It was about what I expected when I played through the first in the Garten of Banban series of video games last month. A mascot horror game that takes heavy inspiration from the much better made Poppy Playtime series. I did say then, that if I saw the subsequent ones on sale I would take a look of them. Less than a month later and those games are on sale, so I gave Garten of Banban II a try. Unavoidable spoilers for the first game to follow.
The first game ended with you descending on a hidden elevator into the depths of the Banban's Kindergarten, before getting attack by a giant creature. This one picks up immediately afterwards, the attack caused the elevator to crash, with you saved by the creature breaking the elevator's fall. You emerge into a secret underground complex, and it is there that someone spots you on the complex's camera system. A man's voice informs you that he has become trapped in the security room, and has asked for your assistance in finding the key card to free him. Can this man be trusted though?
Much like with Poppy Playtime Chapter 2, Garten of Banban II is more of the same but offers a larger experience than the roughly 45 minutes of the first game. It is hard to quantify exactly how long this one took, as I did have the game paused for minutes at a time due to texting a friend while playing. I reckon that this one took me just over an hour to complete, and at a once again dirt cheap price, I find it hard to complain about that length. Thankfully, while still obviously low budget (the signs on the walls and the notes you find still all appear like they were written on MS Paint!), this was a much better made game than before, and is made up of more than just one long corridor with branching rooms off of it. Again in first person, your main goal is finding key cards to proceed further into the labyrinthian underground complex. You still have a drone that you can send to press switches, though this seemed to be used less this time around. Puzzles were all easy, but they were fun to do, not so easy that they felt pointless obstacles to progress. These puzzles range from collecting a group of chick mascots and returning them to their nest, to pressing switches in a correct order, and one sweat inducing platforming section over a large pit, which was more fun than its similar counterpart in the first game. The highlight of this second game was when you find yourself inadvertently trapped in a classroom with a teacher mascot, having to answer the questions she gives you, with surreal break time mini-stories involving the other students, who were made up of non-sentient watering cans, bowling pins, and shade wearing basketballs! I really enjoyed that section, felt unique, doing something different in feel to Poppy Playtime at last.
Before there were only the two mascot antagonists, and both barely featured. For this second game there were at least six of the creatures. I can't recall their names, but these included the return of the bird from the first game, the teacher mascot, a giant snail, a large spider, and a hulking great green monster among others. Similar to Poppy Playtime, some of these mascots are able to talk. The voice acting wasn't great, it felt like they had just dragged random people off the streets to read the lines. In the context of these normal voices coming out of vaguely creepy looking creatures though, the voice work grew on me. There were plenty of jump scare moments should you get caught in any of the sections where that is possible, unlike my first experience, here, I jumped a fair few times. The chapter culminates in a chase sequence, that while not original, was pretty cool, mainly due to the wonderfully massive Jumbo Josh. Dotted around the game world are letters and video tapes. I never actually got a chance to use the tapes, but the letters added a surprising amount of lore to what had seemed to be a wafer thin game story-wise. There are still many lingering questions, but I had far more of an idea what was going on than I did previously.
Level design is better here, but again, the game world doesn't feel like a realistic place, you have dark chasms that stretch into darkness, and this place if real, you would have to assume was created by a maniac, due to the amount of artificial puzzles and level design. It is after all a game though, so perhaps I'm being a bit harsh on that front.
Garten of Banban II was a lot more fun to play than the first. It is still obviously low quality, but I found this to be better designed in general, and I didn't really find any of it frustrating to get through. It also delighted by doing some original things, rather than just feeling like a copied clone. Even with those new ideas, I could never escape the feeling that this is just a poor imitation of a better series, but I would be lying if I said there wasn't some fun to be had here, and would be lying if I said I didn't immediately boot up the third game at the completion of this one.
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