Been playing a ton of Buffalo Bison: Launcha Libre since yesterday.
I was a BIG fan of the first one and plowed through (hurr hurr) it in a matter of just a few hours. It was a simple game with a cute and funny mechanic that didn't have a whole ton of substance to it, but you could complete the thing in one sitting so it was a good time waster.
Launcha Libre is everything a sequel should be. There are a ton of new things to unlock, with each one being able to be upgraded up to 10 times. There are new Launchalibros, the character you launch, who add some diversity to the gameplay. There are a slew of new bosses to kill, all of which can also be upgraded. The graphics have been cleaned up and the overall presentation is much tighter and more professional looking.
The gameplay is simple, for those who don't know. You launch your Launchalibro at your opponent by pulling back on the cords of the wrestling ring and letting go. Your character flies high in the air, and your job is to maintain, and gain, speed for as long as you can by crushing gummy bears and smashing through giant walls of cake to reach the next area (with each area granting you larger and larger sums of coins). You have a rocket dash which rockets you down into a body slam against any gummy bears below, but this is also to be used to maintain speed if you are about to hit the ground and there are no gummy bears below you. Each Launchalibro is different, however, with Buffalo Bison having a body slam, Pineapple Sling having a grappling hook of sorts (she's my favorite), and El Pollo having the ability to briefly fly before slamming down (if there are more libros, I am not aware, as I have not unlocked everything). Each time you play a round, the libros get rotated out, so you do not have the choice to select which character you wish to play with. This is both good and bad, as it keeps the gameplay varied, but I kind of really don't like playing as El Pollo, but oh well.
It's all very simple and perfect for mobile and pick-up-and-play. My issue? The currency. You will notice quickly it takes VERY long to amass enough coins to purchase items and upgrades, and the prices on the items balloons into the stratosphere VERY quickly. The game DOES NOT offer the ability to purchase any coins, which is great! It does, however, sell Pinatas (think of them as a treasure chest full of coins and powerups), with a three pack going for $2.99 and a 15 pack going for $8.99. You can also purchase permanent powerups, such as a coin doubler for $9.99, an ad remover for $7.99, or power pinatas, which increase their contents by 3, for $11.99. There is no indication that purchasing just the coin doubler would also remove ads, but I am assuming you would need to purchase the ad remover to do that. Ads are not annoying AT ALL in the game. You will only ever see an ad when attempting to open a pinata you found during a launch, or one of your free pinatas (becomes available every 3 hours, and can also be tripled by watching a 30 second ad). It is pretty stupid that you MUST watch an ad to open a pinata, OR spend $7.99 on the ad remover to just open them immediately, however, but the ads are never longer than 30 seconds, so it's a small price to pay. Another strange choice they made with the game is you will occasionally come across a sale bonus on a particular power-up, generally cutting the cost of an upgrade by 75%. This is clearly the developer acknowledging the fact that the upgrades are entirely too expensive and giving us some respite, but it begs the question why they didn't just make things cheaper? Clearly they bowed to some pressure to have IAP that would alleviate this problem, but went about it in a very strange way.
That being said, it's a great little game that can be played entirely without spending any money. It's just going to take you a very, very long time to unlock and upgrade everything to the fullest.