The original Red Steel was hyped up before the release of the Wii, but provided an underwhelming experience. I wished for a sequel to iron out the game's shortcomings. What I didn't expect is a complete overhaul of the game which is so far from the original; you wonder why it wasn't given a completely different name.
In Red Steel 2, the game world takes influences from Samurai, Wild West, and some futuristic aspects. It's a strange and unbelievable world, but it sure is an interesting one. Tumble weeds blow across the dirt floor, wooden shacks and barrels lay around the environment, metal doors and switches block off areas.
One thing that usually annoys me about Wii games is when they try and make realistic style graphics but the result is a dark and murky mess like the original Red Steel. In this sequel, cel-shaded graphics portray the world beautifully and clearly; it's actually some of the best on the Wii. The cut-scenes are nice too, and one of the early ones you experience makes use of a Quick-Time Event which is weird why no other scene made use of them.
You play as a nameless hero who is the last member of the Kusagari clan. He returns to a town named Caldera after years of exile and begins to take revenge on the gang that has eradicated your clan. The story doesn't really develop from there, and the characters you meet don't seem to have much story or personality, but the focus is on the game-play which is the games' strong point.
The original received criticism about how you primarily use guns, but then when faced with sword enemies, you were restricted to sword fights with the only explanation is your 'honour'. In Red Steel 2, you can switch freely between the weapons, although the game is geared towards sword fights. A lot of enemies are armoured where guns do not deal much damage, and samurai style enemies block bullets with ease anyway, so you should engage with swords and take them down with hard swings.
The game recognises horizontal and vertical slashes, jabs, and more aggressive swipes which help disarm armour. Pressing A switches to blocking stance, and B is used to shoot your gun. Holding down 'A' or 'A & B' also allows you to use special attacks based on motion control.
After dealing enough damage, a prompt will appear which activates a finishing move. This can be a basic finisher, or use an appropriate special attack for a more brutal finish. Taking enemies down with style gives you a cash bonus to unlock upgrades or extra guns. You can upgrade your special moves, as well as increasing health and defence. There's plenty of crates and other objects which you can smash up which rewards you with extra cash, although they're too numerous which detracts from the action if you find yourself distracted by the temptation of extra coins. Some objects require a certain action to interact with such as slashing a specific direction horizontal/vertical/thrust, or safes which require turning your remote to unlock.
The game is very linear and even if there are several doors, all of them will be initially locked except the one you require, which is marked clearly on your map in red and green respectively. The game constantly plays like this which may annoy some. There are secret tokens to look out for which give you a cash boost. These are usually hidden behind objects or high up, but you don't have to go too far out of your way to acquire them.
When you walk around, you don't really need to keep your eye out for danger, because a count of the enemies will appear on your HUD. There will only be a small amount of enemies on screen at once, and if the count is higher than this, you know that by killing the current ones, more enemies will spawn. When all enemies have been defeated, your health will regenerate and you can proceed. I'm not sure if this was a hardware limitation to keep the frame-rate steady, or if it was to make sure you are never too outnumbered, but the game does run smoothly and the system seems to work well.
Red Steel 2 is a drastic improvement over its' predecessor, although pretty much is unrelated. The graphical style is brilliant, the combat is effective and fun but is let down by its linear level design and lack of story (which isn't a deal-breaker by any means). I would have probably changed the money collecting aspect by only giving money by kills, special objects (safes, lockers) and secrets (hidden tokens), rather than by being in the abundant and re-spawning minor objects (barrels, boxes etc). This would have kept the action flowing and rewarded the player for skill and observation rather than mindlessly bashing any old object. The combat system worked well but it would have been nice to have more suspense by making you keep your eye out for lingering enemies.