Review will be edited and updated as patches roll out and/or more issues are found.

Someone said I needed to post my positives, so here they are:

• The game has never looked better
• Multiple playable characters is interesting

This is a hard review to write. I absolutely love the first Undermine. It was perfect in every way. The controls were tight and everything just seemed to work. I rarely ever felt damage taken or a death was BS. Undermine 2 is in Early Access so it's too soon to make a major judgement call, but right now it's not even remotely up to snuff. The following is simply a list of my gripes currently in the game.

• Gotta put this at top. For anyone who played the first one this is unforgivable. SALAMANDER TAIL NO LONGER COOKS FOOD. Smacked food for a while, never cooked. (Unstable concoction also no longer destroys rocks, lame)

• The controls don't feel right. Jumping feels off and diagonal movement is slower than the cardinal directions.

• Blessing which are aquired through mining gold nodes are capable of falling into nearby pitfalls through no fault of the player.

• Levels used to have 4 stages and then a boss battle or descent to next floor (IE: goldmine 1, 2, 3, 4 / Dungeon 1, 2, 3, 4... Etc). Now you only get 2 stages and boss battle, barely any time to get relic and blessing combos.

• Gaining gold is a huge problem. There's enough gold nodes to mine, but when you only get 20 to 35 gold per node you end up not being able to buy anything at the shop. I skip the shop in goldmine 1 100% of the time due to lack of gold.

• Either the enemy hitboxes or the thrown pickaxe hitbox don't feel right. I've had thrown pickaxes just fly through enemies that aren't jumping and it does nothing. Not just once or twice, I experience this issue almost every single run.

• You enter a room and your enter animation ends you further inside. This is a huge issue when the animation places you right on the edge of a pitfall in the map, and you immediately fall down into it. Seems Fixed!

• It's 10x easier to fall into pitfalls on the map. In undermine 1 you could really ride the edge, but in this game you seem to slide towards holes the closer you get. Nearly all my runs have been ruined by damage taken this way. This also pertains to the holes which lead to boss chambers or down a floor (Undermine 1 had edges around these holes so you couldn't accidentally descend). Not fun.

• The sequel is harder. That's not normally a problem, but it's harder in the way that there's so many enemies on screen shooting off attacks you can't possibly avoid them all. The enemies are also overall harder, and this is gold mine 1, literally the starting level.

• The maps are now larger sometimes and they extend off your screen, which means attacks from enemies you can't even see come flying at your from off screen.

• I'm not sure how I feel about the mana system. The arcane powers are cool and add more combat depth and variety, but I'm just not sure.

• It feels like someone told the team to expand upon the original, but the complexity just started getting out of control at some point and no one reigned the team in. So now we have a bunch of complex systems clashing with each other.

• The menus screen is a good example of this. Undermine 1 had one screen to look at that showed you everything you needed on one page. Now youve got multiple pages to sort through where everything is separate and nothing can be compared together. It's cumbersome.

• They removed damage numbers from your character menu as far as I can tell.

• Player attributes are another weird thing to add that is just combersome, confusing, and adds complexity in all the wrong ways. Trying to keep track of all your stats which effect all your arcane, weapons, relics, blessings, perks is just too much.

• Progression, as far as I can tell in my few hours playing is done by coins, not gold. You don't lose the coins, or a portion of them, when you die, but you only seem to get coins for beating bosses or donating money to the pilfer store. Although I did find some in a chest inside a secret room once. Not a fan as of this as of yet.

• The crafting system seems over complex and required you to sacrifice keys and bombs plus a couple other resources in order to get materials which you use to craft relics. As of right now, I've maybe had one or two relics in my runs. This system is not fun.

I sincerely hope I'm mistaken about some of these systems. Maybe I haven't played enough. The game is still in early access, but if these are finished systems and the EA label is for content, I can't see myself playing this game anywhere near as much as the original.

It's just not as fun in any single way as Undermine 1.

It isn't bad by any means but there is nothing that would make me recommend it over UnderMine 1. Hoping it improves with time because, right now, it is just a worse iteration of the same formula.

Edit: The more I play, the worse it feels. While I don't hate the Crown Coins, they aren't nearly as compelling as Gold in 1. Only having 2 Floors per Level feels terrible. The stats feel fairly irrelevant beyond just pumping damage numbers. More than enough people mentioned the slippery pitfalls so I won't delve deeper on that. There is a lot of completely reused stuff including a boss, many enemies, and various items.

There isn't a single thing that feels better than Undermine 1 but a whole lot that feels worse.

Really enjoying it - everything I loved about the first, but more, better. Really loving the idea of alternate characters and multiple paths!

I'm not sure what's up with some of the negative reviews. Like it has co-op?? (https://www.undermine2.game/remote-play) Do people hate Steam Remote Play? I've always thought it was great, since it means there's also a couch co-op option. It's online. It's co-op. I don't understand people.

Actually, let me respond to a couple of points in another review, which I think are a little off-base IMO.


From another review: "* You will not gain any meta progression, or anything of value at all unless you reach a certain point apparently. You lose =EVERYTHING= when you die. In a run for 30 minutes? Fall into one of way-too-many pits and die? Time is completely wasted. There is no way to leave without hitting this arbitrary point. This is the primary reason for the review."

The change here from the first is that gold is now an in-run currency only, meaning you have to clear the second floor (which has the first boss) in order to be guaranteed any thorium or whatever the seal thingies are called for meta progression. That seems... pretty reasonable to me? Literally the only way you're not making any progression at all is if you can't beat the first 10 to 15 minutes of the game.


From the other review: "* You start out with a responsive, quick character with a dash as an intro. Then you're given a terrible jumping character with crazy short range. This would be fine (unlockable character upgrades are great) if not for the above point."

Since the above point about meta progression doesn't have a lot of merit, all that's left is that yeah, it'll take time to unlock the good stuff. I feel like teasing you in the beginning of a game with a powerful build and then taking it away so you know what you're working towards is a super common trope in games that goes back for decades. Castlevania Symphony of the Night did it. Super Metroid did it. Etc. etc. I do think the movement of Undermine 2 can feel a little bit sluggish when you first start out (similar to Undermine 1), but I think it's promoting a more deliberate style of play rather than hack and slash. It's similar to Hades or Binding of Isaac.


From the other review: "* There are way too many enemies, and projectile enemies when spawning into rooms."

It's right on par, or probably honestly a little bit easier than Binding of Isaac. But that's why there's a meta progression so you'll get more health and move faster and deal more damage over time, plus get access to new abilities, etc. I don't feel like it's unreasonable, personally.


From the other review: "* Enemies do way too much damage (you can take about 7 normal enemy hits, or like... 4 from some). Falling does too much damage."

I think maybe this person just was frustrated that they weren't immediately successful at the game? That's what I'm picking up from these complaints. But I feel like enemies doing a lot of damage and forcing deliberate play rather than just running in and killing everything is kind of the hallmark of this genre. Maybe they'd prefer something more like Dynasty Warriors? And again, you will get more HP and get stronger over time through meta-progression.


From the other review: "* You will regularly take damage and get hit when entering these over-crowded rooms."

I haven't experienced this. If so, that doesn't feel good. But it's EA. Tell the devs?


From the other review: "* Healing is incredibly rare ( I saw one drop in 4 runs for 20 health... Basically healing part of a single damage hit)."

Healing drops are pretty infrequent. Again, intentional game play. You're not supposed to be running around recklessly and taking a bunch of damage all of the time. That being said, there is a guaranteed store on every floor, and the floor essentially always has at least one healing item. And especially now that gold is an in-run currency, so there's no pressure to save it for meta-progression, you can buy some healing.


From the other review: "* No online co-op."

It's got remote play: https://www.undermine2.game/remote-play.

Anyway, I'm having fun. But I like this kind of game. Clearly it's not for everybody. But if you like roguelites, this is a fun one.