Super Heavy Sword hasn't really learned from the mistakes of its predecessor. It's still clunky in all the wrong places, and still has an art style that doesn't quite hang together.
But it's a tighter production than the original HEAVY-sword. It's a little sharper, and a little smoother when it needs to be.
And more importantly, once you manage to get over its slightly laborious controls and cumbersome world map, it's actually quite a lot of fun.
Sword swallowingYou play a prince or a princess, and leap your way through a series of retro-looking levels. There are boxes to bounce under, pipes to jump down, and enemies to slice into chunks with your titular blade.
You control the game with a series of buttons. They're not perfect, but they do their job reasonably well. You can rearrange their positions from the main menu as well.
Double taps let you perform spinning mid-air sword slashes that give you extra height, or jump-ending bottom bounces that let you smash blocks and press buttons.
The controls never quite feel intuitive, and you often have to wrestle with them to point yourself in the right direction.
The game still owes a great debt to Mario, with its patchwork worlds, multiple pipes, and gold coins. But there's more here as well, from upgradable weapons to new equipment.
And when it does things right it snaps and pops in just the right ways. There's an honesty to the gameplay that makes Super Heavy Sword difficult to dislike.
A bit bluntBut when it gets things wrong it can feel sloppy and underwhelming. There's charm here, and buckets of retro heart, but the game underneath it all creaks a little too often.
That's a shame, because Monster Robot Studios is obviously a developer with passion. But there isn't quite enough here to wholeheartedly recommend Super Heavy Sword.