Super Bomberman R2

Considering that it was released six years after its direct predecessor on more powerful hardware, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to hope Super Bomberman R 2 is a big step forward for the series. Super Bomberman R 2 is… not that. Instead, it’s more akin to Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 or a yearly sports title, making minimal changes and charging a semi-premium price that all but the most dedicated of fans will scoff at. The majority of what’s present in this game is taken from the original Super Bomberman R and R Online, which is a boon when it comes to preserving R Online in particular, but it comes with caveat: most, but not all of the content from R and R Online is present here with little new to compensate, so you’re potentially paying $50 to play a lesser version of a delisted game that was previously free to play. R 2 isn’t devoid of perks, what with the introduction of Castle mode and a new story, but the package as a whole feels disappointingly slim and unambitious.

Super Bomberman R 2 picks up after Buggler’s defeat and the Bombers are quickly presented with a new mystery to solve. A distress signal brings them to the mysterious Planet Ellon, home to critters of the same name that have the ability to power special technology. Aside from the occasional cutscene, the plot is very much back-heavy this time around, which is actually to the game’s benefit. Though the characters haven’t changed a bit, the game doesn’t try as hard to force humorand everyone tends to stay on track and contribute to the situation at hand. There’s even a twist towards the end that’s rather dark in contrast to the rest of the R series, making for an actual surprise. Having an entirely new villain in the form of Fusell (and the creatures called Lugion he commands) is also much appreciated since his motivations are different and more personal compared to Buggler’s simplistic “evil for the sake of evil” approach. Working towards 100% completion in the story mode earns you secret reports that provide additional lore and context for Fusell’s actions and Planet Ellon as a whole, making the story more foundationally solid compared to the original’s carefree approach to storytelling.

The plot of R 2‘s campaign is an improvement, but the gameplay is a different story. Instead of linear levels, you’re given three planets made up of 15 different sections to explore. The ultimate goal is to destroy each of the Lugion bases and face off with the planet’s boss, but in order to find those, you’ll need to collect Ellon along the way. The Ellon are required to open gates blocking your path, but they’re also used to fuel other devices like teleporters leading back to your camp and entrances to secret puzzles, which are miniature challenges that require you to solve a riddle with minimal guidance. Ellon follow behind you like eggs in Super Bomberman 4, however, which means that they can get blown up if you’re careless. You don’t actually lose Ellon killed in this way since a machine at your camp lets you spawn as many as you need to open locks, but sloppy play is fittingly rewarded with inconvenience, encouraging you to take your chaperone duties seriously. Ellon come in multiple flavors and there are 100 to collect per world, but their elements only serve as differently-colored keys to the same locks. Collecting Ellon and solving puzzles are the story’s most compelling mechanical elements, but much of the game’s runtime is instead squandered on navigating its overly large and dull environments.

White starts at the bare minimum power level like usual, but this time around, he can only become stronger by earning enough experience to level up. Each level up grants you higher stats and the usual bomb manipulation abilities, but earning experience involves tediously grinding through soft blocks to find experience-granting items. Each area on each planet tends to be far bigger than it needs to be with lots of empty space and enemies that are rarely any trouble, so the pace of the game is dreadfully slow more often than not. Your level is reset to 1 at the beginning of each world, so for a large portion of your time in each world, you have to blow up every soft block in sight just to get back to where you were. Between the lack of surprises and the bizarre absence of things that would make this process less tedious like Louie and the pierce bombs, the whole system feels designed to pad out the story mode as much as possible in a way that’s oddly reminiscent of RoboWarrior‘s excessive use of soft blocks. The idea of focusing on exploration is one that has worked for the series before in games like Bomberman Quest and Bomberman Generation, but R 2 lacks all of the surprises and incentives that made those takes on the idea so successful.

The multiplayer addition to Super Bomberman R 2 is Castle mode, which pits a single defender against up to 16 attackers. The defender’s job is to protect five treasure chests for three minutes and the attackers need to find the chest keys and open said chests. To help even the odds, the defender gets to customize the map to their liking as well as choose from three different weapons (a laser cannon, a sword, and a barrier that prevents enemies from passing through) to use alongside their bombs. The customization options on offer allow for a lot of creative variety, including cannons that shoot bombs, electric fences to block intruders, platforms that carry players around and waste their time, and walls in all sorts of shapes. Creating castles is fun and the story gives you plenty of opportunities to test them out through mandatory Lugion invasions to repel, but these become repetitive fast due to each match per world being identical and enemy AI that’s terrible at navigating anything remotely complex. If you’re particularly good at creating nightmarish mazes, it’s possible to put the controller down and still win!

In contrast to the calculated setup for the defender, the attacking team gets to revel in pure chaos, for better or worse. Attackers can hypothetically work together to keep the defender busy while some players grab keys, but the game frames it as such that the only “real winners” are the people who actually open the chests. In ranked play, you earn the full experience reward and can leave the match as soon as you open a chest, so you’re incentivized to favor yourself over the team through dirty strategies like intentionally harming allies to steal their keys. The story mode plays into this as well; when attacking the Lugion bases, you’re only considered to be victorious if White gets the treasure before any of his siblings! This idea of building the foundation of the attacking team atop a fragile alliance is really interesting, but falls flat due to the balance heavily favoring the defender. Created maps can be brought online to ranked battles and it’s possible to download other players’ maps for use as well. You’re required to test your map before you can upload it, but said test doesn’t use the same 3-minute conditions as the real thing. Therefore, it’s possible to trick the system by creating maps that are technically beatable, but are so exhausting and unreasonable that winning in three minutes with a combination of backstabbing human teammates and multiple useless AI teammates feels nigh impossible.

The rest of the multiplayer options are taken from the previous two R games, with standard battle, Grand Prix, and Battle 64 making a return. As of this writing, Grand Prix only has Crystals and Basic Battle options, Battle 64 is missing the Orion Town map, and Standard Battle doesn’t have all of the maps from R 1. The characters added to R Online are all available here, but many characters from R 1 are absent, including Reiko, AyanoKatagiri, Xavier Woods, Ebisumaru, the Option Bombers, and all of the console exclusive characters. The structure of the online modes at launch made playing what you wanted an absolute chore. A rotation of Castle mode plus one other mode chosen at random per hour was enforced when playing ranked online, but this was quickly changed to one mode per hour after backlash. When Standard Battle was chosen for ranked, it also chose a specific ruleset and map for the entire hour, so if a mode like 1v1 battles was picked and you didn’t want that, you were stuck unless you returned later. Castle mode is supposed to prioritize attacker or defender for you based on your preference, but this option was broken and not reliable at launch. As of October 13^th, 2023, the game was once again updated to allow players to pick their desired modes online, though with the playerbase reduced from launch, getting AI opponents remains very likely.

Though there’s still hope for continued updates to improve the experience, Super Bomberman R 2 doesn’t instill much confidence in the future of the franchise. The new story mode is at least trying interesting things, but it struggles greatly with maintaining an engaging pace. The multiplayer modes are technically as fun as ever, but their initial issues and minimal features are already resulting in a reduced playerbase. Castle is a creative mode with loads of promise that works great with as many humans as possible, but unless its balance issues are fixed and new gadgets are added to keep it interesting, players will have to rely upon an honor system to make it fun for both parties. Bomberman as a franchise has always been iterative more often than not, but in an age where Hudson’s little robot doesn’t have the pull he used to, Konami will have to set their sights higher if they intend to keep the franchise around.

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