Neon Abyss 2

1. Summary

Neon Abyss 2 is a 2D roguelike shooter, and 88% of the English reviews recommend it. Reviewers praise fast, chaotic runs, item synergies that snowball into absurd builds, the neon pixel art and the soundtrack. The first Neon Abyss is the reference point (38% of reviews bring it up), and many of those players call the sequel "Neon Abyss but better", pointing to online co-op, a much wider faith system, melee weapons and weapon leveling. Some also credit the Early Access patches with turning a rough start around.

Bugs and softlocks come up across the whole Early Access period. Online co-op draws praise and complaints in roughly equal measure: lag from connections routed through distant servers, desyncs, only the host unlocking things, and scrambles over shared loot. A vocal group of first-game veterans finds the new items and weapon upgrades flat and situational next to the old game's screen-filling builds, and busy fights can be hard to read. This verdict reads English reviews; Steam's all-language rating is Mostly Positive, well below the English share.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Fast, chaotic runs and builds that snowballHigh

Short reviews lean on "fun", "addicting" and "one more run", and one sums it up as "one more run turned into four hours. love it". Longer reviews point to the build-crafting: weapons scale off coins, bombs, eggs or jumps, items stack into combos, and a good run ends with the screen full of projectiles. Players describe the combat as smoother, faster and "chunkier" than the first game, and several single out the melee weapons as a new way to play: "Melee truly opens up more unique playstyles and it honestly feels amazing to use." Players who never reach that power curve are less taken with it.

More of the first game, and to most fans a better oneHigh

The sequel is judged against Neon Abyss 1 more than against any other game, and many of those comparisons favour it. Short reviews often just tell fans of the first game that they will like this one too, while longer ones list what was added: online co-op, more agents, faiths beyond the original two, melee weapons, a weapon leveling system, free cosmetics, and item descriptions you can read in-game instead of checking a wiki. One fan writes, "It's just more Neon Abyss, which is exactly what I wanted." Newcomers who never played the original enjoy it too, and a couple of reviewers say its mixed reviews nearly put them off buying it.

Neon pixel art and the soundtrackMedium

Bright neon pixel art, expressive boss designs and the electronic music get steady praise, with the soundtrack called killer, thumping or top notch. One reviewer lists "music is amazing... art is perfect", and another writes, "Holy jesus the music is stunning!" A few players push back. Some find the level music repetitive or too close to the first game's, a few suspect the character portraits are AI-generated and say they clash with the pixel art, and one finds the pop-culture references heavy-handed.

BossesMedium

Reviewers who bring up bosses mostly like them, and describe more of them, more varied and with better designs than in the first game. One credits a free Early Access DLC that added the first game's bosses with completing the package. Criticism is about fairness and pacing. Some attacks are hard to read (a boss called Trojan is named more than once), one first-floor boss feels unfair to newer players, one player dislikes bosses turning immune when they change phase, and a strong build can delete a boss in seconds, so there is little reason to learn the later phases. One reviewer puts it as "either have a broken build where boss takes less than 2 seconds to kill or you are going to spend 10 minutes there".

Faiths, weapon leveling and vaporizing spare weaponsMedium

The faith system, where you pick a "belief" that changes shops, gambling rooms and rewards for the run, replaces the first game's two-path setup, and one long review calls it "So so so so much better than NA1." Breaking down unwanted weapons to level up the one you are using is popular because no find is wasted: "now you'll no longer feel offended after letting a good weapon on the ground." Objections are few: one player calls the blessing and misfortune system "lame", and one long-time player says a late change makes switching faiths cost health again.

Frequent patches during Early AccessMedium

Some reviewers thank the developers for fast patches, from quick fixes in launch week to larger updates that reworked weapons and items. One calls it "a good example of Early Access done right", one changed their review from No to Yes after a patch, and another writes, "It's gotten a lot better since release, To a point where i can say its better than neon abyss 1." A negative review disagrees, saying new updates kept adding bugs while old ones stayed, and a couple of long-time players say specific balance patches made the game worse.

Fishing, gambling rooms and minigamesLow

The side activities, especially fishing and the gambling rooms, are a running joke in the short reviews ("Hardest thing in this game is to stop fishing"). One experienced player notes that fishing and other special rooms make it easy to break a run in your favour.

Runs well on Steam Deck and LinuxLow

Players on Steam Deck, Legion Go and Linux report smooth play, one at 90fps on Deck. One Deck player could not remap controls there.

Where players are split

Online co-opHigh

16% of reviews mention co-op or multiplayer by name, and they pull in both directions. Fans call it chaotic fun with friends and like that each player can explore rooms on their own. Complaints are specific and turn up across the whole period:

• Connections. At the Early Access launch some could not connect or rejoin a friend. Later reviews describe lobbies routed through servers far from both players, with one writing "games from aus to aus play on 300 ping with constant desyncs and dissconnects".
• Desyncs and run-ending bugs. Room desyncs and frozen characters forced some groups to restart runs.
• Unlocks and loot. One complaint is that "only the host can unlock things, including characters", and others dislike fighting over shared items: "Items aren't split between players, so you end up worrying about who rushes to grab which upgrade and hearts, etc." One player dislikes the instanced loot a later update brought in.
• Empty public lobbies. A couple of players looking for random partners found public lobbies quiet, though one still found people to play with.

Some players report the early connection problems were fixed quickly, and solo players note the co-op issues do not affect them.

Too close to the first gameMedium

Some fans want exactly "more of the same". Others say it plays like an expansion or "Neon Abyss 1.5" with recycled enemies and items, and that returning players have to unlock content they already knew all over again. One positive review that calls out the recycled content suggests buying it on sale, especially for players of the first game.

Difficulty and weapon balanceMedium

On difficulty, a few players find the default too forgiving and advise playing on hard, while others say solo bosses got harder than in the first game, or that the first few hours are rough even on easy. Weapon balance draws more agreement: reviewers describe a few weapons as dominant and many as weak ("Weapon balancing is just completely all over the place"), and some say the sword character Saya outclasses the other starting agents.

Hatchmon petsMedium

The pet system was reworked so that eggs hatch into small "baby" Hatchmon that must be combined into a full one. Some players love collecting and evolving them. Critics, many of them first-game veterans, find it slower and weaker than the old unique pets ("realistically you will need about 5-6 baby hatchimons before getting enough to make a full one"), dislike reviving downed pets, and say a big swarm of them clutters the screen.

Meta-progression and unlocksMedium

Players like the amount to unlock: agents, weapons, tasks, an evolution tree, cosmetics. The complaints are about what is locked: basic functions sit behind the grind ("Essential game functions should not be locked behind meta-progression"), the tree forces you to buy everything on one page before seeing the next, and some say newly unlocked weapons rarely show up in runs, though another reviewer disputes that. Free-weekend players were split between progress feeling too quick and run resources vanishing at the end of every run.

What frustrates players

Bugs and softlocksHigh

Bug reports appear throughout Early Access, from launch week to the last months. Softlocks come up again and again: getting stuck in NPC dialogue ("Keep getting stuck in NPCs interactions"), rooms that stay locked after every enemy is dead, a shrine that froze the run, unlootable rewards in a treasure room, and the interface turning white or unresponsive. Others report crashes, a handheld PC crashing after the first boss, and controller input lag that was later fixed. One negative review says "every update keeps adding more and more bugs, while all the old ones go unfixed." Some positive reviewers met few or no bugs, or treat the ones they hit as expected in Early Access.

Flat items and weapon upgradesMedium

27% of the negative reviews (15 of 56) say items and upgrades are weak, situational or dull. They cite the same examples: a shield that triggers when an egg hatches, which only happens after a room is cleared, items that give one crystal for breaking a rock, and upgrades phrased as a chance that something "may" happen. Critics say most upgrades feed pets, wisps or bombs instead of changing how the gun fires, and miss the first game's stacking projectiles and the way items changed your character's look. One veteran writes, "Powerups are few and far between and each one barely affects you." Most of these complaints were written in the first two weeks of Early Access, and some later reviews, including one of the harshest early critics, say item bans and reworks improved things.

Visual clutter, hard-to-read attacks and floaty movementMedium

When builds get big, players lose track of their character, enemy shots and their own pets. "Visual clarity is abysmal, as it was in the first game," one reviewer writes, and others say they could not tell what hit them or when they took damage. Movement adds to it: several want a dodge or a way to fall faster ("No dodge roll/teleport/parry/slide or even just a simple slam move to get to the ground quicker"), and one cites the lack of invincibility frames.

Stutter and performance at the Early Access launchLow

In launch week several players hit regular micro-stutters that got them hit mid-fight, and one later edited their review to say the stuttering was fixed. One player reports the main menu using nearly all of their GPU with few graphics settings to turn down.

Untranslated text and typosLow

Item descriptions left in Chinese, flashes of untranslated text and English grammar errors were reported, almost all in the first two weeks of Early Access.

Confusing hub and menusLow

Some players find the starting area awkward: "The starter area seems to have absolutely no use other than to inconvenience you as you have to run from one side of the building to the other to begin a run." Others mention bland menus, rewards that give no sound or animation, and the lack of an "accept all" button. One reviewer likes the hub itself as a place to explore.

No couch co-op or achievementsLow

A handful of players ask for local co-op ("no couch play is crazy really would love to play with my partner...."). Others missed Steam achievements during Early Access or per-character completion marks.

3. The player conversation

Two kinds of review make up the conversation: a large number of short, enthusiastic ones ("fun", "addicting", "better than the first") and a smaller set of long, detailed critiques, mostly from veterans of the first game. Both measure the sequel against Neon Abyss 1. 54% of the negative reviews mention it, usually to say something was lost: unique pets, items that changed your look, builds that broke the game.

In the Early Access launch week, 79% of the 103 reviews were positive. Most of the complaints about flat items, along with almost all the translation and stutter reports, date from the first two weeks. For the rest of Early Access the positive share stayed near 90%, some later reviewers say updates fixed what bothered them, and positive reviews from every stretch of the period push back against the game's "Mixed" Steam rating. Bug reports and co-op complaints did not fade the same way: they show up from the first month to the last.

What a reviewer raises depends on how they play. Negative reviews written within an hour or two of play name a room that would not open, a white interface, unreadable attacks or co-op latency, or simply dismiss the game as the first one again. Veterans with many hours in the first game write most of the long item and balance critiques, and some of the sequel's heaviest players complain about specific patches that changed builds they relied on. A free weekend in June 2026 brought in newcomers whose notes are about the confusing hub, NPC dialogue softlocks and how progression works. Only two reviews were written after 1.0: one short positive one, and one complaining that the game now requires accepting terms of service before playing.

4. What the developers could do

1. Fix the softlocks and test patches for regressions. Players keep getting stuck in dialogue, in cleared rooms or at shrines, and one negative review says updates added new bugs without fixing old ones.
2. Make online co-op connections reliable. One Australian player reports 300 ping to another Australian because of how sessions are routed, and others describe desyncs and failed rejoins that end runs.
3. Let every co-op player earn unlocks and get a fair share of loot. Host-only unlocks and fights over shared items are the co-op complaints that remain once the connection works.
4. Give more items and weapon upgrades a direct effect on the gun. Negative reviews point to situational, chance-based items and upgrades that feed pets and wisps instead of changing how weapons fire.
5. Improve readability in busy fights. Players ask for clearer boss telegraphs, a way to fade pets and effects, and a dodge or fast-fall to answer bullet-heavy rooms.
6. Even out weapon and agent balance. Reviewers describe a few dominant weapons and one standout agent next to many weapons that are not worth picking up, which also makes boss fights swing between seconds and slogs.
7. Move basic functions out of the unlock grind. Players want the evolution tree to unlock new rooms and items, not core mechanics, and to allow choosing upgrades instead of buying out each page.
8. Add local co-op. Couch co-op is a small but repeated request from players who want to play with a partner on one screen.