evil overlord's inner circle, and the game starts with you betraying him as soon as you receive your immortality-granting MacGuffin. Thus empowered, you're thrust into the leadership of the resistance as the only one who can stand against his monstrous armies. The game fails to follow through with plot development or role-playing opportunities, but the setup itself is exceptional.

The strategy portion is the best aspect of the game, where you send your lieutenants across shattered landscapes in search of food, supplies, and allies. The overlord's armies are always in pursuit, though, and no hiding place is ever safe - particularly once the demon lord himself emerges and starts his implacable advance. The overall effect is a desperate flight from overwhelming odds that the resistance can never win. The only hope is for your allies to buy time for you to seek out the power you need to eventually challenge the tyrant yourself. The simplicity of its design and the limited actions available to the player in no way diminish the tense and rewarding experience of trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy while scrounging enough supplies to keep the resistance alive.

However, the bulk of your time with A Valley Without Wind 2 is spent in side-scrolling action. The creators make no bones about their love for 16-bit action/platformers, and the influence of everything from the SNES Star Wars titles to Actraiser is clear. Enemies dot the randomly generated landscapes, following simple patterns like launching themselves at you, wandering aimlessly, firing bullet swarms, or breathing fire. With no XP rewarded or doodads to collect, you're just trying to make it to the end so you can fight the boss or clear the stage, depending on the encounter.

You can freely switch between the huge variety of mage classes at your disposal, picking from five at each tier (randomly selected for each playthrough from ten total classes). Spell effects span a wide range: direct beam attacks, player-centered explosions, shields, homing blasts, and wall-crawling attacks are packaged three apiece into classes like Lumbermancer and Nihilmancer. Unfortunately, my experience led me to quickly lock into the class with the best seeking spell (or, failing that, the most diverse attack patterns) because of the problems that plague the level generator.

A Valley Without Wind 2 demands tight, flawless play with significant bonuses for avoiding damage and a life pool quickly depleted by any but the weakest enemies. However, the floaty and imprecise movement and a viewport far too small for the speed at which the player and enemies move make avoiding damage problematic at best. On top of that, bizarre difficulty spikes from the random placement of enemies within random level geometry are tough to deal with. You can cruise through three entire levels only to bounce off of a nasty configuration - which could very well be far past the last checkpoint or even blocking your only progression path.

I enjoy the strategy portion of A Valley Without Wind 2, but that only makes up a fraction of the total game. The mediocre-at-best action segments that take up the majority of players' time are rough enough to sink the overall experience below modern gaming standards. I salute indie developers like Arcen Games for putting unique and creative designs like this out there, but every great idea needs to be executed well to reach its potential. A Valley Without Wind 2 just doesn't get there.

6.75

Free a broken world from its evil overlord, both by commanding the resistance and using your near-godly powers on the battlefield

The hand-drawn 16-bit aesthetic is colorful and full of personality, but animations are short on frames and the environments get repetitive

The soundtrack is eclectic in the extreme, but the good far outweighs the bad. This is my favorite game soundtrack since The Binding of Isaac

Native support for an Xbox 360 controller is a great boon for the side-scrolling action, but the design has problems no gamepad can overcome

The unusual combination of styles and genres is a fantastic and creative mix, but the execution of the action portion leaves much to be desired

Moderate