Brave Dwarves II Review

I really wanted to like this game. From the opening screen on, the graphics and sound were exactly what I like to see in a platformer. My character, a Dwarven Mage, was small and relatively cute, but well animated and packed some punch. The colors are bright and crisp, and the animations were all very smooth.

The background music is excellent for setting the the mood the game designers were going for. Light and cheerful, it put me in a "fantasy game" sort of mood. They've also added background sound, like crickets chirping at night in the forest, that really helped me get into the game (once I'd lowered the volume from the apparently default 100%).

Some problems that really detracted from the game experience follow.

FIrst off, there's absolutely no backstory in the game at all. I can only speak for myself, but I like to know why I'm running about the forest collecting jewels. Am I trying to rescue the damsel in distress? Am I on a quest for the king? Do I need to get the money to buy my kid a new puppy?

Besides that, Brave Dwarves 2 is extremely repetitive. I spent my playing time going from room to room (or, I suppose, forest glade to forest glade), collecting all manner of jewels, treasure chests, gold coins, and strangely moving bags. That was fine the first two or three rooms, but after about 20 it started to get dull, even with blasting enemies.

The enemies are the second problem I had with this game. I'm a dwarven mage and I'm fighting things like cobras, bats, big bees and frogs...frogs? Yup, frogs seem to really have it in for dwarves for some reason. Frogs and leprechauns.

And the leprechauns bring me to my third issue with the game. The dreaded leprechauns sit, usually at the top of the screen, firing in any direction they please. Their magical bolts arc beautifully all the way across the screen. While my Mighty Dwarven Mage can fire a very similar looking magical ball about one third of the way across the screen at waist height. I was bombarded from afar while I had to work my way up the screen to get in position to hit the leprechaun. And, as with everything else in Brave Dwarves 2, this repeated from screen to screen.

That brings me to the final flaw with the game. The control scheme, while pretty standard, makes for some annoyances. You control your character with the directional arrows, jump with space bar and fire with the outside control key. The problem with that is, the left control key is just to the left of the windows start button, so several times while I was playing the game my aim was a little off and instead of firing at my enemy, I took myself back to my desktop and my character stood there getting beaten senseless while I awaited the game's return.