YMMV / Freedom Planet 2

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • During the Battlesphere arc, Neera seems a little too insistent that she is only interested in potentially recruiting Captain Kalaw. What if she actually does enjoy the events that unfold, but is trying to hide it?
  • Merga is open to a myriad of interpretations, thanks to the vague details surrounding her exact perspective and feelings, as well as the fact that each character's story mode provides different views on her.
    • Is Merga using Bakunawa squarely as a weapon to destroy Avalice and get revenge on those who wronged her, or is her true priority merely separating from the planet that is the source of so much of her pain, with Avalice's destruction being more of a side effect? Bakunawa was designed in a way that space flight wasn't possible without the destruction of a moon, and the story gives many reasons why Merga would feel unhappy with the world in its entirety, so the idea that she doesn't necessarily want to harm the people of the planet so much as she has to because of the weapon created by her people's cruel masters is not farfetched.
    • How much of Merga's desire to kill out of vengeance is genuine? Though she has several opportunities to directly kill the heroes over their continued interference, she instead focuses almost entirely on the rise of Bakunawa, only attempting to shut Lilac and company down for good when they make it clear they want to climb aboard the weapon itself. Milla's story lends the most credence to the idea that Merga doesn't actually want to kill - with Milla believing Merga is afraid of her role as a weapon, despite her insistence to the contrary.
    • Was Merga's initial failed shot at the moon really because she miscalculated and wasn't close enough to the surface, or did she hesitate in some way and essentially stall because she didn't really want to go through with it?
    • Did Merga actually intend to keep the various promises she made to her followers to ensure their loyalty? The fact that her plan would have resulted in Avalice's destruction seems to contradict her promises to help Askal reform the political system or to help Kalaw become a "real" hero, but perhaps she intended to let them stay aboard Bakunawa as she travelled the stars? Was she really going to let Aaa and Corazon (plus Carol) accompany her as she left the planet, or was she planning all along to abandon them to die?
    • Is Merga's ire against the Earth Dragons just because of their genocidal crimes against the Water Dragons, or is there more to it? In Time Capsule 14, which is Cordelia's last recorded message, she claims she managed to arrange a peace conference between the Earth and Water Dragons, with Merga in attendance to keep both sides in line. Something happened that caused everything to go pear-shaped. Cut dialogue from Merga implies that, according to her, the Earth Dragons had Cordelia assassinated to continue the war (though that didn't happen since in the true ending she's shown to be alive and well, but Merga apparently was unaware of this). This would most certainly would have caused Merga to believe her enemies had crossed the Moral Event Horizon and make her hatred towards them particularly personal.
• Breather Boss: Although being one of the most challenging bosses in the game Merga's second and penultimate forms, Blood Moon and Lilith respectively, are rather easy to deal with. Blood Moon’s attacks are all telegraphed to the player beforehand, meaning that they’re very easy to avoid. Lilith’s attacks are slow and move in rather predictable directions, making them easy to party. Given that the player can actually get extra health from some of Lilith's attacks^note There’s a low chance of her star attacks dropping life petals if you attack them with a ranged attack, this was likely intentional as the form after it is That One Boss.
• Difficulty Spike: The latter half ups the ante with stages taking upwards of ten minutes and much tougher bosses. Compounded by you only receiving two stocks per stage (unless you get more via gathering crystals), and losing them necessitates a restart (unless you pay a hefty crystal fee).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Carol's older sister Corazon generated the most attention even before the game released. With nothing to go off of but a website description and a sprite, fans latched on to her badass design, Cool Plane, and status as an Evil Counterpart to Carol.
  • Maria Notte has generated a lot of fanart. A lot of people like her character design and think she looks cute with her bat wings and like the idea of a reporter type in the setting.
• Even Better Sequel: With higher production values, this game is more polished than the already-acclaimed first Freedom Planet. It not only features superior visuals and grander levels, but also expands upon the best qualities of its predecessor such as the gameplay and combat, while improving on the writing and story. The quality-of-life features especially alleviate any difficulty spikes.
• Evil Is Cool: Merga. While she may lack the Complete Monster qualities and intimidating presence of Lord Brevon, she makes up for it by being a more rounded character with motivations beyond simple world conquest, as well as being just as much of a No-Nonsense Nemesis who repeatedly outplans the heroes simply by keeping her schemes simple and effective. It helps that every battle against her is a pure thrill-ride of challenge.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The Magister's opinion on his world's history changed after he discovered a single water dragon book on flowers and horticulture which described the events that led to the death of her people, whereas other historical texts had earth dragon authors. The Time Capsules that Pangu plays back are recorded from Cordelia's perspective, and she mentions that Merga had an interest in flowers and horticulture. What are the odds that the book in question was penned by Merga herself, before she descended into genocide-induced misanthropic madness? That leaves the question of how the book itself survived - either Merga uses a fabricated pen name to elude suspicion, or Cordelia had the book preserved before she disappeared.
  • It's clear that The Power of Friendship was a big motive for Milla to break free from the resonance link, and that's not something to deny. However, it may not be the only motivation. It's also clear that she loves parents she hasn't seen in years, given she once tried to make a potion to help her find them. So with those two established, what was the big push where she failed against Brevon in the past? It's The Power of Hate: whereas Brevon simply subdued her, mutated her and was done with her afterwards, Serpentine continued to push the promise that he would reunite Milla with her parents - a promise that was made on bad faith given that, even if she were to recognize them after all this time, they wouldn't recognize her and would be hostile until her mind was gone. "You'll be a mindless weapon, just like mommy and daddy!" was the final push she needed to begin fighting back in earnest, and with her love of friend and family as a conduit to safely channel all that hatred, there was no fear of moral degeneration afterwards. Serpentine issued a command to Milla to kill her friends, with no further modifiers specifying Lilac, Carol and Neera as the intended targets. Milla was under the influence of her War Dog programming, which recognized servants of Lord Brevon as "friends". The nearest available targets under those parameters were Syntax, then Serpentine. Attacking Syntax disrupted the resonance link and freed Milla. Attacking Serpentine was gratuitous catharsis.
  • Once again, Serpentine is That One Boss for everyone except Milla, who continues to hard-counter him in every boss fight. Even when he's using his Wolf and Titan Armors, Milla is still able to hit him hard from any direction while staying mobile enough to avoid attacks her shield can't deflect. Then Serpentine reveals that Milla is a Tyke Bomb from Lord Brevon's home planet, bred as a weapon to aid him in conquering other worlds. What would she be fighting in such a role? Soldiers counterpart to Serpentine in the defense forces protecting those worlds. So of course she'd be the best suited to fight Serpentine and his war machines.
• Fridge Horror:
  • The fact that almost all of the time capsules are found as rewards for Battlesphere challenges. Considering the difficulty the Magister has in finding a water dragon's perspective on the genocide of their race, it's very possible that there was an erasure of water dragon culture so thorough that nobody could make the connection between what look like simple trophies and the capsule in the Parusa museum.
  • Bakunawa is a spaceship that gains its power from destroying moons and harvesting their energy. The horror kicks in when you realize that it was the earth dragons who ordered the water dragons to build this weapon, and it was stated that they desperately tried to find a way back home. Considering that the game reveals that they were actually Abusive Precursors who painted themselves as an innocent party after the war, this leaves the implication that Merga using it to destroy the moon to leave the stars was not just her twisting the earth dragons' weapon to her own designs: it was always intended to destroy the moon and reduce Avalice to a lifeless husk, the difference being that the earth dragons would've been the ones to do so, seeking to doom the water dragons and other inhabitants of the planet once they outlive their usefulness.
  • The heroines attempted to utilize Syntax as a decoy for Merga to use so she wouldn't be able to awaken Bakunawa. In the Golden Ending, Syntax fuses with the entire ship thanks to Code Black, and proceeds to attempt to harvest the moon's energy. What would have happened if Merga was successfully tricked with Syntax? Pangu was teleported away after the Merga fight in the Golden Ending, so it's likely that Syntax can pilot the ship without Pangu on board... except nobody would be able to control it short of Brevon, in case you thought Bakunawa was nasty enough on its own. Furthermore, her "Code Black" virus is a weapon that lets her take over enemy machinery. During her fight as Bakunawa Fusion, she actually responds to pausing the game with "You can't hide here." Code Black 2.0 didn't just hijack the Bakunawa. It's giving her access to your computer, because you are her enemy.
  • Going back to Brevon for a bit, the revelations about Milla in this game have retroactively made Torque's mission that much harder. Given how he was expected to play back in the original Freedom Planet, Torque relies a lot upon long-ranged firepower, which could easily be reflected by Milla's shield - keep in mind this may very well be the reason Brevon had "war dogs" like her bred in the first place. And he is guaranteed to have at least two such bodyguards very close at hand. Where did Serpentine say Milla's parents were? "Nice and comfy in Brevon's command center"?
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Shield Potion boosts the number of shield charges you gain whenever you pick up a shield on top of the two you always start with. At 5 stacks of the potion, one shield grants you 7 charges, and they max out at 12. Since shield charges stack up to the 12 charge cap whenever you pick up a new one, and all but a handful of Boss-Only Levels have at least 2 shields to pick up throughout, this means even a modestly skilled player can make their way through many levels without ever technically taking damage, making getting the highest rank in the game markedly easier than it was probably intended to be. There's even room to throw in a damage boost or Life Drain potion or two and still have enough shield charges to muscle through most of the game.
    • Even better? Even if you have 5 Shield Potion boosts equipped, so long as you equip the One Hit KO Brave Stone and another Brave Stone that gives you a bonus upon completion of a level, you can still get a Rainbow S-Rank. While this doesn't work on the Boss-Only Levels (bar Snowfields, the first one, and only after the first phase), this will work on every other level. Yes, this includes Weapon's Core (after an update granted it a single Metal Shield).
  • Stacked with, say, the healing strike potion or a shield charm as a buffer for mistakes, and proper usage of the guard move, the oscillator can potentially become this. If you can deal with an empty health bar every 30 seconds (The timer keeps going if your player is downed but hasn’t made a revive prompt yet), you’ll get your health meter topped off every 60. In other words, clock strikes ##:30:##, empty health, clock strikes ##:00:##, full health. Key word Potentially.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • With the addition of a parry-and-dodge skill to this sequel come a couple of enemy types whose attacks will track the player's position regardless of their speed to force them to parry or use an invincible ability like Lilac's Dragon Boost.
  • Temporary platforms aren't enemies in themselves but they'll trap the player character upon overlapping them rather than forcing them on top, presumably to avoid collision glitches. This can lead to amusingly annoying situations as players try to use movement abilities to rush past them.
• Good Bad Bugs: In release 1.01 of the Sample version, if the Special and Attack buttons were pressed at just the right frames while jumping, Milla could stack a limitless supply of Phantom Blocks. This is about as hilarious as it sounds, as her Super Shield Burst let her gain ridiculous amounts of height. See it here. Sadly, this was patched out immediately, and replaced with an Easter Egg that visually does the same thing, but now just lets her shoot a projectile and fire a single charged shot at the same time.
• I Knew It!: Several fans guessed with the promo shot of the title screen that the four colored icons represented Lilac, Carol, and Milla, as well as a fourth, unnamed character that would be revealed in a trailer. The fact that a dev said they would be "showcasing trailers of the playable heroines" had many suspect Neera Li would be the final character, a month before it was confirmed.
• Les Yay: Lilac and Carol, arguably even more so than the first game!
  • After beating the Final Boss, Lilac gives a "No More Holding Back" Speech to Merga, mentioning they are "The people we help, the friends we make, the love we share and the world we leave behind.", faded silhouettes of the main characters appearing in the background as she speaks... and Carol just so happens to be the one popping up during the "Love" part.
  • And of course, in Carol and Lilac's endings, they give themselves a rather romantic-looking hug,◊ loving stare and all.
• Magnificent Bastard: Corazon “Cory” Tea, Carol’s older sister, is a thrill-seeking pirate working for Merga in her plan to awaken Bakunawa and destroy the moon. A skilled plunderer who regularly uses her hundreds of drones to distract people and steal countless items, Cory often uses deception to escape from her opponents. With a genuine love for her sister, Cory hopes Merga leaves her alive for when Avalice is eventually in ruin, and even attempts to sacrifice herself to save her upon Merga’s betrayal.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Despite being commonly seen as a general improvement over the original game's narrative (especially thanks to the better voice acting and less controversial tonal shifts), it's not uncommon to once again see players praising the high-speed action gameplay while finding its story to be lukewarm at best.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The girls' characterization is in no need of repairs, but their gameplay got some much-needed tuning.
  • In the first Freedom Planet, Carol was commonly seen as less fun to play than Lilac as her movements were on the stiff side, her special wasn't seen to do anything particularly unique, and her lack of mobility gave her a bit of a learning curve. In this game, she can now attack while running which smooths her gameplay flow immensely, her motorcycle is both more easily accessible and isn't destroyed until Carol dies herself, and her jump disk lets her aim and leap in any direction, letting her easily scale walls faster and do a bit of gliding. It's such an improvement the loss of the Wild Kick is almost unnoticeable.
  • Those who weren't fans of Milla's Difficult, but Awesome gameplay style from the first game will be more satisfied with the addition of both melee and ranged attacks, the significantly reduced charge-up time for her Phantom Cubes, and a small health boost on top of everything she had from the first game.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Battlesphere, full stop. While its modes are fixed and some can get quite tricky, a player can spend quite a bit of time on the 18 challenges, 38 boss rematches Including all 6 phases of Merga faced individually, the Secret Boss Bakunawa Fusion, and 2 Exclusive bosses to boot, as well as an Angry Birds-type mini game available, with another arcade game available in the Lobby. It’s pretty telling that when Carol runs off to participate in the story, Neera is naturally irritated, but quickly joins in the contest along with the others.
• Tainted by the Preview: The Galaxy Trail Mix 2019 video got a mostly positive reception, but there were some people, unhappy with the cutscenes and/or the story of the first game, who felt that the inclusion of hubs, NPCs to talk to, and an overall greater emphasis on story have taken this game in the wrong direction, comparing it to the Adventure era of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.^note The era consists of Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic and the Secret Rings, and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
• That One Boss: Just like the first game, this game has its own share of tricky battles:
  • The fight against Serpentine in the Snowfields can end up being this. While the first phase might give you a little trouble, it's the second phase where the difficulty of the fight skyrockets. He begins piloting a Mini-Mecha with many powerful, tricky-to-dodge attacks. The fight also transitions to a new area that gives you a lot less breathing room. In addition, he has a Last Ditch Move, which can easily catch a player off-guard. On top of everything else, you are unable to go back to any towns until you win the fight because the path to Shuigang Palace, and by extension the rest of the world map, is unavailable; an update added a side area with Chloe camping out and offering supplies explicitly to address this issue. One of the few mitigating factors is that, depending on your character, you might be able to go above the new arena in phase two and collect some health pickups scattered throughout the pit you fell down during the transition.
  • Hundred Drillion in Magma Starscape. The main gimmick of the level (the heat meter) is hardly a factor: but the rest of what the boss can do is. For starters, the boss loves to bombard the arena with the red drills from earlier in the level, and despite their warning, they come out rapidly and they fill up a lot of the screen. ^note  And the nerfed version, the one in current versions, has them come out after 1.5 seconds: the original version of the battle had them come out after 0.5! Hundred Drillion also has a small hitbox that only has a small time to be hit before he drills into the wall. Combine this with the lava pit in the middle of the arena that hampers your movement even more, and you have a boss that'll hide away while his drills shred your health to zero, regardless of which character you fight. The Fire Orb that's on a platform just before the fight only slightly mitigates things, what with it rendering the lava and heat meter a moot point and giving you two extra hit points at the least. Oh, and the fun part? After beating him, the level still isn't over! Now you have to escape the volcano and hit the card to properly finish the level. While it isn't the most difficult thing (especially with Life Petals scattered about as you climb up), nerves might get the best of some players.
  • Askal in Diamond Point is a tough boss just the stage after. He isn't particularly difficult because of a cheap gimmick; he's just generally fast and aggressive, with a heavy load of HP at 14 Life Petals. And his other phases up the ante, with giant crystals forming out of the ground he can teleport to and shout crystals from, making him more unpredictable, and being able to summon loads of rocks for a tough to dodge rapid-fire attack. That's saying nothing about how his Hundred-Hook Punch, seen throughout the fight, can shred your health down if you're caught inside of it. While you can fight an easier version of him early on in the Training Grounds as practice, guess what? That area's locked out when you're in Parusa. And guess what boss you have to fight to progress the Parusa story and reopen the Training Grounds?
• That One Level: Inversion Dynamo may be a late-game level, but hoo boy is it annoying. Already long enough (at a par time of 8 minutes) and filled with tough spikes you need to dodge, it also has an intense barrage of enemies. And not easy ones, either; powered up by Syntax's Code Black, you'll get to see such pleasant sights as Turretuses caking the floor in bombs, Flash Mouths shooting a hard to dodge spiral pattern of shots, Shade Troopers, and even Shell Growths chasing you and pelting you with missiles. To make things worse, the level's main gimmick focuses on portals, which are sometimes placed in ways that make the level confusing to navigate. The level caps things off with an on-foot rematch against the Titan Armor, who, while not the toughest boss, is still fairly tanky and has some hard-hitting attacks. Patches have come out since launch that have lessened the level's difficulty, primarily nerfing the amount of enemies in the level, but it still stands as one of the toughest in the game.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • You can skip the cutscenes, but unlike in the previous game, Classic Mode has to be unlocked by either beating the game first or entering a code on the title screen. This choice is seen as a negative for those who do not care for the story.
  • The auto-advancing text. Unlike the first game, the voiced dialogue plays out automatically without any input. While the first game had its fair share of complaints that the pacing could be slow because of it, many players felt it allowed jokes and banter to play out at a better pace. Much of the sequel's humor has a harder time to land when cutscenes can be over within seconds.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: All of Team Merga fall under this even if they're a group of antivillains. Askal wants half breeds to get more recognition, Aaa wants a friend that isn't a robot, Kalaw desired to be a real hero and Corazon wants to save her sister from Avalice 's destruction. The issue is that they are willing to cross the line and cause death and destruction in order to do so, such as willingly let an active volcano kill the residents of Adventure Square just to raise Bakunawa, or kidnap Mayor Zao and threaten to kill him to get what they want, or willingly go with Merga onto Bakunawa, enabling her destruction of Avalice; some fans think this is enough to have them executed instead of their community service sentence. Even then, Merga, Corazon and Askal stand out.
  • Within the frame of the story, Merga is presented as a terrorist with sympathetic motives as to why she commits her atrocities, but even with the reveal that the water dragons were wiped out, Merga's actions may still come off as hard to accept for some. She calls earth dragons "schemers and liars" while lying to her sympathizers and scheming precise plans to destroy Avalice, and condemns earth dragon kind for their genocide of the water dragons while plotting to destroy all of Avalice, proving herself to be just as monstrous as the slavers who killed her people. While she says that the people of Shang Tu will be spared if they allow her plans to continue, she later shows no qualms over burning another town alive through the beacons activating the nearby volcano, with the full knowledge of her plan to power Bakunawa and flood Avalice potentially causing this intended "fair moment" to instead come off to audiences as Cruel Mercy. Merga displays a deeply homicidal and somewhat sadistic personality, saying to the player character that "their suffering will be a masterpiece!" in the final battle, as well as cruelly mocking Carol that she and Corazon are together after knocking Corazon unconscious in an attempt to attack Carol. Merga also holds a grudge against the Magister for his role in covering up the Water Dragon Genocide and openly yearns for his death, while acknowledging that he was merely a child when the event occurred. However, Merga's other actions, such as entering an intimate platonic relationship with the earth dragon Cordelia, working with the half-earth dragon Askal, attempting to assuage a water dragon child, inviting Lilac for a one-on-one dialogue about the water dragons as a prelude to recruiting her, allowing Carol one chance to leave and save Corazon after the latter takes a hit for the former, her breakdown when she hears Cordelia's broken recording, damaging the Bakunawa Fusion out of guilt over her actions, and saving Lilac after she gets concussed by a broken Syntax suggest she may have been driven insane by her imprisonment, adding an additional layer to her tragedy.
  • Corazon. Her motive for teaming up with Merga is that she wants to protect herself and Carol, her sister. Despite saying that she loves Carol and is doing this for her, however, she has zero qualms with attacking Carol and her friends, gassing her and knocking her out despite all the trouble Carol went through to find her, stranding her in the middle of the ocean, and leaving her with her least favorite food, raisins.
  • Askal's motive for joining Merga is because he's faced with racism in the past, and Merga promised him that she will change all that. However, not only is Askal a hypocritical jackass who treats Team Lilac like crap, he seen taking somewhat sadistic pleasure in taking them out at Diamond Point. Plus the racism he presumably suffers through is only seen like twice by NPCs, plus Askal has shown to be immensely powerful, so of course the Battlesphere wouldn't want someone so overpowered to compete against normal civilians. It's assumed that Askal knew the volcano was erupting and going to kill everyone at Adventure Square, yet never says anything about it and presumably doesn't care. And while he does turn ship at the end of the story, his demeanor and motives make him very hard to like, let alone sympathize with.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: While the game itself is not more violent than the predecessor, the console ports received a T rating by the ESRB for its “suggestive themes”, with reason up in the air.
• The Woobie: Milla, Milla, Milla. Throughout the game - especially in her story - she has to bear the agony of everything she went through at Brevon's hands in addition to everything Serpentine heaps on top of that, starting with her trip to Shuigang. It doesn't help that Serpentine levies the Awful Truth like a sword of Damocles over her whenever he has the opportunity. She does graduate to an Iron Woobie after she blasts Serpentine's face in, but holy hell...

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