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115 Reviews:
ElCochran90
**Dedicated to Denferok, CosmicSense, CakeSauc3, BBF and Thenadertwo.**
I know revolution when I see it.
I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 2 is the fangame equivalent of the relationship that exists between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, which is Sam Raimi’s masterpiece: the latter functions simultaneously as a sequel and as a retelling of the events of the first feature. It reinvents the characters and stylizes the universe of the previous film to unleash the definitive edition of what Raimi, by 1987, decided what should be the auteuristic voice of the Evil Dead Trilogy. Army of Darkness didn’t change a thing of Evil Dead II, meaning that the director had already established his personal celluloid trademark and put a signature on it as his most representative.
Back when I played the Best Guy series and Timemachine 1, I noticed a drastically different meme culture and sense of humor than the one adopted by America and Europe, and explaining the geography behind this is beyond obvious and unnecessary. However, there was an implementation of gimmicks and humor in South Korea that differed greatly from the most ambitious trap/adventure games of the early 2010s, such as the fantastic Rukimin, the rustic creations by Carnival or the highly appealing Galaxy: South Korea is more explosive (literally, like, Michael Bay would be proud), shaky screens, cognitive dissonance, flashy screens, an abundance of gay jokes, and a pervasive freneticism. Best Guy 1 is a disastrous game, but analyze the bosses and, except for the first old man, which is beyond boring and frustrating, the rest are emblematic and an absolute blast. The final boss, Gustav, is one of the most badass and replayable final bosses I have seen, stupid meme instances throughout and whatnot. Just like with I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 1, the game was not made by the user referenced; marhite initiated the idea, and the Best Guy series was continued by Gustav himself. Part II, which is my personal favorite even if not the most visually ambitious, has tremendous replay value despite the self-awareness that Gustav displays throughout regarding that his platforming is woeful.
Now consider Influka. Timemachine 1 was a prototype for creating different visuals and time eras in an insanely good and fun adventure that offers many difficulty possibilities and, while recreating Boshy, pays tribute to both Boshy and IWBTG while remaining aesthetically authentic and self-sustaining. This is where The Game Terminators come in: a full-throttle, balls-to-the-wall display of Korean meme galore at a frenetically high speed with screams, gun blasts, female obesity, Ao Oni (as in Best Guy), first-person shooters, maniacal laughter, and some indie references (The Binding of Isaac, et al). The last boss of the game is one of my favorite fangame bosses of all times (along with Nue Houjuu in Breaking Out and Solgryn in Boshy), and the vocaloid choice is one of the best available. Influka self-represents as a Phoenix Wright version of Megurine Luka and is animated! A png sprite moving?? Insane. She had the capacity, just like Solgryn, of summoning the attacks of the previous enemies by physically calling them. Timemachine 2 implemented a much more mature of platforming, adventure and cohesion, and a beautiful thing came out of it, albeit with a questionable difficulty peak with the final boss.
Combine both talents and something of the quality of Justice Guy comes out: a hardcore, multi-faceted and varied adventure that combines the best of both worlds.
These arguments are being made not only to defend my opinion that Influka was one of the best fangame makers that actually had a learning curve, but that Influka works amazingly with other creators and testers. K2 is the proof of this.
Now construct a medley with these talents and passion. K2 is a timeline event for all communities, for the fangame world and, yes, for the entire world of videogames. Twitch was already a thing, Carnival was pretty much famous not only in Japan and Korea for legendary challenges such as Crimson and Destination, people had passed their test of manhood beating Boshy at least in Hard-On Mode, and communities were more united. We would now start talking about A community, not many. Eastern and Western players and makers interacted in a more significant basis and exchanged best practices more often.
This remake starts where K1 stopped (just like Evil Dead II) and reinvents the whole concept with a sequel fashion. The soundtrack has a gigantic passion for referencing original videogames, especially the Sonic and Kirby series, something that I thank because both characters’ game series get too overshadowed by even greater franchises; however, there is a special appreciation towards Kirby in the fangame culture. The title screen purposefully opens with Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 for the PS3 to seal it as an Asian fangame, emphasizing the perhaps-not-a-happy-accident of K1 concerning Kamilia’s eyes being Pink and Purple each, and we kick off with the meme of Chokochoko at the speed and rhythm of Sonic Colors. From there, exceptional pieces from Sonic Generations, Steins;Gate, EZ2DJ, Kirby (Kirby 64 and Kirby’s Return to Dreamland) and others hit your speakers and headphones hard with authentic awesomeness. Most importantly, the Dodonpachi series begins to have a protagonistic presence in the series, being Dai-Ou-Jou the case here. I do have complaints for Stage 5 putting a stressful song for the entirety of the stage, but it works greatly for doruppi’s amusing 5-star difficulty screen of Seven Trials, which was scoreless to begin with. SaiDaiOuJou and Maximum would become the spinal cord of K3’s soundtrack.
The mechanic of the soundtrack works stupendously because it has the same mentality of the playthrough logic. Each stage has a song that highly correlates with the difficulty of the stage. The majority of the bosses, with two exceptions (the first melee boss and The Guy, and the first one not really counting precisely because of being a melee boss) feature the song that played in the original fangame that they starred in. The Guy, for correlation, cohesion and entertainment purposes, places the Egg Emperor theme from Sonic Generations and works stupendously, especially since the fight is more concerned with remaking Phase 1 of The Guy (Phase 2... that will come in proper time, not in this game, also with a Sonic remix). However, once you step into Stage 6, you will find out that each new screen has a different song; they are all bangers and have a different tone according to the fangame portrayed. You know you’re in a special stage, probably the last one, where each screen is preparing you for the final challenge, as you witness giants like Catastrophe, Popularity’s Extra Stage, Crimson, Destination and LoveTrap suggesting wicked things to come, especially if you understood the logic of the last screen of each stage being a foreshadowing of the boss you would encounter at the end of it.
The difficulty curve is the closest to flawless I have ever seen in a fangame. I have no complaints with Geezer as a boss from a concept standpoint; the problem relies in the lack of a checkpoint like Kamilia 1 implemented, because there was an awareness that, up to that point, the whole first phase was redundancy if replayed. It is easy; it’s an introductory phase. Place a save after the Keese appear, just before the extra avoidance of Device, and you have a different experience. Actually, if I could swap the lack of an intermediate save, it would be Geezer for Boshy, just for the sake of emulating the original final fight of Boshy in Stage 5: 3 phases, no continues Revive one of the first big achievements you ever had in your fangame trajectory. Scratch the Geezer mistake, and you have the perfect difficulty curve.
A pivotal point of discussion for a medley are the game choices and, simultaneously, the screen choices per game. This game emulates much better the exercise that K1 did: not only the game gets progressively more difficult at perceivable levels without any drastic peaks, except for Geezer and the final boss, but the games in question also had that difficulty in question. Stage 1 games are beginner-friendly games, with the arguable exception of I Wanna Be the Fangame! (and it is arguable because it is one of the founding classics), and Stage 6 games are fangames for veterans or experts. Although it does have a bias towards Asian fangames as well (main protagonists with more than one of their fangames featured are Carnival, Mizudori, Doruppi, P, Surumeika, Teto Rin, to mention some), but it also gives proper credit to Kayin, Thenewgeezer, tijit and Solgryn for the influence they imprinted permanently on fangame players with a single fangame by 2012. Beyond the first melee boss, all bosses are iconic and have been immortalized by now: The Guy, Influka, Geezer, Solgryn, The Four Crimson Gods, Destination and Big Kid. Others, such as Nue Houjuu and Gravity Man, were chosen for their uniqueness, and I must admit they are good bosses, with an emphasis on Nue who is an absolutely freaking fantastic miracle of a boss in the original Breaking Out.
What is more relevant is the eternal discussion among medley players and critics: “they could have chosen a much better screen and instead they chose one of the worst ones”. At many cases, this rings true, such as Locus, Unknown, Terminal, Rukimin, Fangame!, Competitor, Timemachine and others. The exact opposite applies to ones like The Guy, Boshy (when shit gets real, it gets real), Best Guy (it’s the least terrible!), Crimson, Destination, Graduate from CT, Yellow Star, Experience, Skyclad, Rainbow Miku, Symmetry, Breaking Out, etc. Then you have the middle spectrum, like pretty much the rest, and for GB, there was literally no other choice as that screen was already a meme and it took 9 years for the Western community to respond to it with an immense collab. The true question, in my opinion, is whether choosing the most innovative or “best” screens, “best” being subjective in the eyes of the beholder, would bring the same pacing and playthrough consistency for a medley, or they just function better in the context of the original fangames. I think the point of a medley is dual: to celebrate the uniqueness of the fangames portrayed, and make it in a way that makes sense in the overall genre of the medley (needle, avoidance, adventure, etc.). K2 is an adventure medley. So, Tribute might me annoying as hell, and Yassan might scare curious beginner players that don’t even know who The Kid is, but the overall choices constitute a consistent and fantastic experience.
The game changer for the Kamilia series was a concept that many fangames did before. Take Device as a random example: you have the main game, secrets scattered all around, extra (which is unlocked by gathering said secrets), a buffed boss rush and a true final boss/avoidance. Influka applies the same concept by Stage 6, but borrows legendary bosses; the implementation is fascinating and mad good, which I speculate was based on Popularity’s extra stage, and ergo ended up taking the form and feel of Rockman 5:
-Instead of having Big Kid as a Stage 6 boss immediately due to LoveTrap being the 10th screen of the stage, you face four bosses of games that were also featured in that stage
-The bosses are gigantically nerfed for correct continuity and progress purposes: Destination has much less HP and only phase per color, at the expense of the attacks being faster; Crimson has less HP at the insignificant expense of figuring out when Blue triggers the water blocks; Nue Houjuu has much less attacks at the expense of having the original orbs pattern changed and you only having 1HP (bothersome, unfortunately); and Gravity Man has only the first of Popularity’s original true final boss and you have bigger bullets, at the expense of both of you moving much faster and Gravity Man shooting quicker after each gravity shifting. The game made the incredibly wise decision of nerfing all bosses and still making them enjoyable in the sense of reviving those epic fights you faced before, with the plus of having a much faster progression granted that you’re not fighting the original bosses at all. If that was the case of the game, we would have quite a questionable roadblock for everyone.
-You can choose the order of the bosses and autosave is implemented immediately after you beat a boss in case of any accident you or an external source or event might cause
-As in the Mega Man series, you unlock the true boss of the stage after beating all Kamilia’s minions. LoveTrap here is the funny response to Brute of a Man in K1; however, you do fight the boss in here. There is a catch: the game is reasonable enough to acknowledge that beating Big Kid was a feat that could probably take months, resulting in probably the most nerfed non-troll boss of all times. The pattern of killer and water bullets is set instead of being random, which allows you to fully plan your strategies ahead.
What mines the entertainment of players during the Boss Rush is the sense of progression compared to the previous, more known bosses and the smooth increasing difficulty of the platforming. Also, if it’s the first time you face these bosses, that’s entirely up to you, but for me, it was an incredibly enjoyable time while I reminisced about the many instances of my life where I beat the true, original versions of these tough bastards.
The Big Kid scene also became a moment in the annals of fangame history. Redone to death many times in both serious and parody forms, the chase challenge is a big consistency save against the clock. There are two problems with this section that make it shy away from perfection: the scrolling screen depends on the Big Kid, not your movement, and there are traps scattered around that do not belong in a chase / consistency save. Nevertheless, after what seems to be a nod to the ending of World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. for the NES (getting through two choke needle sections instead of grabbing a victory flag), one of your fangame ancient dreams comes true: you do not only beat Big Kid: you watch him explode like everytime you die. Boy, does this game reward you for effort.
Enter M-Stage, the original stage of the game (although the chase is also technically original) at the beat of Tekken 6. It is time to pass the ultimate skill/gimmick/trap test of the game where wonders like two double sphincters in a row, upward planes, jump refreshers with gravity shifting, speed change gimmicks, corners of many kinds and 9-jumps await you before your final definitive trial. There is no way you don’t get pumped up with the aid of Tekken 6, and the extremely efficient and sensical saves placement makes the ride consistently enjoyable.
Before and during your encounter with Kamilia, there are many Easter Eggs that should be noted, including one that, much to my shock, no one in IWC had noticed:
-The hall with the big save on it displays a plethora of the tilesets belonging to the fangames featured in the medley
-When you shoot the save that transports you to her otherworldly realm, four words appear in a circle around you: EMMANUEL (“God is with us”), TETRAGRAMMATON (“consisting of four letters”, which is associated with the Hebrew word יהוה, which is YHWH “I am who I am” [Exodus 3:14]), JEHOVA (the most famous vocalization of the TETRAGRAMMATON), and an unclear one, which seems to read JEIAH, a word that, as a Christian, I don’t know. My hypothesis is that it was misspelled and the true word is JEDEDIAH, a name derived from Yedidyah (“beloved of Jah”).
-Before Kamilia appears, five orbs attack you, each one symbolizing a stage, and therefore, an enemy, or the concept of an enemy itself. The red one represents Geezer, the purple one represents Influka’s orbs, Green represents Solgryn’s orbs, and there’s a debate concerning the meaning of the yellow and blue ones. Yellow one could represent either The Guy’s bullets or the stars from Conquer The Blow Game’s Crazy Spike, and the blue one could represent the melee boss or the boss rush (so, in either case, it represents a collection of bosses). These orbs reunite and the former sprite of Kamilia, previously a female Kid-like sprite, assumes a new form, the form that was foreshadowed all along.
What does this all mean? Does this mean that we’re facing God? That’s unlikely, since Kamilia seems to be a fallen angel considering her final form, which makes her a demon. Does this mean that we’re bestowed with the power of God before facing Kamilia just like Kamilia receives the power of all previous big bosses/demons of fangames? I’m absolutely loving that review and I am sticking to it forever.
As the orbs suggested, an avoidance phase consisting of five phases ensues, with each attack representing the bosses per stage.
-Boss 1 and Boss 2 attacks are combined into one and have a single tough moment: the Gustav attack, to which you must react fast. The gray delicious fruit insta kills you as a position-based attack, Sticky Keys appears trying to crush you and, while avoiding a pattern of Crazy Spike stars and Flandre’s curving orbs, Guy bullets aim straight at you and the Gustav attack culminates what is the toughest attack to react.
-Boss 3 attack is easily one of the most epic moments I have played in fangames: Influka’s orbs swarm the middle portion of the screen while God’s attacks from Heaventrap 2 appear at two random spots of the ceiling shooting at random directions, Influka’s “tomb” attacks you wherever you are while the original Influka attack from K2 creates a portal that throws little pink orbs at you (the one that made gravity heavier in Stage 3 Boss). The sound effects for the portal, I must highlight, are eargasmic. For a final showdown, Pochi’s barrage attack from Rukimin floods the screen while making a combination of Venus’ attack of See the Moon. This attack is the apotheosis of awesomeness and the feeling of power you have after clearing something so menacing and yet so beautifully looking is indescribable. This attack is also a stunningly representative example of the importance of (and difference between) sound sound editing.
-Boss 4 attack sucks and it is the hardest by far. It combines Beelzebub’s attack from Heaventrap 1 as a pattern, creating blind spots that can be infested and crowded with the garbage that the two giant Explorer heads throw at you. Add some Geezer lava for the lol’s and a couple of Keese to compromise your jumps after the Explorer heads attack you simultaneously for the second time. It is luck-based trash that provides you many times with squished roofs/walls where you can do nothing about them.
-Boss 5 attack is considered as one of the hardest, and the second hardest for me. It follows the logic of Solgryn’s second phase were position-based green orbs hunt you down. The yom yom yom creature attacks you at 3 specific points in time while you’re attacked rhythmically by Missingno.’s Hydro Pump that pushes you up to the ceiling, precisely to where the Solgryn orbs are. Good luck making a consistent strategy, as the green orbs are random! After that, a consistent position-based strat exists for avoiding the hearts of the final boss of Scapegoat and the orbs at the same time. Very challenging.
-Boss 6 attack is a celebration of the Boss Rush enemies where the true skill of the first half relies in knowing exactly what every color of Destination did. Gravity Man’s attack have always the same blind spot, so stick in the middle, and the UFOs from Nue should pose no problem as they are a very easy pattern. The second half poses a challenge since Nue’s randomly moving red orbs, combined with the position-based attacks of Destination can create very interesting combinations that will demolish you.
There is a checkpoint! Will you believe that?
Enter Phase 2: Big Kid combined with Kamilia’s own attacks, which are very tame, but just like Big Kid, this is an exercise in patience and calculation, since the more damage you inflict on Kamilia, the bigger the amount of delicious fruits that will appear from any border of the screen. This stage, frankly, gets repetitive, redundant and boring very fast, but following the logic of referencing all past bosses and the tradition of Influka and Kamilia having the power to summon the attacks of other enemies, I supposed it “had to” be there. The problem is that there is no third checkpoint after the easy avoidance proceeding the Big Kid phase.
Phase 3 is the stuff of your nightmares: Kamilia shows her true fallen angel form because why not? If you keep questioning the logic of a fangame by this point, bruh, where have you living your whole life? Kamilia has an arsenal of no less than 10 attacks to choose from, half readable, half monstrous, especially one where the orbs do a screen wrap. The punishment for dying is going back to the boringness of Phase 2. Part of what makes the victory so heart-racing is that you have to make a clean clear of Phases 2 and 3 in one go, with Phase 3 being a tough-as-nails challenge. However, the feeling of hearing that heavily copyrighted song of the credits is very overwhelming, more fulfilling than a male autotune singing to you than you can call yourself The Boshy now.
Finally, you end up in a hub with access to all areas and bosses as an invitation to practice, replay any part you want, or even speedrun the game, which, I won’t lie, is a very tempting idea for me.
The penultimate thing I’d like to remark is that K2 is one game that not only takes care of offering a pristine production value, but also has a lot of little details that add value to the game, even if they might go unnoticed consciously by many:
-An original Game Over screen and theme
-The fact that every screen at Stage 6 has an original song
-Related to the previous point, the fact that Go the Dotkid! featured an 8-bit remix of the Factory Investigation Remix of Kirby 64 and that this game, in return, features the same screen with the same theme employing another remix (a very based one)
-The hit sound is epic; it does give you the feeling that instead of doing comedic damage reusing the sound effect from IWBTG, you are really impacting the enemy, making the battles more epic (the rushed sound effect during the Gradius section of Solgryn is tremendous!)
-The fact that there is a memorable “Stage Complete” theme
-The fact that the credits have a terrific, non-vocaloid choice of a song and properly credits all fangames featured and individual artists, gamemakers and testers
-The fact that there is a functional hub, a trademark of Timemachine 1
-The fact that Influka is considered as a boss as important as The Guy, Geezer and Solgryn, because it is
-The fact that it autosaves when it is the sanest thing for the player
-All main bosses are remade in a very original and authentic way without losing their essence: Influka calls all bosses from Stage 3 including Pochi if you go for the full cycle challenge, and Solgryn’s version is the best adaptation ever made, featuring an even better Phase 1 than Boshy and Timemachine 1
-The fact that all bosses in Boss Rush are nerfed to extremely playable levels (I second tried Destination, which is the hardest boss)
-The fact that Stage 6 features fangames that are unquestionably harder than Kamilia 2 itself, proving that this game never intended to be an impossible challenge to begin with, but a tribute to veterans
-The fact that it features the original fangame screens exactly as they were designed, and when there is a change or a buff, the game lets you know with a shaky, in-your-face warning sign (I have seen reviews and comments asking: “It's a screen just like any other screen. What is this Caution sign doing here?”. Bruh... know your fangames!!)
-No Nekoron or other weird engine, thank God!
-No restarting music
The landmark gimmick of inserting random, unrelated avoidance segments in the middle of the fights can be questioned, and it hurts the playability of Geezer due to the lack of an intermediate save, but not for The Guy or Solgryn.
K2 established the year 2012 as a new standard to measure fangame creation and successfully combining great platforming with production value, where the latter never overshadows the former. If the previous installment was a meme game that celebrated a person’s reputation, this magnificent adventure platformer celebrates the collective creativity of a community and what had been accomplished so far while being loyal to the graphics of many fangames that had a different look and feel to the usual standard tilesets and cherries. It reinvents the original concept and becomes a trip down memory lane for the fortunate ones that did play at least 75% of the fangames featured here. For those that didn’t, it became the definitive test of fangame skills that you could willingly experience by yourself and show off to others. This is the point where Kamilia’s Twitch attention started to peak, reaching a maximum around 2014-2015. It tries and succeeds at representatively showcasing what had been the greatest known challenges back then, from the Tower Guy to beating destination, embellished with a modern touch and soundtrack. When The Guy is the second boss and Solgryn is not even the gatekeeper, you know you’re currently playing and living a new definitive challenge.
This is a revolution, a tribute, a celebration and a stunning, action-packed adventure statement in the world of videogames.
And it also represents the Stockholm Syndrome for its admirers according to Kiyoshi.
FINAL STATS FOR MY 1ST BLIND PLAYTHROUGH:
Deaths: 3517
Time: 12:24:08
Games played before: 50/60 (beaten 47)
CLEAR SCREEN
https://discordapp.com/channels/82930961544646656/415571545075744768/945863119350165514
TWITCH HIGHLIGHTS (2nd PLAYTHROUGH, LIVE)
-Influka Full Cycle with Cool Kill: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432159960
-Geezer: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432163844
-Solgryn Hitless (No Skip): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438758085
-Boss Rush + Almost 1st Try Big Kid: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432169537
-Final Boss: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438759272 (fight starts at 4:21)
[10] Likes
I know revolution when I see it.
I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 2 is the fangame equivalent of the relationship that exists between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, which is Sam Raimi’s masterpiece: the latter functions simultaneously as a sequel and as a retelling of the events of the first feature. It reinvents the characters and stylizes the universe of the previous film to unleash the definitive edition of what Raimi, by 1987, decided what should be the auteuristic voice of the Evil Dead Trilogy. Army of Darkness didn’t change a thing of Evil Dead II, meaning that the director had already established his personal celluloid trademark and put a signature on it as his most representative.
Back when I played the Best Guy series and Timemachine 1, I noticed a drastically different meme culture and sense of humor than the one adopted by America and Europe, and explaining the geography behind this is beyond obvious and unnecessary. However, there was an implementation of gimmicks and humor in South Korea that differed greatly from the most ambitious trap/adventure games of the early 2010s, such as the fantastic Rukimin, the rustic creations by Carnival or the highly appealing Galaxy: South Korea is more explosive (literally, like, Michael Bay would be proud), shaky screens, cognitive dissonance, flashy screens, an abundance of gay jokes, and a pervasive freneticism. Best Guy 1 is a disastrous game, but analyze the bosses and, except for the first old man, which is beyond boring and frustrating, the rest are emblematic and an absolute blast. The final boss, Gustav, is one of the most badass and replayable final bosses I have seen, stupid meme instances throughout and whatnot. Just like with I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 1, the game was not made by the user referenced; marhite initiated the idea, and the Best Guy series was continued by Gustav himself. Part II, which is my personal favorite even if not the most visually ambitious, has tremendous replay value despite the self-awareness that Gustav displays throughout regarding that his platforming is woeful.
Now consider Influka. Timemachine 1 was a prototype for creating different visuals and time eras in an insanely good and fun adventure that offers many difficulty possibilities and, while recreating Boshy, pays tribute to both Boshy and IWBTG while remaining aesthetically authentic and self-sustaining. This is where The Game Terminators come in: a full-throttle, balls-to-the-wall display of Korean meme galore at a frenetically high speed with screams, gun blasts, female obesity, Ao Oni (as in Best Guy), first-person shooters, maniacal laughter, and some indie references (The Binding of Isaac, et al). The last boss of the game is one of my favorite fangame bosses of all times (along with Nue Houjuu in Breaking Out and Solgryn in Boshy), and the vocaloid choice is one of the best available. Influka self-represents as a Phoenix Wright version of Megurine Luka and is animated! A png sprite moving?? Insane. She had the capacity, just like Solgryn, of summoning the attacks of the previous enemies by physically calling them. Timemachine 2 implemented a much more mature of platforming, adventure and cohesion, and a beautiful thing came out of it, albeit with a questionable difficulty peak with the final boss.
Combine both talents and something of the quality of Justice Guy comes out: a hardcore, multi-faceted and varied adventure that combines the best of both worlds.
These arguments are being made not only to defend my opinion that Influka was one of the best fangame makers that actually had a learning curve, but that Influka works amazingly with other creators and testers. K2 is the proof of this.
Now construct a medley with these talents and passion. K2 is a timeline event for all communities, for the fangame world and, yes, for the entire world of videogames. Twitch was already a thing, Carnival was pretty much famous not only in Japan and Korea for legendary challenges such as Crimson and Destination, people had passed their test of manhood beating Boshy at least in Hard-On Mode, and communities were more united. We would now start talking about A community, not many. Eastern and Western players and makers interacted in a more significant basis and exchanged best practices more often.
This remake starts where K1 stopped (just like Evil Dead II) and reinvents the whole concept with a sequel fashion. The soundtrack has a gigantic passion for referencing original videogames, especially the Sonic and Kirby series, something that I thank because both characters’ game series get too overshadowed by even greater franchises; however, there is a special appreciation towards Kirby in the fangame culture. The title screen purposefully opens with Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 for the PS3 to seal it as an Asian fangame, emphasizing the perhaps-not-a-happy-accident of K1 concerning Kamilia’s eyes being Pink and Purple each, and we kick off with the meme of Chokochoko at the speed and rhythm of Sonic Colors. From there, exceptional pieces from Sonic Generations, Steins;Gate, EZ2DJ, Kirby (Kirby 64 and Kirby’s Return to Dreamland) and others hit your speakers and headphones hard with authentic awesomeness. Most importantly, the Dodonpachi series begins to have a protagonistic presence in the series, being Dai-Ou-Jou the case here. I do have complaints for Stage 5 putting a stressful song for the entirety of the stage, but it works greatly for doruppi’s amusing 5-star difficulty screen of Seven Trials, which was scoreless to begin with. SaiDaiOuJou and Maximum would become the spinal cord of K3’s soundtrack.
The mechanic of the soundtrack works stupendously because it has the same mentality of the playthrough logic. Each stage has a song that highly correlates with the difficulty of the stage. The majority of the bosses, with two exceptions (the first melee boss and The Guy, and the first one not really counting precisely because of being a melee boss) feature the song that played in the original fangame that they starred in. The Guy, for correlation, cohesion and entertainment purposes, places the Egg Emperor theme from Sonic Generations and works stupendously, especially since the fight is more concerned with remaking Phase 1 of The Guy (Phase 2... that will come in proper time, not in this game, also with a Sonic remix). However, once you step into Stage 6, you will find out that each new screen has a different song; they are all bangers and have a different tone according to the fangame portrayed. You know you’re in a special stage, probably the last one, where each screen is preparing you for the final challenge, as you witness giants like Catastrophe, Popularity’s Extra Stage, Crimson, Destination and LoveTrap suggesting wicked things to come, especially if you understood the logic of the last screen of each stage being a foreshadowing of the boss you would encounter at the end of it.
The difficulty curve is the closest to flawless I have ever seen in a fangame. I have no complaints with Geezer as a boss from a concept standpoint; the problem relies in the lack of a checkpoint like Kamilia 1 implemented, because there was an awareness that, up to that point, the whole first phase was redundancy if replayed. It is easy; it’s an introductory phase. Place a save after the Keese appear, just before the extra avoidance of Device, and you have a different experience. Actually, if I could swap the lack of an intermediate save, it would be Geezer for Boshy, just for the sake of emulating the original final fight of Boshy in Stage 5: 3 phases, no continues Revive one of the first big achievements you ever had in your fangame trajectory. Scratch the Geezer mistake, and you have the perfect difficulty curve.
A pivotal point of discussion for a medley are the game choices and, simultaneously, the screen choices per game. This game emulates much better the exercise that K1 did: not only the game gets progressively more difficult at perceivable levels without any drastic peaks, except for Geezer and the final boss, but the games in question also had that difficulty in question. Stage 1 games are beginner-friendly games, with the arguable exception of I Wanna Be the Fangame! (and it is arguable because it is one of the founding classics), and Stage 6 games are fangames for veterans or experts. Although it does have a bias towards Asian fangames as well (main protagonists with more than one of their fangames featured are Carnival, Mizudori, Doruppi, P, Surumeika, Teto Rin, to mention some), but it also gives proper credit to Kayin, Thenewgeezer, tijit and Solgryn for the influence they imprinted permanently on fangame players with a single fangame by 2012. Beyond the first melee boss, all bosses are iconic and have been immortalized by now: The Guy, Influka, Geezer, Solgryn, The Four Crimson Gods, Destination and Big Kid. Others, such as Nue Houjuu and Gravity Man, were chosen for their uniqueness, and I must admit they are good bosses, with an emphasis on Nue who is an absolutely freaking fantastic miracle of a boss in the original Breaking Out.
What is more relevant is the eternal discussion among medley players and critics: “they could have chosen a much better screen and instead they chose one of the worst ones”. At many cases, this rings true, such as Locus, Unknown, Terminal, Rukimin, Fangame!, Competitor, Timemachine and others. The exact opposite applies to ones like The Guy, Boshy (when shit gets real, it gets real), Best Guy (it’s the least terrible!), Crimson, Destination, Graduate from CT, Yellow Star, Experience, Skyclad, Rainbow Miku, Symmetry, Breaking Out, etc. Then you have the middle spectrum, like pretty much the rest, and for GB, there was literally no other choice as that screen was already a meme and it took 9 years for the Western community to respond to it with an immense collab. The true question, in my opinion, is whether choosing the most innovative or “best” screens, “best” being subjective in the eyes of the beholder, would bring the same pacing and playthrough consistency for a medley, or they just function better in the context of the original fangames. I think the point of a medley is dual: to celebrate the uniqueness of the fangames portrayed, and make it in a way that makes sense in the overall genre of the medley (needle, avoidance, adventure, etc.). K2 is an adventure medley. So, Tribute might me annoying as hell, and Yassan might scare curious beginner players that don’t even know who The Kid is, but the overall choices constitute a consistent and fantastic experience.
The game changer for the Kamilia series was a concept that many fangames did before. Take Device as a random example: you have the main game, secrets scattered all around, extra (which is unlocked by gathering said secrets), a buffed boss rush and a true final boss/avoidance. Influka applies the same concept by Stage 6, but borrows legendary bosses; the implementation is fascinating and mad good, which I speculate was based on Popularity’s extra stage, and ergo ended up taking the form and feel of Rockman 5:
-Instead of having Big Kid as a Stage 6 boss immediately due to LoveTrap being the 10th screen of the stage, you face four bosses of games that were also featured in that stage
-The bosses are gigantically nerfed for correct continuity and progress purposes: Destination has much less HP and only phase per color, at the expense of the attacks being faster; Crimson has less HP at the insignificant expense of figuring out when Blue triggers the water blocks; Nue Houjuu has much less attacks at the expense of having the original orbs pattern changed and you only having 1HP (bothersome, unfortunately); and Gravity Man has only the first of Popularity’s original true final boss and you have bigger bullets, at the expense of both of you moving much faster and Gravity Man shooting quicker after each gravity shifting. The game made the incredibly wise decision of nerfing all bosses and still making them enjoyable in the sense of reviving those epic fights you faced before, with the plus of having a much faster progression granted that you’re not fighting the original bosses at all. If that was the case of the game, we would have quite a questionable roadblock for everyone.
-You can choose the order of the bosses and autosave is implemented immediately after you beat a boss in case of any accident you or an external source or event might cause
-As in the Mega Man series, you unlock the true boss of the stage after beating all Kamilia’s minions. LoveTrap here is the funny response to Brute of a Man in K1; however, you do fight the boss in here. There is a catch: the game is reasonable enough to acknowledge that beating Big Kid was a feat that could probably take months, resulting in probably the most nerfed non-troll boss of all times. The pattern of killer and water bullets is set instead of being random, which allows you to fully plan your strategies ahead.
What mines the entertainment of players during the Boss Rush is the sense of progression compared to the previous, more known bosses and the smooth increasing difficulty of the platforming. Also, if it’s the first time you face these bosses, that’s entirely up to you, but for me, it was an incredibly enjoyable time while I reminisced about the many instances of my life where I beat the true, original versions of these tough bastards.
The Big Kid scene also became a moment in the annals of fangame history. Redone to death many times in both serious and parody forms, the chase challenge is a big consistency save against the clock. There are two problems with this section that make it shy away from perfection: the scrolling screen depends on the Big Kid, not your movement, and there are traps scattered around that do not belong in a chase / consistency save. Nevertheless, after what seems to be a nod to the ending of World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. for the NES (getting through two choke needle sections instead of grabbing a victory flag), one of your fangame ancient dreams comes true: you do not only beat Big Kid: you watch him explode like everytime you die. Boy, does this game reward you for effort.
Enter M-Stage, the original stage of the game (although the chase is also technically original) at the beat of Tekken 6. It is time to pass the ultimate skill/gimmick/trap test of the game where wonders like two double sphincters in a row, upward planes, jump refreshers with gravity shifting, speed change gimmicks, corners of many kinds and 9-jumps await you before your final definitive trial. There is no way you don’t get pumped up with the aid of Tekken 6, and the extremely efficient and sensical saves placement makes the ride consistently enjoyable.
Before and during your encounter with Kamilia, there are many Easter Eggs that should be noted, including one that, much to my shock, no one in IWC had noticed:
-The hall with the big save on it displays a plethora of the tilesets belonging to the fangames featured in the medley
-When you shoot the save that transports you to her otherworldly realm, four words appear in a circle around you: EMMANUEL (“God is with us”), TETRAGRAMMATON (“consisting of four letters”, which is associated with the Hebrew word יהוה, which is YHWH “I am who I am” [Exodus 3:14]), JEHOVA (the most famous vocalization of the TETRAGRAMMATON), and an unclear one, which seems to read JEIAH, a word that, as a Christian, I don’t know. My hypothesis is that it was misspelled and the true word is JEDEDIAH, a name derived from Yedidyah (“beloved of Jah”).
-Before Kamilia appears, five orbs attack you, each one symbolizing a stage, and therefore, an enemy, or the concept of an enemy itself. The red one represents Geezer, the purple one represents Influka’s orbs, Green represents Solgryn’s orbs, and there’s a debate concerning the meaning of the yellow and blue ones. Yellow one could represent either The Guy’s bullets or the stars from Conquer The Blow Game’s Crazy Spike, and the blue one could represent the melee boss or the boss rush (so, in either case, it represents a collection of bosses). These orbs reunite and the former sprite of Kamilia, previously a female Kid-like sprite, assumes a new form, the form that was foreshadowed all along.
What does this all mean? Does this mean that we’re facing God? That’s unlikely, since Kamilia seems to be a fallen angel considering her final form, which makes her a demon. Does this mean that we’re bestowed with the power of God before facing Kamilia just like Kamilia receives the power of all previous big bosses/demons of fangames? I’m absolutely loving that review and I am sticking to it forever.
As the orbs suggested, an avoidance phase consisting of five phases ensues, with each attack representing the bosses per stage.
-Boss 1 and Boss 2 attacks are combined into one and have a single tough moment: the Gustav attack, to which you must react fast. The gray delicious fruit insta kills you as a position-based attack, Sticky Keys appears trying to crush you and, while avoiding a pattern of Crazy Spike stars and Flandre’s curving orbs, Guy bullets aim straight at you and the Gustav attack culminates what is the toughest attack to react.
-Boss 3 attack is easily one of the most epic moments I have played in fangames: Influka’s orbs swarm the middle portion of the screen while God’s attacks from Heaventrap 2 appear at two random spots of the ceiling shooting at random directions, Influka’s “tomb” attacks you wherever you are while the original Influka attack from K2 creates a portal that throws little pink orbs at you (the one that made gravity heavier in Stage 3 Boss). The sound effects for the portal, I must highlight, are eargasmic. For a final showdown, Pochi’s barrage attack from Rukimin floods the screen while making a combination of Venus’ attack of See the Moon. This attack is the apotheosis of awesomeness and the feeling of power you have after clearing something so menacing and yet so beautifully looking is indescribable. This attack is also a stunningly representative example of the importance of (and difference between) sound sound editing.
-Boss 4 attack sucks and it is the hardest by far. It combines Beelzebub’s attack from Heaventrap 1 as a pattern, creating blind spots that can be infested and crowded with the garbage that the two giant Explorer heads throw at you. Add some Geezer lava for the lol’s and a couple of Keese to compromise your jumps after the Explorer heads attack you simultaneously for the second time. It is luck-based trash that provides you many times with squished roofs/walls where you can do nothing about them.
-Boss 5 attack is considered as one of the hardest, and the second hardest for me. It follows the logic of Solgryn’s second phase were position-based green orbs hunt you down. The yom yom yom creature attacks you at 3 specific points in time while you’re attacked rhythmically by Missingno.’s Hydro Pump that pushes you up to the ceiling, precisely to where the Solgryn orbs are. Good luck making a consistent strategy, as the green orbs are random! After that, a consistent position-based strat exists for avoiding the hearts of the final boss of Scapegoat and the orbs at the same time. Very challenging.
-Boss 6 attack is a celebration of the Boss Rush enemies where the true skill of the first half relies in knowing exactly what every color of Destination did. Gravity Man’s attack have always the same blind spot, so stick in the middle, and the UFOs from Nue should pose no problem as they are a very easy pattern. The second half poses a challenge since Nue’s randomly moving red orbs, combined with the position-based attacks of Destination can create very interesting combinations that will demolish you.
There is a checkpoint! Will you believe that?
Enter Phase 2: Big Kid combined with Kamilia’s own attacks, which are very tame, but just like Big Kid, this is an exercise in patience and calculation, since the more damage you inflict on Kamilia, the bigger the amount of delicious fruits that will appear from any border of the screen. This stage, frankly, gets repetitive, redundant and boring very fast, but following the logic of referencing all past bosses and the tradition of Influka and Kamilia having the power to summon the attacks of other enemies, I supposed it “had to” be there. The problem is that there is no third checkpoint after the easy avoidance proceeding the Big Kid phase.
Phase 3 is the stuff of your nightmares: Kamilia shows her true fallen angel form because why not? If you keep questioning the logic of a fangame by this point, bruh, where have you living your whole life? Kamilia has an arsenal of no less than 10 attacks to choose from, half readable, half monstrous, especially one where the orbs do a screen wrap. The punishment for dying is going back to the boringness of Phase 2. Part of what makes the victory so heart-racing is that you have to make a clean clear of Phases 2 and 3 in one go, with Phase 3 being a tough-as-nails challenge. However, the feeling of hearing that heavily copyrighted song of the credits is very overwhelming, more fulfilling than a male autotune singing to you than you can call yourself The Boshy now.
Finally, you end up in a hub with access to all areas and bosses as an invitation to practice, replay any part you want, or even speedrun the game, which, I won’t lie, is a very tempting idea for me.
The penultimate thing I’d like to remark is that K2 is one game that not only takes care of offering a pristine production value, but also has a lot of little details that add value to the game, even if they might go unnoticed consciously by many:
-An original Game Over screen and theme
-The fact that every screen at Stage 6 has an original song
-Related to the previous point, the fact that Go the Dotkid! featured an 8-bit remix of the Factory Investigation Remix of Kirby 64 and that this game, in return, features the same screen with the same theme employing another remix (a very based one)
-The hit sound is epic; it does give you the feeling that instead of doing comedic damage reusing the sound effect from IWBTG, you are really impacting the enemy, making the battles more epic (the rushed sound effect during the Gradius section of Solgryn is tremendous!)
-The fact that there is a memorable “Stage Complete” theme
-The fact that the credits have a terrific, non-vocaloid choice of a song and properly credits all fangames featured and individual artists, gamemakers and testers
-The fact that there is a functional hub, a trademark of Timemachine 1
-The fact that Influka is considered as a boss as important as The Guy, Geezer and Solgryn, because it is
-The fact that it autosaves when it is the sanest thing for the player
-All main bosses are remade in a very original and authentic way without losing their essence: Influka calls all bosses from Stage 3 including Pochi if you go for the full cycle challenge, and Solgryn’s version is the best adaptation ever made, featuring an even better Phase 1 than Boshy and Timemachine 1
-The fact that all bosses in Boss Rush are nerfed to extremely playable levels (I second tried Destination, which is the hardest boss)
-The fact that Stage 6 features fangames that are unquestionably harder than Kamilia 2 itself, proving that this game never intended to be an impossible challenge to begin with, but a tribute to veterans
-The fact that it features the original fangame screens exactly as they were designed, and when there is a change or a buff, the game lets you know with a shaky, in-your-face warning sign (I have seen reviews and comments asking: “It's a screen just like any other screen. What is this Caution sign doing here?”. Bruh... know your fangames!!)
-No Nekoron or other weird engine, thank God!
-No restarting music
The landmark gimmick of inserting random, unrelated avoidance segments in the middle of the fights can be questioned, and it hurts the playability of Geezer due to the lack of an intermediate save, but not for The Guy or Solgryn.
K2 established the year 2012 as a new standard to measure fangame creation and successfully combining great platforming with production value, where the latter never overshadows the former. If the previous installment was a meme game that celebrated a person’s reputation, this magnificent adventure platformer celebrates the collective creativity of a community and what had been accomplished so far while being loyal to the graphics of many fangames that had a different look and feel to the usual standard tilesets and cherries. It reinvents the original concept and becomes a trip down memory lane for the fortunate ones that did play at least 75% of the fangames featured here. For those that didn’t, it became the definitive test of fangame skills that you could willingly experience by yourself and show off to others. This is the point where Kamilia’s Twitch attention started to peak, reaching a maximum around 2014-2015. It tries and succeeds at representatively showcasing what had been the greatest known challenges back then, from the Tower Guy to beating destination, embellished with a modern touch and soundtrack. When The Guy is the second boss and Solgryn is not even the gatekeeper, you know you’re currently playing and living a new definitive challenge.
This is a revolution, a tribute, a celebration and a stunning, action-packed adventure statement in the world of videogames.
And it also represents the Stockholm Syndrome for its admirers according to Kiyoshi.
FINAL STATS FOR MY 1ST BLIND PLAYTHROUGH:
Deaths: 3517
Time: 12:24:08
Games played before: 50/60 (beaten 47)
CLEAR SCREEN
https://discordapp.com/channels/82930961544646656/415571545075744768/945863119350165514
TWITCH HIGHLIGHTS (2nd PLAYTHROUGH, LIVE)
-Influka Full Cycle with Cool Kill: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432159960
-Geezer: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432163844
-Solgryn Hitless (No Skip): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438758085
-Boss Rush + Almost 1st Try Big Kid: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1432169537
-Final Boss: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1438759272 (fight starts at 4:21)
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 85 85
Apr 21, 2022
memesyouhard
After 180+ hours, I finally cleared this game. Now it's time for my in-depth review. WARNING: Long review ahead that contains lots of spoilers:
I Wanna Kill The Kamilia 2 is a sequel to the original medley game: IWKTK by OyO. The game is basically a remake, featuring many of the same games and bosses fitting with it's medley theme. The difficulty curve is the most flawless I've ever seen in any fangame, starting off easy and gradually building up the more you progress.
The game begins at the menu: You have options to change the volume of the music and SFX (if you're not a fan of the death sound consider this). You can also change your keybinds to whatever button you like on your keyboard/controller.
Onto the game itself, starting with Stage 1:
Stage 1 begins with Chokochoko, a joke screen to anyone who has seen a vine before. Many beginners quit right here as they don't know how vine mechanics work. Holding down jump when on the vine and tapping the arrow keys will propel you up the shaft and to the next screen. GGM is an easy enough needle screen, other screens in stage 1 won't challenge you too hard beyond a couple F-Jumps and a tricky chase sequence in Yellow Star. Fortress returns however is by far the hardest screen in the stage and deserves to be in stage 2. For a beginner who just started the game, a corner jump into a sideways gate followed by a few more fairly precise jumps was quite a daunting task, ending with a raised gate that gave me many chokes. After Fangame you're at the first boss.
Volcano Zone features several characters from the original Kamilia game, it's a relatively straightforward avoidance, the hardest part being Jirachi's pattern attack (it is 100% pattern) that is annoying to learn on your first playthrough. Upon completion you reach Stage 2, and another ten screens.
Stage 2 starts off with Blow Game 2 and Graduate from DT, two pretty simple needle rooms. Green Moon is the first screen that has trickyish jumps in the stage, but that quickly changes once you reach the infamous Yassan: A very tricky 16px room in which the 3rd and 4th saves in particular are extremely brutal for somebody new to fangames. many quit here, don't be afraid to take a break and play other fangames then come back to try again. Run The Terminal is a joke in comparison and so is Best Guy. Guy Tower is also extremely easy, you then reach boss 2.
The Guy is the 2nd Boss and he is quite a step-up from the Volcano Zone avoidance. Firstly he requires you to shoot him to lower his HP. To deal optimum damage don't shoot too fast at him as he has i-frames (invulnerability frames) that last a short amount of time. The boss itself is initially fairly easy with a mix of pattern and RNG that is mostly fair. Flandre Scarlet's attack however is extremely difficult for this point in the game and makes this boss arguably harder than Influka in Stage 3. I recommend staying in the middle and focusing on dodging the barrage than prioritising damage. There is a surprise at the end of the boss, but I won't ruin it ;) .
Stage 3 has a noticeable difficulty increase. Skyclad is a tricky timing screen with some annoying jumps if you don't get the good align. CQ is a heavy choke screen that can take a long time if you are bad at long saves. Diverse is particularly rough as it introduces the gravity flipping gimmick and has a tight jump at the end of the save. White Cherry has some precise needle jumps (but most have good setups), and finally Take the Time Machine is a very annoying screen that requires good timing and light tapping on the vine jumps. Overall a fun, but challenging stage for me on my first playthrough.
Boss 3 is Influka, the most fun boss in the game in my opinion. Composed of several phases, the God phase can be skipped if you mash shoot at the right speed (like the guy she also has i-frames). be sure to find the right shooting speed to deal optimal damage. Also there is the secret Pochi phase that follows after the God attack that is incredibly tough. The boss itself is particularly good because every attack feels fair. As such the boss is pretty much always beatable if you play it right.
Stage 4 is rather trap-heavy. GB early on is arguably the hardest screen in the stage. Phantom's 2nd save is also tricky without a good v-string strategy for the final jump. Heaven Trap is a tricky one-save room that requires you to go through it twice. Explorer features some of the hardest needle in the game yet and took me the longest up to this point to clear. There are cheese strats for the last two screens, I'll leave you to figure them out.
Geezer is the 4th boss. And it is a roadblock. Taking 13hrs for me to beat, it's a laborious boss due to the easy but long first part. Having to rebeat this part every time you die to Miku or the final phase is really frustrating and I completely understand those who quit or take a break right here. If the boss started with the hammer attack then it would be more reasonable and less of a boring grindfest. Alas, the boss is what it is. Six attacks begin the fight, each relatively simple. You are then transported to a Miku avoidance that requires precise movement: Be sure to climb the platforms as slow as possible. After Miku is the final attack: When the timer reaches 28, lava will begin to rise up and fall and will continue this every 6 seconds until the end of the fight. If you keep your cool you will be rewarded with a bust up TV and a key to Stage 5.
Stage 5 was by far the most difficult of the first 6 stages for me. Insure you have the good align for the corner in the final save of Color. Scapegoat and Symmetry are easy screens if a little annoying. Rainbow Miku however was just plain torture for me. The first save took me nearly 3 hours and the second a further hour still, I guess I'm just bad at really long saves. PYF is another really difficult room that trips up first-timers as is Locus. Boshy feels ridiculously out of place after these hard screens but the irony that the "Good Level Design" room was chosen as a good screen to put in was rather funny.
Solgryn is boss 5 and is split into two phases. Phase 1 is pretty much all pattern and is extremely fun to learn. Phase 2 is a different story. Still pretty fun, it is far more challenging mostly because of the avoidance phase that requires decent RNG for the first part and extremely precise movement for the next. After that there is a gradius phase that can be skipped and you're done. Overall it's a pretty good boss with some tough RNG here and there. It's also arguably harder than most of boss rush that comes later on.
Stage 6 has far tougher needle than the previous stages. Every screen will pose a challenge and the game knows this: The music changes for every screen as they know you will be stuck here a while (incidentally stage 6 took me less time than stage 5, although I did take a break and play other fangames in between). GR has some tricky jumps, especially the last save. Dotkid is a neat introduction to 2x2px needle. Crimson has some cool skips that you can try out if you wish. Breaking Out is one extremely long save with high choke potential. Seven Trials may look scary but as each save is never particularly long it's actually one of the easier screens in stage 6. Just be sure to know what align you need for some saves to make your life a lot easier. The first save of Catastrophe is pretty much a meat-grinder, try and jump between the third and fourth spike and hop out. Lovetrap was the hardest screen in my opinion and a worthy final screen before the infamous boss rush. Don't shoot the final switch before hitting the save or you will have a nasty surprise.
After Lovetrap you are transported to a room with 4 teleporters, each containing a nerfed version of the final boss from some of the fangames featured in Stage 6. Despite there nerfs, each boss will still pose a challenge even to experienced players. For me being a newer player, this room became my nightmare.
On the far left you have Titan Dweevil, the final boss of I Wanna be the Destination. This version only has one attack per colour and less overall health. An incredibly fun, but challenging boss that is extremely rewarding to beat. Keep a level head on the final phase and you'll find it isn't so bad.
Next to Titan Dweevil are the Four Gods from Crimson. These four bosses have less health than in the original. This boss is particularly cool because there are so many different strategies to beat it. My slow, but safe strategy was: Lower all colours to half health, then lower green to 1hp, then kill red, then kill yellow, then kill blue, then kill green.
3rd in from the left is Nue Houjuu, a character from the Touhou series and the final boss in I Wanna Make it Breaking Out. This boss features the infinite jump gimmick and is composed of six phases. The first phase is simple enough and rarely gives bad RNG. Phase 2 is the worst phase in the fight. Unpredictable orbs will surround you and you must take any gaps you can find to insure you kill her quickly. Phase 3 is relatively tricky RNG barrage and phase 4 is pattern. There is a cheese strat for phase 5. The final phase is a very precise pattern that will require several attempts to learn.
Finally, on the far right is Gravity Man, a nerfed version of the final boss from I Wanna be the Popularity. Not many people like Gravity Man, for some reason I loved it. It's a really nice pattern fight to learn and relatively relaxing compared to the other three bosses. The final phase does have really annoying RNG, but as long as you focus on shooting him down as quick as possible, it isn't so bad.
After you beat these four bosses you must then fight a fifth boss: Big Kid.
Heavily nerfed from Lovetrap, this boss is still tough if you try to go too fast. Patience is key particularly towards the end when the bouncing apple spawns. It is possible to sink below the water bullets and jump back up into the next one - a key strategy that is required for certain dodges. Once you lower his healthbar to zero you exit the room and fall outside into a nighttime chase. The game autosaves here.
The Chase sequence is ~80 seconds long and by far the hardest platforming in the entire game. This isn't filled with easy jumps either: Dropgates, shuriken gates, dickspikes, f-jumps a couple M-Jumps and far more await you. The final drop is also easy to die to. Yet unlike Rainbow Miku I actually enjoyed this part of the game a lot. This section was my favourite part of the game as it was such a fun grind to progress through and a massive breath of fresh air after fighting 5 bosses before it. The music is also an excellent choice.
After the Chase you finally finish Stage 6 proper and enter M-Stage, the seventh and shortest stage of all. While the saves are tough, this should be a breeze to anyone if you made it this far. M-Stage took me under 2 hours in total, The Chase by comparison took me 10.
After ten saves you reach the final boss, Kamilia herself in all her glory. Composed of four phases. She was by far and away the hardest part of the game for me.
The falling orb barrage in Phase 1 was pretty much the only thing wrong with the phase. Very often this attack would be undodgeable and incredibly frustrating to do. After this attack you must beat 5 attacks in a row based off of the previous bosses in the game. Each attack is extremely tough for a first-timer. It took me two hours to beat one attack just once. 5 in a row took me a further 12 hours to pull off. After beating phase 1 the game autosaves (thankfully).
Phase 2 is trash. I hated it for the longest time. I was stuck on this part of the game for many many hours. Kamilia reappears with a health bar. You must shoot at her and get it down to zero while dodging one of the six different attacks she fires at you. Every time you shoot her an apple will randomly (?) spawn from certain areas of the edge of the room. Every time her attack goes through three cycles two projectiles will spawn up from either side of the room and explode. This sounds good right? Wrong. There are so so many ways you can die unfairly to this phase it’s not even funny, it’s unbelievably frustrating and demoralizing to get so close to killing her to just get sniped by a projectile you didn’t see (yes the colours are very similar to the background), bad apple spawns killing you, low explosion spawns giving impossible dodges and super fast bullets hitting you out of nowhere. Not to mention every time you beat it, you must then beat phase 3 and 4 in one go or you return right back here, healthbar fully restored and all.
Phase 3 is unwelcoming after beating phase 2 for the first few times. It is entirely pattern and relatively simple to learn. Once you beat it the first time you won’t be dying here very often. My real problem was phase 4 which took me 50 attempts to beat before clearing. Phase 4 is an endurance test. Kamilia returns with 300hp and you must kill her while dodging any one of the ten attacks she uses on you. 9 of the 10 are pattern attacks, some are far easier than others. Dying here was painful but a useful part of the grind as it made me very consistent at phase 2. When you finally kill her you get a huge rewarding feeling that I’ve yet to experience in any other fangame.
In conclusion, I started this game several months ago as a total fangame noob. I watched people speedrun this game and never thought one day I’d actually beat it. K2 gave me many skills I can use in other fangames and is absolutely my all-time favourite fangame that everybody should play regardless of skill. It is an incredibly tough but rewarding adventure.
[8] Likes
I Wanna Kill The Kamilia 2 is a sequel to the original medley game: IWKTK by OyO. The game is basically a remake, featuring many of the same games and bosses fitting with it's medley theme. The difficulty curve is the most flawless I've ever seen in any fangame, starting off easy and gradually building up the more you progress.
The game begins at the menu: You have options to change the volume of the music and SFX (if you're not a fan of the death sound consider this). You can also change your keybinds to whatever button you like on your keyboard/controller.
Onto the game itself, starting with Stage 1:
Stage 1 begins with Chokochoko, a joke screen to anyone who has seen a vine before. Many beginners quit right here as they don't know how vine mechanics work. Holding down jump when on the vine and tapping the arrow keys will propel you up the shaft and to the next screen. GGM is an easy enough needle screen, other screens in stage 1 won't challenge you too hard beyond a couple F-Jumps and a tricky chase sequence in Yellow Star. Fortress returns however is by far the hardest screen in the stage and deserves to be in stage 2. For a beginner who just started the game, a corner jump into a sideways gate followed by a few more fairly precise jumps was quite a daunting task, ending with a raised gate that gave me many chokes. After Fangame you're at the first boss.
Volcano Zone features several characters from the original Kamilia game, it's a relatively straightforward avoidance, the hardest part being Jirachi's pattern attack (it is 100% pattern) that is annoying to learn on your first playthrough. Upon completion you reach Stage 2, and another ten screens.
Stage 2 starts off with Blow Game 2 and Graduate from DT, two pretty simple needle rooms. Green Moon is the first screen that has trickyish jumps in the stage, but that quickly changes once you reach the infamous Yassan: A very tricky 16px room in which the 3rd and 4th saves in particular are extremely brutal for somebody new to fangames. many quit here, don't be afraid to take a break and play other fangames then come back to try again. Run The Terminal is a joke in comparison and so is Best Guy. Guy Tower is also extremely easy, you then reach boss 2.
The Guy is the 2nd Boss and he is quite a step-up from the Volcano Zone avoidance. Firstly he requires you to shoot him to lower his HP. To deal optimum damage don't shoot too fast at him as he has i-frames (invulnerability frames) that last a short amount of time. The boss itself is initially fairly easy with a mix of pattern and RNG that is mostly fair. Flandre Scarlet's attack however is extremely difficult for this point in the game and makes this boss arguably harder than Influka in Stage 3. I recommend staying in the middle and focusing on dodging the barrage than prioritising damage. There is a surprise at the end of the boss, but I won't ruin it ;) .
Stage 3 has a noticeable difficulty increase. Skyclad is a tricky timing screen with some annoying jumps if you don't get the good align. CQ is a heavy choke screen that can take a long time if you are bad at long saves. Diverse is particularly rough as it introduces the gravity flipping gimmick and has a tight jump at the end of the save. White Cherry has some precise needle jumps (but most have good setups), and finally Take the Time Machine is a very annoying screen that requires good timing and light tapping on the vine jumps. Overall a fun, but challenging stage for me on my first playthrough.
Boss 3 is Influka, the most fun boss in the game in my opinion. Composed of several phases, the God phase can be skipped if you mash shoot at the right speed (like the guy she also has i-frames). be sure to find the right shooting speed to deal optimal damage. Also there is the secret Pochi phase that follows after the God attack that is incredibly tough. The boss itself is particularly good because every attack feels fair. As such the boss is pretty much always beatable if you play it right.
Stage 4 is rather trap-heavy. GB early on is arguably the hardest screen in the stage. Phantom's 2nd save is also tricky without a good v-string strategy for the final jump. Heaven Trap is a tricky one-save room that requires you to go through it twice. Explorer features some of the hardest needle in the game yet and took me the longest up to this point to clear. There are cheese strats for the last two screens, I'll leave you to figure them out.
Geezer is the 4th boss. And it is a roadblock. Taking 13hrs for me to beat, it's a laborious boss due to the easy but long first part. Having to rebeat this part every time you die to Miku or the final phase is really frustrating and I completely understand those who quit or take a break right here. If the boss started with the hammer attack then it would be more reasonable and less of a boring grindfest. Alas, the boss is what it is. Six attacks begin the fight, each relatively simple. You are then transported to a Miku avoidance that requires precise movement: Be sure to climb the platforms as slow as possible. After Miku is the final attack: When the timer reaches 28, lava will begin to rise up and fall and will continue this every 6 seconds until the end of the fight. If you keep your cool you will be rewarded with a bust up TV and a key to Stage 5.
Stage 5 was by far the most difficult of the first 6 stages for me. Insure you have the good align for the corner in the final save of Color. Scapegoat and Symmetry are easy screens if a little annoying. Rainbow Miku however was just plain torture for me. The first save took me nearly 3 hours and the second a further hour still, I guess I'm just bad at really long saves. PYF is another really difficult room that trips up first-timers as is Locus. Boshy feels ridiculously out of place after these hard screens but the irony that the "Good Level Design" room was chosen as a good screen to put in was rather funny.
Solgryn is boss 5 and is split into two phases. Phase 1 is pretty much all pattern and is extremely fun to learn. Phase 2 is a different story. Still pretty fun, it is far more challenging mostly because of the avoidance phase that requires decent RNG for the first part and extremely precise movement for the next. After that there is a gradius phase that can be skipped and you're done. Overall it's a pretty good boss with some tough RNG here and there. It's also arguably harder than most of boss rush that comes later on.
Stage 6 has far tougher needle than the previous stages. Every screen will pose a challenge and the game knows this: The music changes for every screen as they know you will be stuck here a while (incidentally stage 6 took me less time than stage 5, although I did take a break and play other fangames in between). GR has some tricky jumps, especially the last save. Dotkid is a neat introduction to 2x2px needle. Crimson has some cool skips that you can try out if you wish. Breaking Out is one extremely long save with high choke potential. Seven Trials may look scary but as each save is never particularly long it's actually one of the easier screens in stage 6. Just be sure to know what align you need for some saves to make your life a lot easier. The first save of Catastrophe is pretty much a meat-grinder, try and jump between the third and fourth spike and hop out. Lovetrap was the hardest screen in my opinion and a worthy final screen before the infamous boss rush. Don't shoot the final switch before hitting the save or you will have a nasty surprise.
After Lovetrap you are transported to a room with 4 teleporters, each containing a nerfed version of the final boss from some of the fangames featured in Stage 6. Despite there nerfs, each boss will still pose a challenge even to experienced players. For me being a newer player, this room became my nightmare.
On the far left you have Titan Dweevil, the final boss of I Wanna be the Destination. This version only has one attack per colour and less overall health. An incredibly fun, but challenging boss that is extremely rewarding to beat. Keep a level head on the final phase and you'll find it isn't so bad.
Next to Titan Dweevil are the Four Gods from Crimson. These four bosses have less health than in the original. This boss is particularly cool because there are so many different strategies to beat it. My slow, but safe strategy was: Lower all colours to half health, then lower green to 1hp, then kill red, then kill yellow, then kill blue, then kill green.
3rd in from the left is Nue Houjuu, a character from the Touhou series and the final boss in I Wanna Make it Breaking Out. This boss features the infinite jump gimmick and is composed of six phases. The first phase is simple enough and rarely gives bad RNG. Phase 2 is the worst phase in the fight. Unpredictable orbs will surround you and you must take any gaps you can find to insure you kill her quickly. Phase 3 is relatively tricky RNG barrage and phase 4 is pattern. There is a cheese strat for phase 5. The final phase is a very precise pattern that will require several attempts to learn.
Finally, on the far right is Gravity Man, a nerfed version of the final boss from I Wanna be the Popularity. Not many people like Gravity Man, for some reason I loved it. It's a really nice pattern fight to learn and relatively relaxing compared to the other three bosses. The final phase does have really annoying RNG, but as long as you focus on shooting him down as quick as possible, it isn't so bad.
After you beat these four bosses you must then fight a fifth boss: Big Kid.
Heavily nerfed from Lovetrap, this boss is still tough if you try to go too fast. Patience is key particularly towards the end when the bouncing apple spawns. It is possible to sink below the water bullets and jump back up into the next one - a key strategy that is required for certain dodges. Once you lower his healthbar to zero you exit the room and fall outside into a nighttime chase. The game autosaves here.
The Chase sequence is ~80 seconds long and by far the hardest platforming in the entire game. This isn't filled with easy jumps either: Dropgates, shuriken gates, dickspikes, f-jumps a couple M-Jumps and far more await you. The final drop is also easy to die to. Yet unlike Rainbow Miku I actually enjoyed this part of the game a lot. This section was my favourite part of the game as it was such a fun grind to progress through and a massive breath of fresh air after fighting 5 bosses before it. The music is also an excellent choice.
After the Chase you finally finish Stage 6 proper and enter M-Stage, the seventh and shortest stage of all. While the saves are tough, this should be a breeze to anyone if you made it this far. M-Stage took me under 2 hours in total, The Chase by comparison took me 10.
After ten saves you reach the final boss, Kamilia herself in all her glory. Composed of four phases. She was by far and away the hardest part of the game for me.
The falling orb barrage in Phase 1 was pretty much the only thing wrong with the phase. Very often this attack would be undodgeable and incredibly frustrating to do. After this attack you must beat 5 attacks in a row based off of the previous bosses in the game. Each attack is extremely tough for a first-timer. It took me two hours to beat one attack just once. 5 in a row took me a further 12 hours to pull off. After beating phase 1 the game autosaves (thankfully).
Phase 2 is trash. I hated it for the longest time. I was stuck on this part of the game for many many hours. Kamilia reappears with a health bar. You must shoot at her and get it down to zero while dodging one of the six different attacks she fires at you. Every time you shoot her an apple will randomly (?) spawn from certain areas of the edge of the room. Every time her attack goes through three cycles two projectiles will spawn up from either side of the room and explode. This sounds good right? Wrong. There are so so many ways you can die unfairly to this phase it’s not even funny, it’s unbelievably frustrating and demoralizing to get so close to killing her to just get sniped by a projectile you didn’t see (yes the colours are very similar to the background), bad apple spawns killing you, low explosion spawns giving impossible dodges and super fast bullets hitting you out of nowhere. Not to mention every time you beat it, you must then beat phase 3 and 4 in one go or you return right back here, healthbar fully restored and all.
Phase 3 is unwelcoming after beating phase 2 for the first few times. It is entirely pattern and relatively simple to learn. Once you beat it the first time you won’t be dying here very often. My real problem was phase 4 which took me 50 attempts to beat before clearing. Phase 4 is an endurance test. Kamilia returns with 300hp and you must kill her while dodging any one of the ten attacks she uses on you. 9 of the 10 are pattern attacks, some are far easier than others. Dying here was painful but a useful part of the grind as it made me very consistent at phase 2. When you finally kill her you get a huge rewarding feeling that I’ve yet to experience in any other fangame.
In conclusion, I started this game several months ago as a total fangame noob. I watched people speedrun this game and never thought one day I’d actually beat it. K2 gave me many skills I can use in other fangames and is absolutely my all-time favourite fangame that everybody should play regardless of skill. It is an incredibly tough but rewarding adventure.
Rating: 9.6 96
Difficulty: 80 80
Oct 4, 2016
Almurat_Mor
Back in the days the game was kind of Revolution, which caused many people get involved into the fan games, community and stuff. Best production value, music, original concept gave at the time a deserved popularity.
Then K3 has been released and then every kid (it's about psychological age, but not biological) starts to attemting to create their own game, literally and directly coping the original with it's advantages and disadvantages. So now we got a pure example of this untalented expluatation of the Kamilia title, "game" with negligible and barely noticeable differences, fixing minor bugs, which most ppl wouldn't notice. Another clumsy attemt of lucre by using Infucca ideas, but now it's most flagrant and glaring.
Here we go about negative selection now. People care about this, because commubity heat up interest about this, with this... Lolrunning, ugh... Gustav has left, and Influcca, I Wanna Find My Destiny 2 got cancelled year or two ago. So now only MattyJ not leaving. Yet. (Thx, btw) How long he would create a really good, talented and original content without deserved feedback, recognition and popularity here?
I wouldn't rate this "remake" stuff, because DF.com doesn't allow me to set a negative number of ranting (left than zero). So there is positive review for original game, which really was the best when it came out.
[7] Likes
Then K3 has been released and then every kid (it's about psychological age, but not biological) starts to attemting to create their own game, literally and directly coping the original with it's advantages and disadvantages. So now we got a pure example of this untalented expluatation of the Kamilia title, "game" with negligible and barely noticeable differences, fixing minor bugs, which most ppl wouldn't notice. Another clumsy attemt of lucre by using Infucca ideas, but now it's most flagrant and glaring.
Here we go about negative selection now. People care about this, because commubity heat up interest about this, with this... Lolrunning, ugh... Gustav has left, and Influcca, I Wanna Find My Destiny 2 got cancelled year or two ago. So now only MattyJ not leaving. Yet. (Thx, btw) How long he would create a really good, talented and original content without deserved feedback, recognition and popularity here?
I wouldn't rate this "remake" stuff, because DF.com doesn't allow me to set a negative number of ranting (left than zero). So there is positive review for original game, which really was the best when it came out.
Rating: 9.5 95
Difficulty: 94 94
Jan 23, 2019
sonicdv
So, I decided to go back and play this game again, as I thought my review was a little rage filled and unfair, and I appreciated it a little more, so I decided to boost the score. I still think that boss rush onwards is pretty awful though. Just stop after solgryn and you will have a mostly solid game
[6] Likes
Rating: 6.2 62
Difficulty: 88 88
Oct 10, 2015
Raganoxer
In my opinion, this is the best Medley fangame. hands down, no comparison. It starts out easy but when i got to stage 5, holy shit i didn't realize how tough this could actually get.
To be honest, my one and only dislike is the big kid chase, because when you reach the end it crashes in windows 8, but that isn't near enough to bring this game down.
Stickykeys - fun avoidance with the star barrage being the only "hard" thing about it
The Guy - The first boss where you have to shoot at! yay! This boss has some tricky attacks to learn but is an overall fun boss to play
Influka - One of the best bosses, the attacks are tough (especially the one where youre being sucked in) and has the best avoidance by far.
Geezer - Okay boss to be honest, but hes still pretty good compared to the rest of the bosses
Solgryn - Being the Boshy fan i was back then, this boss made my heart stop. This boss was tough and it was so great of them to give us a checkpoint for the rng bullets.
The boss rush - this is honestly a whole review in itself.. when i saw all these bosses i remember them from their much harder counterparts. beating every single one of these felt like such an amazing reward
Kamilia - Im pretty sure you all know how amazing this boss is, where it all boiled down to. An amazing final boss with an intense final phase.
In the end everything was good, the stages and bosses were memorable. If fangame now a days copied this instead of K3 maybe it wouldn't be so cancer.
To be honest, my one and only dislike is the big kid chase, because when you reach the end it crashes in windows 8, but that isn't near enough to bring this game down.
Stickykeys - fun avoidance with the star barrage being the only "hard" thing about it
The Guy - The first boss where you have to shoot at! yay! This boss has some tricky attacks to learn but is an overall fun boss to play
Influka - One of the best bosses, the attacks are tough (especially the one where youre being sucked in) and has the best avoidance by far.
Geezer - Okay boss to be honest, but hes still pretty good compared to the rest of the bosses
Solgryn - Being the Boshy fan i was back then, this boss made my heart stop. This boss was tough and it was so great of them to give us a checkpoint for the rng bullets.
The boss rush - this is honestly a whole review in itself.. when i saw all these bosses i remember them from their much harder counterparts. beating every single one of these felt like such an amazing reward
Kamilia - Im pretty sure you all know how amazing this boss is, where it all boiled down to. An amazing final boss with an intense final phase.
In the end everything was good, the stages and bosses were memorable. If fangame now a days copied this instead of K3 maybe it wouldn't be so cancer.
Tagged as: Medley
[5] Likes
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 85 85
Sep 8, 2015