Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince Review – Another Blooming Adventure

Modern homages to classic video games often go one of two ways: They either stick close to the gameplay conventions to which they are paying tribute, or they expand the original games’ styles in meaningful and innovative ways. Blossom Tales II – The Minotaur Prince follows the same blueprint as its 2017 predecessor. Blossom Tales II, despite its lack of innovation captures many of the most acclaimed parts of one of the best video games ever made. It also delivers an enjoyable, retro-oriented adventure that is worth the effort.

When Lily, the player character, accidentally releases the Minotaur Queen, she quickly abducts her brother. Unless Lily is able to stop this monstrous mythological ruler, there will be a new darkness. In order to do this, Lily must venture out from Blossomdale and trek through haunted mansions, swamplands, and deserts filled with monsters. Each biome has its own challenges and threats, which I find fascinating. The exploration feels intuitive and natural, taking you from one screen into the next. It was a tribute to both the open world design and its dungeons that I never felt lost in my playthrough.

Although I enjoyed the process, I never felt well-rewarded for my efforts. Even though I had enough gold coins to spend, treasure was often offered in return for completion of the most challenging caverns. Rarely, I was given a heart part to increase my health. However, these were very rare and you only need 4 to make it exciting. Still, that didn’t stop me from bombing every cracked wall, collecting every item, and fishing every pond.

Blossom Tales II carries on the series’ hallmark of well-crafted dungeon experiences. Much like the world, the game’s dungeons flow well from room to room, and give you the right number of clues to progress without much frustration. A late labyrinth may be my favourite due to the combination of difficult combat and head-scratching questions. However, the dungeons have a fantastic design that includes minecart tracks and changing water levels.

Blossom Tales II’s simple combat lacks the sophistication and smoothness of other top-down action games, but it makes up for it by giving you a wealth of items and powerups. You’ll find genre staples such as a boomerang and bow in your inventory very early. A yo-yo which acts as a hookshot, and a guitar that you can play spell-inducing music on are also available. Although these items can be used in interesting ways and are satisfying, I wasn’t too excited by how many times I had to stop the action to map another item to my face buttons.

The story uses an unreliable narrator convention as it’s told to children Lily and Chrys, who also serve as the two main characters of the adventure. On occasion, the kids will fight over what they want to happen, and it’s up to you to decide what to do. While I love being able select the type of enemy I want to face or solve the puzzle, this unique storytelling method is often overlooked and reduced to secondary decisions.

Blossom Stories II is not afraid to show its Zelda roots. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Nintendo’s legendary franchise, it does smooth over many of the early-‘90s design conventions present in games like A Link to the Past to deliver an adventure able to be enjoyed by players of all ages and experience levels. Blossom Tales 2 is better than the original and I’m looking forward to seeing more adventures from Lily and Chrys along with their grandfather in the future.