Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus (GBA)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus (GBA)

Making a stealth game with the ninja turtles ? Great idea and it's had an awesome execution.

Genre(s):	Action Platformer Stealth
Platform(s):	Game Boy Advance
Release:	NA: October 19, 2004 EU: November 20, 2004
Developer(s):	Konami
Publisher(s):	Konami
Country:	Japan
Predecessor:	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Successor:	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus is a stealth-action-platformer released for Game Boy Advance in Autumn of 2004. It differs significantly in many respects from its console and PC cousin, as it is a 2D game that focuses more on stealth (especially before the player collects the Turtles' weapons on each stage), and features massively different levels, enemies, and bosses.

Why It's The True Battle

First off, the idea of a stealth game with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great idea, since they are ninjas and in some media, they do infiltrate some places, and the best thing is that it's very well executed here, and this game has many good ideas that will be explained below.
The graphics are as good, if not better than the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the GBA, as it's very detailed and has graphics that almost look like HD, kind of like Mega Man Zero.
- The sprite work in particular is extremely awesome and looks like it's come from a DS game, especially the sprites for the turtles; it even looks as good as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare on DS, and for a 2004 GBA game, it's great. This might be because the DS version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare uses the sprites of this game.
- The colors are also very colorful, just like the console versions, with it being as vibrant as the first game on GBA, and its color palette is very well used due to the colors being colorful.
- Again, the graphics are faithful to the art style of the 2003 series, going from the colorful environments to the art style of the game.
The soundtrack is really amazing, even for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game; in fact, many of the songs will make you want to dance, much like the console versions, which also have a great soundtrack, and just like it's predecessor, it's had no bad or mediocre music, and it's also very catchy to listen to for a long time.
- It's also got a disco music feeling in some of them, such as in Base Levels 1 and 2, where it's really good and also sounds like disco music for the most part.
- The music in this game also barely sounds compressed, even when compared to the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA, which also has an amazing soundtrack.
- The soundtrack on the first-person shooting stages is awesome too and feels like disco music, barely compressed.
- The rendition of the music from the console versions is also extremely good for a GBA game, especially the Shredder theme, and due to the music style of this port being different, it's actually like a different soundtrack for most parts. This shows how great the soundtrack of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus is.
The controls are very tight; even for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, despite the jump being a bit clunky, the game is designed with it, which makes this not a major problem.
- The controls are also responsive; just like in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for GBA, even the jump is responsive.
- This is one of the reasons why this port is better than the console versions, as it's had a bit better difficulty balance (even if it might be too hard or frustrating sometimes), and there are plenty of other reasons why this game is better than its console counterpart.
The length is an improvement over the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA, with this game taking 5 hours to beat it, and the challenging difficulty will padding the length of the game in a good way compared to most games that do that.
While the idea to search your weapon in all the levels isn't really a great idea (see BQ#1), it's still a good sense of stealth elements in a game, and it isn't really a bad thing, except in some levels, such as in Feudal Japan.
Just like the first game based on the 2003 series on GBA, there are infinite continues, making this game much easier to restart levels again and again.
- This also helps very much since the game is not easy and can be very hard on many occasions, although not as much as its console counterpart.
Awesome boss fight for the most parts that are very challenging and most of them are fun, and for the most parts, they are also balanced as it is not impossible to beat them once you learn their way to attack and their patterns.
It actually makes a few improvements over the console versions:
- First off, the controls, which were mentioned in WITTB #4,
- The game has a more balanced difficulty than its console counterpart, as it's challenging but fair, and the boss fights are less frustrating too.
- Having stealth elements and combining them with the platform action game genre
- having fewer glitches than its console counterpart, and the list goes on.
There's a lot of variaty in the gameplay; for the most part, it is mostly a platform action game that combines stealth elements, but there is also a shoot-em-up genre and vehicule genre in some levels, making the game varied, just like the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA, which was also very varied.
- The vehicle levels are also as awesome as the main action levels, with a lot of fun to be had, challenging and balanced difficulty along with some non-stop action, and your ninja turtles can jump in order to throw shurikens at enemies.
- The first-person-shooting stages in some levels are also awesome in this game (maybe even more than in the first game), as it is very fun to play and you don't go straight for most parts but are also in space, making this genre awesome along with the great mystique playing on these stages.
- The shoot 'em up stages, while not as good as in the first game (which had only one stage with this genre), are still awesome and extremely fun to play, just like the vehicles, first-person shooting, and stealth action platformer stages, as they have very responsive and tight controls, along with a lot of action that is fun.
Again, just like the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA along with the console versions of Battle Nexus, this game is very faithful to the 2003 series.
Due to the stealth elements of the game, it is often considered to be the Metal Gear Solid of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The final boss fight with Shredder and Mega Shredder is very epic; despite the fact that the fight is easy, it's also much more balanced than his horrible console version counterpart.
The 100% is less unfair than in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA, as the crystals are much easier to find and you won't really get any trouble if you know a level where they are hidden. In fact, 100% is much more fun than in the first game (despite the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on GBA being even better than this game).
All the turtles have different attacks and controls, and they are all awesome to play, despite they being a bit downgraded from the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA.
- Leonardo is once again very fun to play with, and his sword is very strong and can destroy a lot of blocks that contain crystals in them. He is also the most useful for most, if not all, of the boss fights.
- Raphael is also very fun to play because, again, his weapon is very strong and deals a lot of damage (slightly more than Leonardo), and he's also fast.
- Michelangelo, while he isn't the best turtle to play, unlike the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA, is still as awesome to play as the said game, and his charching attack is useful to get a lot of crystals that are hidded in blocks when these are in a tight place.
- Donatello, while not as fun as the other, is still as decent as he was in the first game on GBA, and he can access some areas where the other turtles can't get in. He also has a strong weapon, just like the other.
There is now a map where you can choose your level after you beat one, unlike the first game where you must do all the levels or quit the game to see the levels that you have done with that specific turtle. Here you can choose the level you want to play.
- Also, you can play with any of the turtles you want in a specific level, compared to the first game where there's chapters for every turtle. Here, the levels are open to all the turtles, and there'sn't a level where you play as a specific character.

Bad Qualities

Having to search for your weapon at each level again and again can be very annoying, especially in the later levels of the game.
- It's also doesn't help that the shurikens are underpowered and are very useless on many levels, especially in Frudal Japan.
- This was done to make the game have more stealth elements, but while it's not a terrible idea, it can be painful in later levels, as said before.
Some of the levels can be incredibly difficult for poor or weird reasons, such as most of the levels in Feudal Japan.
Despite the soundtrack being amazing, the continue screen theme, while not bad or terrible, can be a bit scary for a younger audience.
- Some of the music can also sound repetitive, such as the first level of Feudal Japan, although not that much, and due to how amazing the soundtrack of the game is, it can sometimes barely have any impact on the quality of its music.
- The music of the first-person shooting levels, while great as said before, sounds a bit similar to the Astro Man stage from Mega Man 8.
The translations for some of the cutscenes, especially in the French translation, are bad for the most part. In the French translation, they say "nous devenons rentrer a la maison" instead of "nous devons rentrer a la maison", which might be possibly because these were rushed, kind of like the rushed English translation of Mega Man X6.
Making 100%, while not as painful as the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on GBA based on the 2003 series, is still too hard to get 100% when you don't know the game, making the search for the crystals sometimes painful.
- Some of them even require a specific character for getting into an area where all of the turtles except the one you can go in are unable to get in, making it hard to know what character you have to play as.
- Most of the boss fights also have this problem, as there are crystals that you have to collect in these boss battles, but the problem is that you can get hit by the bosses when trying to get them, or you don't have enough time to get all of them, forcing you to restart the boss fight just to collect these missing crystals.
The jump can be a bit clunky at times, and the controls also take a little time to get used to.
The cutscenes are still images with dialogue, and most of them are extremely long, such as the intro, where it's nearly 15 minutes to read everything, making this a chore for the longplayers that include all the cutscenes, especially for those who aren't that patient.
For the most skilled players out there, the game is still as short (if not even shorter) as the console versions, and it can take 4 or even 3 hours to beat the entire game if you're skilled enough.
Some levels can take a long time to be completed, mostly due to the explorations for some of them or even the stealth elements that can drag on for too long.

Reception

Unlike the console versions, where it received mixed to negative reviews by critics, this port received mixed to positive reviews by critics and players alike, with a 65/100 score in Metacritic.

Trivia

The soundfond of this game is somewhat similar to the one used for Sonic Advance, which came out in 2001. This is especially noticeable in the Shredder theme.
This game is the only Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that has stealth-based gameplay.
This is one of the last 2D platformer games with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as Mutant Nightmare on DS was the last until Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Danger of the Ooze came out in 2014, almost a decade after Mutant Nightmare came out on DS.