UPDATE: April 12th, 2012
Infinity Blade II has just received its first major update, and it's a pretty cool one. The focus of the update is a new feature called ClashMobs. ClashMobs are massive in-game events that everybody who plays Infinity Blade II with an Internet connection can play a small role in. To see what ClashMob events are available, just go into the menu and tap the ClashMob button.
When you do that, you'll see a list of the various ClashMobs that are in progress, as well as the ones that will occur in the coming days. For instance, in the first ClashMob we played, the goal was for players to collect a total of 750,000 bags of gold. Upon entering, each participant sees the camera slowly pan across a desert landscape. Bags of gold appear, and each player has a few seconds to tap on them to pick them up.
For our part, we managed to collect 12 bags of gold, which were then added to the grand total of bags collected in that ClashMob. If, between all players who participated, 750,000 bags were collected in the six hours the event was available, each participant would be rewarded with loot or gold.
The goals of other ClashMobs include things like "kill 60,000 titans," or "kill one giant titan with a million hit points." In each instance, you only get a few seconds to do your damage, but your results are added to the results of the other participants. Everyone either succeeds or fails together. And since new ClashMobs appear each day, it's not a big deal if one you participate in fails. On the other hand, you get shiny new gear or gold if it succeeds.
For some reason, you have to have a Facebook account to participate in ClashMobs. When you connect your Facebook account to the game, any of your Facebook or Game Center friends who participate in ClashMobs will automatically show up in a section called "My Mob." The more friends you mob up with, the better bonuses you get for each successful ClashMob you participate in.
ClashMobs are a very cool idea, and a great reason to keep coming back to Infinity Blade II every day. It's disappointing that you have to connect to Facebook to participate, but even still, this is a great addition to an already superb game.
Chances are, you’ve poured many hours into your character in Infinity Blade. You’ve fought through the castle a handful of times, leveled up your character, honed your sword-fighting ability, taken down hundreds of beasts, and finally, in a pulse-pounding confrontation, you conquered the God King. So what's next? In Infinity Blade 2, you start over. And if that sounds like a bad thing, it's not. Not at all.
Infinity Blade 2 continues the story of Siris who, after killing the God King, decides to free the creator of the Infinity Blade, the Worker of Secrets. There’s a lot more story in the sequel than there was in the original game, and it’s told in brief cut scenes that are interesting enough that you'll want to find out what happens next. Every line of text is competently voice acted, and the story contains some unexpected plot twists (even if it crosses into retcon territory). We should note that you don’t need to have played the original to understand what’s happening in Infinity Blade 2.
You're so much taller in real life.
But the core of the original game remains fully intact in the sequel. You still make your way from point to point through a spacious medieval castle and take on increasingly dangerous opponents in one-on-one battles to the death. While fighting, your opponents still telegraph their attacks before unleashing them, giving you time to dodge, block, or parry accordingly. After avoiding a few attacks, you get an opening to strike back, and you swipe at the screen to chip away at their health bar.
Instead of totally revamping the gameplay for the sequel, the developers have taken just about every aspect of the original and found clever ways to make the experience deeper, more strategic and engrossing. Weapons are customizable, combat has been tweaked, and the environment changes over time, opening up new areas to explore. If playing through the same environment multiple times bothered you about the first game, you’ll find the sequel to be less repetitive. Restarting from the same place outside the castle is still at the center of the game’s design, but the pathways through the castle branch early and often. And instead of questing after one main villain, you’re charged with killing four bosses here.
This time around, fighting is deeper in several ways. Enemies come in more varieties, with different body shapes, weapon sets, and attacks you’ll have to adapt to as you play. Often the game will lay out a goal before a fight, like winning without blocking, or successfully parrying three enemy attacks before making the kill. Achieving these goals gives you extra experience points. You can even put away your shield and dual-wield light weapons for faster attacks, or use a heavy two-handed weapon that makes your attacks slower, but more damaging.
King of the staircase.
The basic fighting mechanics are more strategic now, too. In the first game, we found ourselves dodging just about every attack, because dodging was easier than parrying, and blocking was for chumps. This time around, the game encourages you to add variety to your defense, so you’re more likely to block, dodge, and parry in each fight. Parrying is much easier to do now, and you’re even rewarded for how precise your parries are. You can also get “perfect” blocks by blocking immediately before a hit will land. To deter players from dodging every attack, you can only dodge a few times in a row before you become exhausted and start moving slower. These features give a lot more texture to the battles, and make them more intense. And believe us, the battles are intense.
And of course leveling up your character is still a huge part of the game. Once again, experience points are funneled through your gear, and when a piece of gear is maxed out, you’ll stop receiving some of the experience points you earn. This sounds annoying, but it encourages you to keep upgrading to new and better equipment. When you do level up, or when you max out one of your items’ XP, you can pump points into your basic stats, increasing your character’s health, attack, defense, or magic.
For the most part, the game has a dark fantasy tone, but you'll find a few playful elements. Searching for gold and items scattered around the environment is always fun, and this time around the world is packed full of collectibles. This adds a fun “hidden pictures” element to the game that nearly everyone will enjoy. You can also find “Prize Wheels,” which let you spin a wheel of items--think The Price is Right--and you get to keep whatever piece of equipment the wheel lands on. Also, the iCloud saving feature lets you play the game on multiple devices and pick up exactly where you left off. And we mean exactly.
This may sting a little.
And last but not least, the visuals of Infinity Blade 2 are incredible. Once again, Chair Entertainment has pushed the graphical capabilities of iOS devices beyond what we’ve seen in just about any other game. The cinematic camera movements, silky smooth animation, and highly detailed textures show the gorgeous things your iOS device can do. We played the game on an iPad 1 and an iPhone 4S, and while it looks noticeably better on the 4S, it’s no slouch on the first generation iPad.
One of the real triumphs of Infinity Blade 2, in our mind, is how all of the gameplay elements are carefully designed to guide you to get the most out of the game. You’re rewarded for changing up your style during fights. You’re slapped on the wrist if you stop trying out new gear. If one path leads you to a boss that’s too powerful for you to handle, you can try out another path to see if the boss at the end is more manageable. It’s incredibly rare to find such a deep and ambitious game on iOS that’s so masterfully constructed.
In just about every way, Infinity Blade 2 builds on the rock-solid foundation of the original game, and delivers an experience that’s as tense, deep, gorgeous, and enjoyable as anything you’ll find on the platform. If you didn’t like the original Infinity Blade, the sequel isn’t different enough to change your mind. But for everyone else--and there are a lot of us--it delivers exactly what we’re looking for.
23 Comments
"Dungeon Hunter 2 takes everything that made the original a great Diablo clone, and makes it better" That was from your dungeon hunter 2 review. Now, look at dis, "Infinity Blade II takes everything that was great about the first game and turns it up a notch." STP! Y U NO CREATIVE??
What are you talking about? These are two completely different sentences that happen to convey a similar opinion... from two different reviewers... with almost a full year in between them... What's the problem??
Anyway, great review. I was on the fence about this game, mainly because of its repetitive nature, but it seems like there might be enough new enhancements to pull me back in for round 2.
Editor in Chief here... It's tough to write 1800+ reviews like we have on STP and never repeat yourself. But we do try to avoid easy cliches so that our reviews are always fun and interesting to read.
Are you complaining that they compared a sequel to the original? That is kind of a necessity and people will know if it is worth it to upgrade to the sequel or stick with the original. And wtf- do you memorize the reviews here? How do you remember the dungeon hunter 2 review so well? You must work for a competing site or something
The iCloud saves are actually really exciting to me, because I tend to try and conserve space on my iPod Touch as much as possible, and a 940 MB app is liable to be deleted.
Agree. And hope for implementation in the first one, too.
iCloud addresses many of the issues I had with iOS and makes jail breaking almost unnecessary. The day Apple releases some sort of theming program that overwrites/backs up the default files AND releases more 1st party and 3rd party widgets for notification center (mainly SBSettings replacement) is the day I stop jail breaking.
tim
Gonna give this a try... =D
This seems to be the gold standard for iOS gaming. Can't wait to finish the first one to start this one.
Do we get an incentive in IB2 for completing IB1?
No real need to play IB1 to understand what's happening in IB2. If you're still playing the first however, just go through a few bloodlines (in order to understand the repetition mechanism) and you'll be clear to jump to IB2... which is definitely THE killer-app.
I wonder how other devs will manage to stay competitive. My bet is that 2012 will be an interesting year for iGaming (either it reaches its limits or it blows everything we used to expect from a portable device)... and one true knee-deep-in-hell for "traditional" portable devices, even those that still are to come (PSVita...).
Aoh damn, I misunderstood your question klouud (sorry I'm no native ^^) : no, there's no incentive in IB2 for completing IB1. You'll start IB2 from scratch, whatever you had accomplished in the first episode.
the game has poor graphics on ios 4.3, for example no shadows for caracters and no rays of lighs, but the game still look good, i play the game on my ipad2, i do not want to get ios 5 for some reasons like battery drain and others, maybe on ios 5 the graphic is better!!
I have maneged to activate 2 of locks but I just can't open the third one
The lock It is the thing that light up when u put your hand in to and just dies. Any help?
Amazing art and gameplay evolution, another christmas purchase!
This game is awesome. So much better than part 1.
Sure, part 1 set the bar really high for the visuals department on iOS devices back in late 2010. And I did enjoy playing it for some time. But in retrospect, the game got pretty old pretty fast. I remember beating the God King on my fourth go at him, finishing the game -SPOILER ALERT- than starting all over again, and killing the God King again on my fifth go. After that, it was just plain old grinding to get enough money to buy the Infinity Blade (which made no sense, since I killed the short bastard who owned the darn thing over and over again) to unlock the Deathless Kings. Thanks but no thanks. Partly in response to that bit on STP earlier this month: I'm just not that kind of player that goes for achievements, leaderboards or statistics. I just want to be engrossed in a compelling story and gameplay, finish it and move on. END OF SPOILERS.
So part 1 ended up being kind of a chore. Part 2 feels much more like an epic adventure than a simple dueling game, with different end-bosses, cutscenes that reveal a (simple) background story, and a much more varied gameplay. This time around I didn't mind the set pathways that much. What I really like is that your successes depend more on you getting better with the game play mechanics than on you getting really expensive gear. I always dislike that.
The bar is raised once more.
Finished it!
Wow, what an ending. MINOR SPOILER ALERT: Can't wait to see Infinity Blade III!
This game is fucking bullshit, its soo fucking repetitive and gives no hint on what your supposed to do, and the enimies i fight you cant block or dodge and bloody 2 hit me, its bullshit!
Just started playing and I love it! Great continuation of the 1st one. The only gripe I have with this game is that I can't seem to sell my equipment to the store.
add me: klouud
Does anyone want to join my ClashMob? Add me on GameCenter: Josue25
Infinity Blade 2 rocks!
Is anyone who is playing this using the original iPad? Infinity Blade crashes about 75% on the load screen, and Infinity Blade II crashes every time. I've done a lot of troubleshooting already, but I think it just doesn't support the old hardware (even though it says it does). If you're using the original iPad, I suggest not buying this one.
I play it n my iPad 1. The AppStore page for the game has a link to their troubleshootng FAQ. I had to physically exit out, turn off my iPad (didnt even know I could do that lol), and then turnit back on. Works like a charm. Apparently it is because even if you exit out of Apps by doubleclickng and holding/Xing somehow memory is being used or smethng... I dont understand the techsude but just exit everything, turn the iPadoff (hold the power button untilit prompts you to shut down) and then turn the iPad backin and try again to play. I did have shut down issues trying to connect to Facebook for the Mobclash but I tried again and it worked fine.
And for the commentors saying this game is too hard, you are CLEARLY not a suited to play this game or you do not understand the mechanics.... And that makes me weep for you :(
Oh woe is me!
After the last upgrade, which is completely useless if you don't have a Facebook account by the way, all my data got lost, and my character is back at square one. And worst of all, there seems no way to restore it, even though I have iCloud saves...
Chair loves you? Well, some tough love that is...
P.S. If anybody knows how to help me get my hard-earned data back, I'd surely appreciate it.
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