Game: Aggelos 2
Genre: Action, Adventure.
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam (Windows), Xbox and PlayStation)
Developer|Publisher: Wonder Bobi | PQube, PixelHeart
Age Rating: EU 7 | US Everyone
Price: US $18.99 | UK 16.99 | EU € 18,99
Release Date: August 27th, 2026
Review code provided with many thanks to PQube.
Aggelos 2 – From the Shadow Realm
Sometimes a game arrives that you weren’t particularly expecting, and suddenly you’re rather pleased to see it. Aggelos 2 was one of those games for me. The original Aggelos appeared on Switch and other platforms several years ago, and I remember being quite excited about it because it wore its Wonder Boy influences very proudly. As someone with a rather large soft spot for Wonder Boy in Monster World on ye old Mega Drive, that was always going to get my attention.
The original wasn’t perfect, though. I enjoyed it, but I came away feeling that there was plenty of room for improvement. So when Aggelos 2 appeared seemingly out of nowhere, I was pleasantly surprised. Even better, it feels like the developers have taken another crack at the formula and actually learned a few lessons along the way. The result is a bigger, more ambitious adventure that I think makes for a considerably better experience.
Take Flight
Aggelos 2 takes place several hundred years after the events of the original game, which is a sensible decision because it means you don’t necessarily need to have played the first game to understand what’s going on. You play as an Aggelos, essentially a powerful angelic warrior, who gets caught up in another rather unfortunate bout of evil taking over the world. Your character becomes corrupted and gains a dark form, giving you access to both an angel and demon form. And this is where the game gets interesting. Rather than simply giving you a new transformation for the sake of it, the two forms are incorporated into the exploration, combat and puzzles.
There are effectively two versions of the world to explore, with the light and dark realms overlapping each other. It gives Aggelos 2 a little bit of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past flavour, particularly when you’re switching between worlds to work out where you’re supposed to go next. The story doesn’t get in the way. Dialogue is generally short and sweet, allowing you to get back to the important business of hitting things with a sword.
Getting to the Good Stuff Quickly
One thing I particularly appreciated about Aggelos 2 is how quickly it gets going. You start off relatively helpless, wings burned off and no equipment, but you’re soon collecting new abilities and equipment. There’s a ranged magic attack, your sword, different spells, the ability to interact with various forms of energy and eventually the rather excellent ability to fly or horizontally glide. The latter genuinely surprised me because I expected it to arrive much later. Instead, Aggelos 2 seems quite happy to hand you the good stuff early and let you have fun with it. The gliding ability is particularly useful for getting across gaps and navigating hazards, and it controls rather well. You gradually build up a decent collection of tools, and the game does a good job of making you think about how they can be used.
Combat is straightforward but satisfying. Your sword isn’t simply there for hitting enemies either, as it can also interact with certain projectiles and objects. Switching between your light and dark forms adds another little layer to the combat and exploration. It all feels surprisingly natural once you’ve got everything available.
Two worlds, Plenty to Explore
Aggelos 2 gives you two sizeable maps to explore, with the light and dark realms offering their own enemies, obstacles and secrets. There are dungeons, bosses, hidden areas and plenty of reasons to wander away from the obvious route. The level design is probably one of my favourite aspects of the game. Platform placement generally feels deliberate, and you can tell some thought has gone into how your newly acquired abilities will interact with the environment. That said, this is also where I occasionally found myself getting a little lost.
There is a map, thankfully, and it does provide some useful clues about areas you haven’t explored. You can also teleport between certain points, which helps considerably. Even so, Aggelos 2 does enjoy making you wander backwards and forwards while trying to remember where that one suspicious-looking gap was that you couldn’t reach earlier. Personally, I don’t mind a bit of exploration, but there were moments where I wouldn’t have complained about a slightly more obvious nudge in the right direction. The dungeons could also perhaps have benefited from a few more checkpoints. Having to make a longer journey back after dying isn’t exactly my favourite retro tradition.
The Same Retro Look
Visually, Aggelos 2 is very much continuing the style established by its predecessor. We’re talking colourful 16-bit-inspired pixel art, detailed sprites and a variety of different environments. There’s a nice contrast between the light and dark worlds, and the enemy designs can get suitably strange. There are flying creatures, dinosaurs, devils and all sorts of things wandering around waiting to ruin your day. It looks good. However, I did find myself wishing the sequel had pushed the visual presentation a little further. Considering the gap between the two games, I expected to see a more noticeable evolution. Instead, it feels very much like an expanded version of the original’s visual style. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you liked the first game’s appearance, but I couldn’t help feeling that Aggelos 2 could have done a little more here. The soundtrack is similar. It fits the retro aesthetic nicely, but some tracks are reused, and I didn’t find the music particularly memorable. Again, it’s perfectly serviceable, but I was hoping for a little more evolution from the original.
Niggles
I’ve only got a handful of real complaints about Aggelos 2. The occasional backtracking can become a little tiresome, particularly as the two worlds open up and the number of possible routes increases. I also encountered some strange moments of stuttering while playing on Switch. On one occasion, the game appeared to briefly display what looked like a little broken-chain symbol, which was rather odd considering I was playing a single-player game. It didn’t totally ruin the experience, and hopefully it’s something that can be tidied up with a patch.
Conclusion: Flying High
I came away from Aggelos 2 considerably happier than I did from the original. That’s probably the biggest compliment I can give it. It takes the foundation of the first game, expands the world, adds the light and dark forms, improves the exploration and gives you more abilities to play around with, which I feel is fine. Most importantly, it feels like a proper sequel rather than simply another game wearing the same clothes.
If you enjoy old-school action-platformers, Metroidvania-style exploration or, like me, have a particular weakness for the old Wonder Boy games, there’s plenty here to enjoy. Is it better than Wonder Boy in Monster World? I’m still not prepared to commit that particular act of heresy. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. But I do think Aggelos 2 is better than its predecessor, and that’s enough for me. It’s colourful, straightforward, occasionally challenging and packed with that old-school sense of exploration that I enjoy. It has a few rough edges, but nothing that stopped me from wanting to keep playing. For me, Aggelos 2 is a recommendation and perhaps the sequel that Aggelos needed to really find its feet.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot 
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