Deadly Neighbors 2 (DN2) is a new strategy game by Nerdook, a prolific developer who mainly sticks to Kongregate! I remember when the original Deadly Neighbors came out and I thought it was one of the best games Nerdook had developed. Deadly Neighbors 2 lives up to its predecessor and does things in much the same fashion, but also brings a few new concepts to the table that make this game even better than the original. In this game, much like the last, your goal is to kill all of your neighbors in combat, using swords, guns and various projectiles, along with special abilities that really spice up the game. Deadly Neighbors 2 also makes good use of the Kongregate API and at the end of the game you can verse other families made by Kongregate users and even upload your! If you’re looking for an awesome strategy game to spend a bit of time on then this is your game!

Deadly Neighbors 2

DN2 has a very unique difficulty to it and it is very customizable. Many of the enemies are well balanced, although, there were a couple of enemies that I had trouble with such as the units that had the ability to do chain-hits, most likely because of my melee-only team though. Maybe, a bit more behind the scenes of the combat is where we see the true customizability of this game. After every battle, you have the ability to grant one upgrade point to a unit. Depending upon which class you are wanting to upgrade there are different upgrades. One of my favorite features of the game is to “re-roll” the enemy units. This means that if there is a family that you can’t beat, then you can “re-roll” and a new family will appear. I really like this feature because it is hard to get stuck in the game. At some point, in some games, you’ll run across a level where you might have to change all of your units, or you might have to grind a bit to upgrade your units to finally defeat the enemies on a specific level, but with DN2 you find that you can simply “re-roll” to generate a team that you can more easily beat. This is a both a nice feature and a bad one – instead of making you work a bit and figure out how to beat a tough team you can simple hit the re-roll button and you can find a team weaker than yours. This, unfortunately, takes a bit of the difficulty out of the game.

Similar to what you’d expect in most turn-based strategy games, you control a small group of warriors and can move and attack with then every turn. The battles themselves were quite basic, which was good, but one thing that really stood out for me were the different abilities. This was a fun addition to the game that turned many of the simple battles into something a bit more complex. One that is utilized many times throughout the game is fire. My only complaint about the fire ability, was that sometimes it was hard to see if your unit truly was on fire, as the fire appears underneath your character. One of the best features of the game, in my mind, were the different classes. I really liked how you could buy many different classes and then upgrade them to your liking. What was impressive, was that every class had fifteen different upgrades, which truly made each unit unique and customizable. My only complaint about the game is that during the game, you only have enough gold to buy one good class (40 gold) and then there wasn’t enough levels to really buy anything else for the rest of the campaign. Luckily though, you could verse other user’s families using the Kongregate API, but I felt that you should at least be able to achieve a bit more in the campaign.

Deadly Neighbors 2

One of the biggest changes is the artwork. If you’ve played a few of Nerdook games then you know the classic look of his characters which have been used in almost all, if not all, of his games. This time around there are big changes to the way the characters look and how fluid their animations are. I really like the new style. While the art is obviously done is much the same way, Nerdook still captures the look of his classic characters. The new animations is very smooth looking and the idling stances loop well. My only complaint as far as artwork goes are the houses. Maybe it’s just a weird angle to be looking at them. I also found the tiles, just outside of the houses to not be lines up very well. The main problem, in my eyes, is that the characters are side-view and everything else is top-down. This makes the game look odd, but I really didn’t pay too much attention until now, when I actually began looking around. Overall, the characters look very good and I like the new style, but the perspective is off in some places.

I thought that the music for this game was done very well. The music for the map, I believe was featured in K.O.L.M 1 or K.O.L.M 2. I always liked that track. It sounds very mysterious and dark. I don’t really know if that fits the description of this game though. This game is bloody and colorful. Maybe it’s only because I’ve seen this music work so well in another game that it’s hard to feel like it fits in with this game. I still like the track though, and always love listening to it, but another, more energetic tracks would have been more effective, in my mind. The battle music worked well and fit in with the game. Compared to the music, the sound effects were very quiet. I liked this and felt that it was a good way to go. I’d rather listen to music then the hack and slash of swords every couple of seconds. Overall, the music was very good, but a better choice for the map menu could have been made.

All in all, Deadly Neighbors 2 is one of the best strategy games I’ve played in a while. I love games like these and when they are done so well, I can’t help but love them. If you enjoyed the original Deadly Neighbor, or just love strategy games then you’ll love Deadly Neighbors 2. In review, the game was difficult at times, but I’d love to see the game become even more difficult. The gameplay was unique to some degree. While many of us have seen similar strategy games, Nerdook always finds ways to make his games original and he does that with a large amount of classes and abilities which spice-up the game and keep it interesting even after the campaign is complete. The artwork has been totally redone and I love the new style. It manages to capture the look and feel of many of Nerdook’s previous games, but also brings in more fluid animation and smoother character design. Finally, the music worked well with the game, but the choice for the map menu could have been changed to something with a bit more energy. To conclude, this is one of the best, recent, strategy games and is definitely one of the best Nerdook games. Be sure to check out the game today on Kongregate!

Play Deadly Neighbors 2 on Kongregate!