Maximus 2: Fantasy Beat-Em-Up Review: A Heroic Brawler

From Streets of Rage to Dragon’s Crown and even Cuphead, beat ‘em up games have rampaged the industry for decades. That exhilarating feeling of bashing up enemies and collecting rewards keeps gamers attached to the genre. And with so many titles out there, it’s hard to choose decent brawlers—especially on mobile. One prime example of a mobile game that allows players to sandbox their experience, and slash and bash monsters is Maximus 2: Fantasy Beat-Em-Up.

Maximus 2 is a cartoonish, fast-paced brawler featuring single-player and co-op gameplay modes. In co-op, there can only be four players in a lobby. Also, there are two difficulty levels for players to tackle: normal and hard. Whatever mode or difficulty is chosen, players will take on a quest to slay monsters, save a Duke who has been kidnapped, and save the day.

Image Credited to Maximus 2: Fantasy Beat-Em-Up | Four Fats Limited 

Before jumping into the action, there are six characters to choose from: Julius, Otus, Scarlett, Bishop, Shishima, and Penrose. Julius and Otus are currently free-to-play, but players need gold to unlock the others. Gold is attained through in-game purchases or beating monsters and bosses as you play the game. 

Once a hero has been selected, players can start slashing away and using skills through all ten stages in the game. Each stage roughly takes five to ten minutes, depending on how skilled players are at taking down enemies. Each stage showcases a unique environment and monsters, and each one ends in a dramatic boss fight. Eventually, as players tackle new opponents, the fighting grows more demanding, and this is where the game starts to get interesting.

After a few stages, an item shop pops up wherein players can buy different weapons, armor, magical rings, and more to enhance their stats. Players can choose items to upgrade their attack, health, magic, and luck stats, all of which provide unique effects to the characters. Additionally, once a character levels up, players can use points to increase a stat of their choice or learn a new talent. Talents generally affect attacks or offer up unique skills.[b]

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Image Credited to Maximus 2: Fantasy Beat-Em-Up | Four Fats Limited 

Once players finish the game, they can continue replaying it to acquire gold, items, and levels for their characters. From there, it's just about making progress until players can handle the hard mode alone or with friends.

Alongside co-op and high replayability, Maximus 2 includes many of the enticing gameplay features I’ve come to expect from beat ‘em ups. However, it suffers some in its controls, particularly the limitations on dodging blows. In my playtime with the game, I struggled to be accurate with my movement. I found it almost impossible to consistently move as intended or be in the right spot to attack enemies, and that especially hurts in a game as fast-paced as this one. 

Because of these problems, stages took longer than anticipated, because I kept sliding off platforms unintentionally and wasting my most powerful skills at inopportune times. 

While the inability to properly manage tiny movements is annoying, Maximus 2’s approach to dodging is nonexistent. Some abilities allow players to defend themselves or block incoming blows, but for such a quick-moving game, I would have preferred being able to gracefully leap out of the way of incoming blows. 

[i]Image Credited to Maximus 2: Fantasy Beat-Em-Up | Four Fats Limited 

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However, it doesn’t just stop with movement, even attacking enemies comes with a downside. Monsters can be knocked down, but only certain skills can damage an enemy once it’s on the ground. Once players knock an enemy down, the monster essentially gets an invulnerability window, which leaves the player standing around waiting. It’s enough to make knockdowns feel more like a punishment than a reward. 

The inevitable deaths I ran into due to the lack of dodging and rough controls were made even more annoying because of Maximus 2’s terrible approach to death and reloading. For example, in-game players can only respawn at the place they died five times. If I ran out of respawning tokens, the last choice I had would be to resurrect at the latest spawn point which reset my damage progress against enemies back to zero. Together, all of these struggles made getting through stages extremely time-consuming and mildly frustrating.

All of the trappings of Maximus 2 point toward a fantastic effort for its genre. Its UI design, art style, animation, and sound effects are all exceptionally good. The storyline is one-dimensional—as if anyone plays a beat-em-up for the story—but it makes up for its lack of narrative creativity with a wide range of characters, enemies, stages, and environments. These endless opportunities for new player-made combinations and experiences accentuate the game's replayability. However, there are definitely a few major improvements needed. Dodging, more reliable movement, and even low attacks against fallen enemies would all help Maximus 2 feel much stronger. For now, it's in a decent place for a mobile brawler, but it can absolutely be better.

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GAME RATING: 3 STARS OUT OF 5[/b]