Aggelos 2 | Switch Review

Aggelos 2, from Wonder Boy developers WONDERBOY BOBI, takes the straightforward level-based approach from the first Aggelos and transforms it into a full metroidvania-style action platformer. It’s an interesting change of pace, and one that works quite well, for the most part.

This sequel game picks up a thousand years after the events of Aggelos, in which our angel hero has saved the world from the evil Deluge. But centuries have passed since then, and Deluge is apparently back and has help from a pair of demons to re-enter the world and destroy it. Enter our angelic hero, who gets knocked out of the sky and loses all his sweet gear and has to find it all again before killing the BBEG. You know, adventure stuff.

Adventure Stuff

Aggelos 2 does a very good job of getting you accustomed to the rigors of being an angelic savior. You start off with a bracelet that lets you fire off Mega Man-esque bullets, then recover your sword and your wings, letting you absorb enemy shots and float above the ground respectively. From there, you can find various movement-improving abilities, along with collectables like mystical eggs, health-recovering potions, and increases to your wallet size.

There’s tons of these collectables to be found, and the wallet upgrades in particular also unlock other potential upgrades, as initially the shops will have items that are priced beyond the limits of your wallet. This is the main puzzlement of this title: there’s not a lot of use for your money beyond the big-ticket shop items, and you fight so many enemies you’ll constantly, even in late game, be running up against the limits of your wallet, making further currency drops useless. You can spend money at certain points on limited hit-absorbing shields or restoring your health pots, but those are few and far between.

My Bad Boy Angel Boyfriend

The main gimmick of this title is the light and dark switching mechanic. Early on you meet a demon who introduces you to your party boy side, and you gain the ability to change from Pit to Dark Pit and vice-versa. This comes into play in a variety of ways, though it’s sadly underutilized.

Your light and dark sides can slash at light and dark enemy shots and destroy them, absorbing them as magical energy. The light and dark sides also have different effects for their magical spells, as well as their potions. And therein lies the problem: the dark side is really only good for the few puzzles that require it, and cheesing a few enemy types that hang out behind walls.

See, your light side’s bullets can go across the entire screen. Dark side? Half the screen, but can shoot through walls. So most of the time, it’s safer and easier to plink at enemies from far away than it is to get closer to them, with the only exception being if you need to shoot through walls. Likewise, your light side potions restore three hearts each. Great. Dark side? Increases your speed. Not so great. There’s no mechanical use for this, and dark side doesn’t seem to do any additional damage over the light, so 90% of the time you’ll likely be in light side for the range.

 

Get Explorin’

That said, it wouldn’t be a metroidvania if I didn’t talk about the exploration. This game features not one, but two maps, and they’re interlinked as well. Once you can go dark side, you can take portals into the dark world. This will lead you to portals back to the light world, to locations you otherwise could not access. That aspect of the light/dark gimmick is a welcome one, both because it gives you more to explore and helps set it apart from the plain old big sprawling map of other games in the genre.

The downside of this is mostly in the UI elements. You can’t zoom in or out on the map, which is a shame. You also only get 20 markers to place on said map, and they’re just blinking lights without any real signifier. If you forget what a particular marker means, good luck.

There’s also no way to track collectables you’re missing, which in a game this huge, is very much a bother. If you happened to locate a mystical egg but couldn’t pick it up because you didn’t have the right ability yet, and you didn’t mark it on your map, it’s effectively lost forever unless you scour the entire game, one map block at a time. And with 100 eggs in the game, you’re bound to miss one or two (or three or four or five). The game does automatically mark where shops and weapon upgrades are located, so a late-game unlock to mark where all the various collectables are would certainly be welcome.

Aggelos 2 Final Verdict

All that said, Aggelos 2 really does nail the metroidvania loop of explore, find new thing, explore more, find more new thing, rinse and repeat. It can be a little repetitive, especially given the amount of backtracking that needs to be done to find everything if you’re going for 100%. However, between the colorful graphics, the chiptune-esque music, and constant dopamine-drip flow of finding items, it’ll satisfy that metroidvania itch. Plus at the $20 USD price point, it’s not too much of an investment to get stuck in.

To hear me talk more about Aggelos 2, be sure to listen to the September 8th, 2026 episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast. around the 1:10:32 time stamp.

This review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy of Aggelos 2 provided by PQube for coverage purposes. It is also available on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.