Contact Monument Valley 2 Support

As a huge fan of he original MV, there seemed to be a distinct difference in the effort put into the original and the sequel; MV2’s settings, for example, were a bit too simple for my taste. The settings in MV seemed to do a better job of creating a clear vision of what the fictional setting of “Monument Valley” looked like with its tower complexes, waterfalls, meadows, cliffs, and ancient catacombs (one of my favorite parts of the original). The detail of those settings really involves the player more in the story about restoring the Sacred Geometry to restore the valley. MV2, however, consists of overly-simple settings, most of which are literally just a floating block in the middle of a plain background (comparable to the levels in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker), where’s in MV you’re scaling actual mountainsides, climbing actual towers, and exploring actual cave complexes. MV2 could have at least given us a waterfall or something in the background to look at and remind us that “Monument Valley” even exists as a setting (the level Botanical Gardens especially did not at all give off any “garden” vibes when it definitely could have). Not to be completely negative, I did love the level where you’re inside Totem; that was pretty awesome. P.S. This is all without mentioning that it literally took me, like, an hour to beat the game, and most puzzles can be solve by simple trial-and-error methods (with a couple of exceptions, to be fair)

I love monument valley, I really do. But what has happened to the cleverness, the difficulty, the head scratching puzzles that made the first game what it was? The first game had a main story, forgotten shores, and idas dream. There were some hard puzzles in the main story, harder puzzles in shores, and the hardest puzzles in idas dream. Each section of the game built off the last in terms of difficulty, in the way platforms would move, in the way the world would visually bend to your finger. Monument 2 is completely devoid of any challenge whatsoever. Some levels of the game have proactively no puzzle whatsoever, and you’re limited not by your ability to think in the MC Escher world, but by the walking speed of the character. The recent “expansion” (I use this term very loosely) for the game got me excited. Wow, 4 new levels since the game was released! They’ve had all this time to think of clever puzzles and unique ways the world can hide a solution. Imagine my disappointment when it wasn’t 4 levels, but rather one level with 4 transitions, and that it has the same difficulty as the third level of monument 2. The difficulty of the puzzles was never something anyone complained about in 1, so it makes no sense to me why it was removed. I know monument valley 3 is in the works- I sincerely hope that it won’t become the boated brain-dead mess that 2 is.

As a huge fan of the first game and forgotten shores, this second installment did nothing to raise the standard set by the first. The art and music were on point, but the levels themselves were shorter, simpler, and far less intriguing than those in the first. The difficulty/complexity of the first game made it rewarding to play and also increased the playtime such that retrospectively I’d have happily paid twice the asking price to download the first... on the other hand I’d tell anyone who hasn’t played these to only buy the first and forgotten shores and skip MV2 (or play it first). MV2 also seemed to have a smaller set of puzzle mechanics. Typically in this game you are limited to rotating platforms and sliding platforms. In MV1 you had these, but you also manipulated the entire map relative to camera angle, redirected water flows, channeled bird people to/from switches etc. The only new mechanic in this game was having two characters that you could direct which ultimately functioned as an easier version of the NPC birds or smaller version of the block friend you work with. In short, the first game had puzzles, clever mechanics, presented a challenge and had a compelling storyline. MV2 felt like a reader rabbit game; a children’s interactive storybook with simple references to the original. The first game involved multiple sessions of play, this one I finished in under an hour.