It’s time for another Bomberman adventure! This is one fighter that you can’t keep down. Well, it’s definitely a cool idea to have Max get his own sub series here. Bomberman gets a cameo at the beginning and he does help out in some puzzle levels but that’s really about it for him. This time it’s Max’s show as you go through the levels and try to defeat all of the enemy robots.

There isn’t much of a story here though. It starts out with the villain turning Bomberman and his friend Max into a mini size. It’s definitely put them in a very dangerous position but fortunately the villains run off rather than pressing the advantage which worked out for the heroes. There is surprisingly not an ending cutscene so it seems to get that you probably have to 100% the game or something like that. Each world does have a ton of levels and most of them aren’t actually required but it’s not like you’re skipping them. So let me explain the setup of how this works.

When you complete a level, 2-3 portals appear. Each one will take you to another level within the world but they don’t say which ones they are. So you will go from 1-1 to 1-4 for example. Then after that you go to 1-6 or 1-3. Some portals take you backwards while others take you forwards. As a result it’s pretty much luck based. The portals themselves don’t change but at least on the first playthrough you wouldn’t know which is which. When you complete a level, the portal taking you back to that stage turns red so at least you don’t run the risk of beating the same level twice by mistake. Now that would have been annoying.

The game actually remembers your progress so if you do have to go back to an old level, the portals are still there rather than having to clear the objective again. That’s definitely a good feature, it means that at least if I ever did go back to try and 100% clear it, it wouldn’t feel like an impossible challenge. Of course this is all me assuming that there is a bonus ending. For all I know it’s just an illustration or it unlocks the credits although I’d be willing to bet that it is a true cutscene.

The graphics here are pretty good. The character models are on point and the artstyle for the GBA was good. The soundtrack is also fairly good. I wouldn’t say it’s anything too noteworthy but at the same time it’s fast paced enough to work with all of the explosions. The game itself is fairly short at around 4 hours or so. I actually went ahead and beat it all in one shot, mainly because my game’s save feature was busted. So I’m actually a bit lucky that it wasn’t longer at 10 hours or something like that.

Naturally the game will usually have a working save file so I wouldn’t hold that against the title. Also I didn’t talk much about the gameplay yet. Like I said, it’s basically a puzzle title. Each level will give you an objective like find all of the food or destroy all of the spiders. Once you do that then the portals open up which will take you to the next level. You start out with all 3 of your stats at 0, speed, bomb range, and # of bombs that can be used at once. As you blow things up you get power ups to make your stats stronger to a max of 4 in each stat.

when you get a game over your stats go back to 1 in all categories on the retry. So while it’s great that you have unlimited continues on the same level, it does mean that it can be tough at first. One level had me stumped for a long while because it was super hard to win with 1 stats but eventually I pulled it off. For the most part the bosses are a lot easier than the levels because of how huge they are. It’s really easy to tag them with explosions but the final boss is an exception. He has so many different forms and power ups that it’s really hard to stay one step ahead of him. That one took me a few different attempts.

So in the end the gameplay was good but not quite enough to make up for the game basically skipping the story entirely. The way the stages have randomized objectives each time is interesting and I like the idea of level trees where you don’t know what you’re going but not if it means that you’ll miss out on an ending. There should at least be a basic cutscene after each world. Also the game feels unfinished in some ways. The main example I have is the monsters that you can summon.

They actually have levels and stats that increase as you pick up collectibles and defeat enemies but they don’t seem to matter in the actual gameplay. Each monster does have a special ability like letting you pick up extra bombs but the ability doesn’t change or improve as you level it up. So I couldn’t figure out what the level ups were doing. They seemed to be completely pointless which is odd. Maybe it’s for a different mode but in that case there’s not much reason to include that in the story. The Gamecube game had “Pokemon Battles” mixed in with the bomb puzzles so it made sense there but that doesn’t happen here. Guess it’s a bit of a mystery for now.

Overall, Bomberman Max 2 is a good game but one that could use some quality of life updates. I think you should get a proper ending when you beat the game even if you get a true ending of sorts for doing everything. Having unlimited continues is great but having to get the power ups again can be a little rough. Still, the puzzle gameplay is on point and the levels are designed well. You really get to make the most out of the bombs that you have and it always feels satisfying to complete the levels. It’s not an easy game by any means so you really have to work for it.

Overall 6/10