Swap Heroes 2 Review

Swap Heroes 2 is a prime example of a game giving players exactly what they want. As an iteration on the fun-but-flawed Swap Heroes, this sequel delivers all of the strategic elements from the original while removing some of the more random elements and adding a good mix of heroes.

For those familiar with the first title, Swap Heroes 2 should be very familiar. Players take control of a set of four heroes and control them purely through swapping their positions in their T shaped formation. Each character has their own set of stats and can unleash special attacks only after being swapped from the back of the formation to the front. Despite being a pretty simple formula, it maintains a sense of depth by providing a wide variety of enemies, character upgrades, and multiple viable strategies for success.

As players progress through the initial levels, they unlock new characters like a werewolf, alchemist, and more - most of which were never seen in the first game. Players also unlock star points along the way to help enhance their abilities according to their personal playstyle and party composition. These star points were present in the first game, but felt a little to random because players were given four random skills to increase between levels - all of which could occasionally be undesirable. Thankfully, now all of the skills that are unlockable by star points are available between levels and can be removed and reapplied to new skills at any time.

Another cool change to Swap Heroes 2 is the fact that players can maintain persistent progress throughout the game. In the first Swap Heroes, players always started from the first level and the goal of the game was to make it all the way to the last level and win all in one run. In Swap Heroes 2, players can switch up their party composition, replay previous levels on harder difficulties, etc, between levels all before taking on the final level of the game. This change brings quite a bit more freedom to the game that was previously missing.

In terms of drawbacks, Swap Heroes 2 is very much more of the same. Despite all of these neat changes to the formula, the core of the game is still all about swapping heroes, which some may not be into.

For anyone that was a fan of the first Swap Heroes but didn't appreciate some of its more difficult or random elements, Swap Heroes 2 fixes just about every single one of those problems. Still though, as a sequel, Swap Heroes 2 is largely just more of the same.