Two Brothers

Two Brothers is absolutely one of the most underrated games I have played. I have yet to finish the game, but have played about 18 hours which, to me, is impressive for an RPG with no grinding. It has its share of glitches, which I hope will be ironed out in the future, but that's not to say that I don't love the game in its current form. The story is simple but interesting, the combat is challenging but uncomplicated, and the classically inspired graphics are filled with colour. The story is thought-provoking and touching. As a whole the game is very retro-inspired (what drew me in), yet it plays with and subverts many of the classic aspects of gaming, particularly death. I look forward to the finished product with all of the kinks ironed out.

Pro:
-The game design itself was gorgeous
-Definite throwback to the games of my youth
-The Devs were polite and corteous

Con:
-Game crashes at start
-When it does decide to run, controller or KB+M doesn't want to work
-Massive video lag
-Texture issues

I've had this game for a few years now, paid $20 for what I knew to be an investment that may or may not work out. Devs did what they could to try and help me out. I don't like not hearing much about how they plan to fix it, but if Chromaphore becomes an actual thing and is released, I hope those of us who bought Two Brothers back when it was still being finished will at least get grandfathered in.

I will update my review on a later date if things change.

I've tried to play this several times since I purchased it, but the bugs just make it impossible. The game locks up often in some areas requiring a restart. They made the bizarre decision to have your inventory available only when you have a particular party member with you, but he frequently leaves. Combat is rough to say the least. Controller support is "partial" at best and has to be reselected every time you start up. Dialog/text stays on screen until new dialog comes up. Meaning your conversations stay around long after they're over. This obscures a portion of the world at all times. The whole experience feels unpolished.

It's been out for over 2 years so I'd expect these glaring issues to have been patched by now. I don't like reviewing a game that I haven't finished, but I just have to give up on this one. Don't waste your money.

A buggy mess plain and simple. I had to fix it so I could play in anything besides a WAY too small resolution, then the intro broke, then after trying to bring the water jug on a girl's head to a fish man and winding up feeding her to him (Or was that just another bug?) I got stuck in an endless loop talking to an NPC.

First run ended after playing the tutorial, then jumping into the actual game, only to find myself outside of the map, wandering around until an event triggered and the game locked up.

Second run ended when I found out that ESC instantly closes the game.

Third run ended when I skipped the tutorial, went right into the game and was unable to move at all.

A game Obsidian would be proud of.

I so want to recommend this, but I can't quite do it.

This game is a love letter to classic 8-bit gaming, and more specifically, the Game Boy. While the game plays most similar to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, it also has references to Pokemon and Final Fantasy. Since the Game Boy was one of my first gaming loves, and Link's Awakening my favorite title on the system, the game just hit me hard with its nostalgia hammer.

The story has some very profound, and dare I say it, vaguely religious themes, at least what I played of it so far. The writing is easily the game's strongest aspect. It's full of refernces to classic games, but it also contains a great deal of pathos and questions about death, science vs faith, and the afterlife. The soundtrack is good as well.

But this thing has more bugs than the last two Bethesda games combined, and even compared to the games it tries to emulate, it actually falls short technically. It plays in an extremely tiny window, and pressing the Escape button quits the game entirely instead of pausing it. You have to be very careful when playing this game lest you run into glitches. And that's too bad, because everything about this game shows great promise.

I may change this to a "yes," but I must bring up something. During a scene in which the Two Brothers meet in a house, there is the Demise of the Ceremony song from Shadow of the Colossus playing. Did the creator have permission to use Kow Otani's composition?

The most common concern people have for this game is the game-breaking glitches. Yes, they happen. However, I bring good news. With the current version, I have yet to have a playthrough ruined by a glitch. Granted, it sometimes takes some troubleshooting, but in the end I found it worth it. Nostalgia is an important element in this game, and I feel Two Brothers used it to weave new stories rather than dwell on old ones. If you are really on the fence about this game, I would wait for the Director's Cut of this game to be released. I found the game, as it currently is, to still be immersive and memorable.

I really tried to like this game, retro soundtrack and overall feel; it was great! Then I actually played it...

Controls: Sloppy and not enjoyable.
Graphics: Good, but many glitches in the tiles and a lot of blank areas.
Game-play: Terrible, enemy encounters are boring and the "puzzles" are absurd and not in the good way.

Overall: This game does NOT feel professional and at the list price is extremely disappointing. This game is so bad, I would return it if Steam allowed such nonsense.

Like many others, who have paid money for this game, I'm experiencing bugs practically from the get go.
Do NOT let the trailer or pictures fool you, you will not recieve the experience advertised.
And it's not like we can get our money back.
£12 wasted.

A fantastic tribute to 90s action-adventure games with an imaginitive story and intriguing game mechanics, this title is nothing less than charming.

If you won't truck through an extremely buggy game, then pass on this one.

The story is very compelling—and while the game isn't killing you: getting you stuck in walls; blasting your ears with glitched audio; barrading you with typos; not having attacks, which indicate that they've hit, actually hit; or not being allowed to proceed for whatever unknown reasons—it can be veeeery immersive. Hell, I've spent quite a bit of time on this game on my first playthrough, and I still haven't completed it. All the side quests are very engaging, and though the game has very little direction, the main story had me 'pining' to know what will come next. It had that classic, old video game story which deals with many adult themes very well in the context of a child's game.

So, if you're willing to pay 15$ for a buggy, seemingly incomplete game for a great story and truck through it, then I recommend this game. Make your assessment, eh?

I have a Mac. Steam says it's available for Mac. So I downloaded the game with Steam on OSX ...and tadaaaa - not playable because it is not available for Mac. Thats quite a mess. I mean I spent 14 Euro for a game, which i cannot play on my preferred Plattform although it was announced by the publisher.
So I dowloaded the game again. This time the windows version. The game started well, but then a hell load of bugs finally made the game unplayable at all.
The sound hangs, there a tons of Graphic-Glitches and after beating Eagle-Island the screen gone black. The sound played further. So I waited...but nothing happened. After restarting the game, I was put into the beginning area. No way to play any further. This is a NO-GO for RPGs. Getting stuck, with the only possibility to start all over again. I'm really upset, because I liked the story. Bring an update for this game...and relase the Mac Version as you promise hiere in Steam.
Up to then I cannot recommend this game.

Two Brothers is a game with a ton of promise. The game feels and plays like a Seiken Densetsu but ditches the tired fantasy setting in favor of a more surreal world. It's hard to assign an existing tag to the world style. I would say that Two Brothers compares most closely to Anodyne or even Zeno Clash in this regard. The presentation contains simple 2D sprites juxtaposed with highly detailed pixel art for large scale creatures. This mixing of styles really left me with a sence of excited uneasiness; that feeling where you are a little disturbed but much more fascinated.

The combat is, from my brief experience, somewhat shallow and uninspired. It serve it's purpose but otherwise felt like a chore between story points. You have a basic melee combo and a ranged attack. Hitboxes are unpredictable and so every encounter feels like a clumsy struggle to spam melee attacks before the enemy can hit you.

The story is surprisingly detailed and well crafted. It deals with some interesting themes and can get rather philosophical at times. Quite enjoyable but I won't delve into it too much to avoid spoiling anything. It's just unfortuante that the only way it's conveyed is through a painfully slow, two line text crawl.

The combat on it's own would not be enough to drag Two Brothers down. Sadly, there is a monumental number of bugs in Two Brothers, a plethora even. These range from innocuous graphical glitches to game breakign bugs that will demand you restart. I was about four hours in and had just finished the first dungeon when I encountered a bug that forced me to reopen the game and then broke sequence such that I could no longer progress. Sadly to say I don't believe I will be able to risk losing another four hours or more to a bug. It is for this reason alone that I cannot reccomend this game is it currently exists. I would be more fogiving if this was early access or beta or something, but this is a shipped product and it is not at all ready.

It's truly a shame. Two Brothers is clearly lovingly created by a team with a great vision. Unfortunately, until the nuts and bolts are not solid enough to properly present this vision. I hope a patch comes to rectify at least the most glaring and game breaking issues. You can bet that once it does I'll be back to see the potential of Two Brothers fully realized.

-As an nostalgic I think it's not worth the time really-

I played all the great game boy classics so I got this one right off the bat. Graphics and music are great nostalgic tokens. Even the story so far is decent. Sadly technically it's more of a mess. Resolution changes screw around with my desktop icons, there's the need to play as admin, game starts up multiple times on the odd occassion. Combat is plain boring and there's no level or interesting item progression system in sight. The first dungeon which took a long time to get to isn't inspired either. While it's unfair to compare it to say "Link's awakening" or "Final fantasy adventure" which is really "Seiken Densetsu" I'd expected more gameplay like the classical bombs to set or exploration or how about switching to your brother for some riddles or anything original really. But in the end it's the combat really that kills it.

Contains nice ideas (color, dying, animal for houses) but in the end not enough to keep me going - also faster text would have been good. A missed opportunity here. Anodyne made a better impression.

This monochromatic tale tells the story of an explorer/scientist brother combo dealing with death and life. Roy Guarder was out exploring forsaken lands with his wife when tragedy strikes and they are both killed. Except while his wife moved on he was stuck in some strange colorful limbo world. The story follows Roy’s attempt to come to terms with this strange new change in his life and exploring the world with his brother to collect the color pieces and uh… er… I think show them to some group of scientists to prove Roy isn’t insane? I’m not entirely sure actually why we’re out risking our necks for colors other than they’re there.

This game seems to be somebody’s love child with classic 1990′s Nintendo. The game plays a lot like a combination of Link’s Awakening and Zelda 2 with a similar over world to go around in with various locales to explore. Combat is like much of the old top-down Zelda games but with a large variety of melee weapons to chose from and an infinite supply of ‘throwing arrows’ to hurl at enemies. There’s a few pokes at Pokemon too with a “it’s hyper effective” screen popping up when you’re using a weapon enemies are weak to and even a weird not entirely sure if intentionally buggy boss fight against MissingNo.

It is certainly interesting the way the game incorporates things we generally forgive into the game’s story. For example your inventory is carried around on the back of a companion and you ‘jump’ into his backpack to access things. Also, death is but a minor inconvenience for Roy who caught in some strange after-life loop. He can’t seem to die but instead travels back and forth freely between living and dead. So when you die you’re just sent back to the strange colorful after-life world. Once there you just gather yourself up and go back into the fight. Also the game is monochromatic but it seems that the characters of the world are used to it being varying shades of mustard and olive. The introduction of colors pretty much freaks everyone out and Roy’s ranting about them has had him labeled as a loony.

In fact dieing is kinda an important thing to do and at various points during the game you must go to the strange after-life world to achieve certain things. The after-life being some strange floating platform in the sky also has a telescope which lets you look down on the planet and spot where the color shards are. It’s sadly about the only sense of direction you get as you wander around the world trying to find said shards.

And now this is where I have to start complaining about the game. The story is pretty decent, although at times it can dump some pretty wordy sequences upon you. But combat starts getting pretty dull and repetitive after a while. Most enemies provide little in terms of challenge and just become repetitive time sinks. The occasional boss fight is usually well done but are so few and far between that they don’t make up for having to slog through hoards of pretty uninspired enemies. Despite them having different sprites and varying amounts of health and damage there’s really only two enemies in the game. Those that wander around shooting projectiles and those that charge at you. Which get pretty boring after a while.

And then sadly, there are the bugs. There’s a few pretty bad ones in the game. Mark, your inventory guy, I think is not supposed to follow you into the afterlife each time you die. If you try to access your inventory while in the afterlife it screws something up as when you come back to the real world you appear off the map. The only way out is to quit the game and relaunch it. There’s also a few points where you will get stuck and nothing can break you out of it. The music track in the museum is horrendously screwed up and is just a loud high pitch screech that made me want to throw my headphones against the wall. I also have issue with the game not remembering my preference for a game-pad, having to select it in the menus each time. And really, who makes the escape button close the game instantly with no confirmation menu?

The music of the game though is pretty darn good and the graphics for what they are aren’t bad. I even dig the theme that buildings int he world are actually giant living creatures. Heck if this game was released 20 years ago the graphics would be amazing but today they are just mediocre sprites.

It is clear this is a someone’s self indulgent love fest to games from the early 90′s. While there is some fun to be had and a decent (if not a little cliche) story to be told here the game started to drag for me. I really wanted to finish the game before I wrote a review but in the end the repetitive combat and bugs in the game really started to turn me off. Having killed many a AA battery on my old grey Gameboy brick I’m as nostalgic as anyone for such things but I would only recommend Two Brothers if it were on sale. Also give it a pass if you can’t stand Gameboy quality graphics.

Final Score:
Graphics: 5/10
Game Play: 6/10
Music / Ambiance: 8/10
Story: 8/10
Value: 5/10
Overall: 6.4/10

Read more reviews of Indy games on my blog!
http://www.markofithian.com/

A lot of bugs, it some cases makes game unplayable. I finished Eagel Island, and right after getting back onto the ride, I got a black screen. I waited for some minuets and nothing happened, so I restarted the game, and it threw me back into the first town. That made the game impossible to finish, and with the dialogue being slow, makes the game hard to resart. I like the story, and the mechanics are interesting and fresh, but the bugs make it impossible to play.

There's a lot of bugs, which is sad because I like the story and the world design. The combat system is boring and usually it seems like buttom smashing is more efficient than actual strategy. I've got stuck in moving walls and I've been stuck forever in mid air because some rats were standing under me and I couldn't fall all the way down from a ledge. Some graphics layers are in wrong places. The water animations only work in places where there are splashes, otherwise it's the regular walking animation. There seems to be no other way to get back to main menu than to restart the game.

Anyway, I hope they fix all this. Other than the bugs, I really like it. Seems like they forgot to playtest it completely.

Really poor optimization around hit detection, combat, dialogue.... It's a shame because the story and world are pretty captivating. Just wish it was executed upon.

Very, very clever Zelda-like game. Tells a good story while affectionately poking fun at older games and using the pseudo-GB format to do some interesting things. Decent length so far, gameplay is pretty good (if "clunky" much like older games often would be), and the music's great. Unfortunately, it seems to have a fair number of glitches, mostly related to collision detection; just be careful and consider backing up your saves every once in a while. (The game autosaves very frequently, so don't worry about losing progress if you have to restart it.)