Our Verdict
Booned by a timelessly pretty art style and fulfilling adventure structure, Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter is a beautiful, sprawling hack-and-slash soulslike let down by its overly forgiving combat.
Spurred by his father’s untimely death, Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter sees Arlo, the little rat that could, setting out on a sprawling fantasy hack-and-slash adventure. With a strong core loop, beautiful presentation, and a respectable translation of soulslike combat to a 2D game, Tails of Iron 2 comes close to greatness but is let down by a few disappointing design decisions.
The most immediately striking element of Tails of Iron 2 is also its greatest strength: the gorgeous art direction. The beautiful hand-painted style remains a real spectacle throughout, combining with the fluid movement and combat animations to make for a stunning slasher. There are also clear distinctions between the design language of the many animalian tribes and biomes Arlo comes across, creating a wonderfully lived-in and intentional fantasy world.
Another ace up its sleeve is the narration by the white-haired Witcher himself, Doug Cockle, who effectively serves as an omniscient fairytale storyteller. While remaining mostly serious and delivering his distinct gravelly gravitas, the writers also give him a few genuinely funny lines, which are subtle enough not to damage the dark-fantasy tone.
Unfortunately, the effective presentation brings an underwhelming element of the story into sharper focus; none of the characters, including Arlo, have actual lines, their words instead limited to speech bubbles with images vaguely depicting their locutions. Cockle’s narration achieves enough alone to present the story, but it’s a shame that’s all there is. And while there’s nothing drastically wrong with the game’s soundtrack, as its instrumentation and tone befit the setting, there are no standout tracks.
The overall vibe of Tails of Iron 2 is explicitly inspired by soulslikes, but its adventure loop is arguably closer to the Monster Hunter series. Arlo ventures out to several biomes and takes down whatever colossal monstrosity is plaguing the inhabitants’ peaceful homes. With each monster defeated, Arlo is granted both armor parts and weapons derived from that monster, as well as the blueprints necessary to forge, upgrade, and recreate any missing parts.
Repeat this, with increasingly challenging bosses and more powerful armor, and you have the core gameplay loop of Monster Hunter. It’s just as effective here in driving the player forth to obtain new gear as it is in Capcom’s series, as Arlo truly feels stronger as both your skill and his equipment grow more formidable. You can also expect Metroidvania elements, with some upgrades and areas only becoming available upon optional backtracking with an item or ability acquired later on. However, a solid loop is nothing if the combat grounding it isn’t satisfying.
As with its soulslike inspirations, Arlo is capable of a few core actions: dodge roll, parry, block, and light and heavy attacks, as well as drinking from a regenerating healing flask. The speed and recovery of his attacks vary between swords, axes, and hammers, but the combat fundamentals remain the same throughout. Enemies will flash up with Spider Sense-like indicators of how to counter their next attack: white can be blocked, yellow must be parried, and red must be dodged. This trifecta is intuitive and easily understood, and there are only a few instances where it’s unclear how to properly defend yourself. Once you understand the combat, you’re set for Tails of Iron 2’s entire runtime.
While knowing the system inside out could feel like a power fantasy to some, it also comes with the risk of combat feeling ‘solved’, and a game sold partly on its challenge becoming too simple. This concern is most realized in the parry and dodge roll systems. In the case of the former, the window for success is massive. Many games will opt for small parry windows of around 10-20 frames or less, such as Sekiro and Elden Ring’s 12-frame parries, to ensure you have to work to earn them. Contrastingly, you can activate Arlo’s parry almost an entire second (measured to be around 48 frames) before an attack lands and still blow the enemy back into a long, vulnerable stagger. It’s generous to a fault, and results in the parry’s huge reward feeling unearned and unsatisfying.
As for the dodge roll, there’s nothing inherently flawed about the move itself. Arlo can leap into a roll with full invincibility frames on startup to avoid attacks, follow up into a second roll to cover extra distance, and even cancel attack animations into a roll. It works as intended when used to avoid red-indicated attacks. The issue is that Arlo can just keep rolling on, with nothing to limit him. Other games with this ability introduce stamina meters or diminishing returns to stop you from roll spamming, but without any limiting factor, avoiding attacks is practically risk-free here, lowering the combat stakes considerably.
Arlo is eventually imbued with the elemental powers of fire, ice, poison, and lightning. These are as powerful as you’d imagine, with ice freezing opponents in place and poison laying down a bubbling field that damages enemies over time. While enjoyable to use, the elemental powers fall into the same trap as the dodge roll; without a meaningful downside limiting their use, they become overpowered. With only a short damage-based cooldown for each, Arlo can frequently cycle between high-damage spell casts to decimate enemies and bosses as the master of all elements.
Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter does a lot of things confidently and successfully. There’s the soul and skeleton of a great soulslike here, so it’s unfortunate that its biggest issues are present throughout the whole adventure. It’s still worth your time, but its flaws bite just enough to keep it from being the best in its class.