A fast-paced shooter, yet only average overall.
The eight levels of the game are divided into two different types, where you either ride on a futuristic motorcycle or jump and shoot your way through the levels.
While on the motorcycle, the game scrolls automatically to the right and you shoot at everything in your way. You also have to jump a lot to avoid being hit or falling down into pits. You pick up items that power-up your weapon, re-energize your health or which let you transform into the “Armorator”, a hovering version of your motorcycle.
The other levels are very simple jump and shoot parts. On your way through these levels you can rescue your captured team-mates. At the end of each of those stages you’ll have to defeat a boss.
After you’ve rescued a team-mate, you can switch between them in the motorcycle levels.
You’ll have to destroy robots, “Noza” soldiers, metal-balls which shoot stuff at you, etc. The bosses you will encounter are some kind of “Noza” commanders.
The controls in the motorcycle levels feel good and responsive. In the other parts it could have been better…the jumping feels a little awkward and it isn’t nearly as much fun as riding the motorcycle.
About the graphics: There’s nothing to special about it. The animations are good; the backgrounds are OK (though they are always the same in the jump’n shoot parts). There are better looking SMS games, but a lot more which are worse looking.
There are only very few tunes. They don’t really become annoying, yet there could have been more. The sounds are standard for games of that time.
Once you figure out certain patterns of your enemies and the bosses, the game becomes quite easy. It’s also very short and all that explains the low replay-value rating. Still, the game is fun to play and you’ll probably play through it more than once.
Some bad critic goes about the jump’n shoot parts. They are very boring and, as mentioned before, the graphics could have been designed more detailed and different from each other. The word “boring” also describes the overall gameplay…there could have been more ideas implemented into the game. Fortunately, the game’s short so that isn’t really such a bad thing.
Every shooter fan who owns a SMS should try out Zillion II when he or she gets a chance to do so. It’s worth playing.