Awful and essentially unplayable.

Such a shame that Deadly Premonition revisionism is so entrenched that even the creators thought being a technical shambles was “part of the charm” - the 360 original ran perfectly fine and was fantastic because of its ambition & heart despite its budget and technical shortcomings.

This? A cynical 10 frame a second travesty.

Avoid

A strong beginning and ending unfortunately don't make up for everything in between. When it works, it really works, but there's so much that doesn't that it makes this one hard to love.

This game is far too happy to waste your time at every opportunity. Whether it's a protracted sequence to follow an NPC, or mandatory things to progress only happening on specific days, way too much happens to prolong the experience to its detriment.

It feels like a lot of the writing missed what made the original work and tried to cover with meta nods and it just misses the mark as a result.

It was nice to go on another adventure with York, but I wonder if we really needed it.

I think an interesting parallel between the first and second game are how they both are Swery's interpretation of pre-existing fictional villages. The first game was obviously his exploration of Twin Peaks, and this game was a fascinating recreation of Cumtown. Most of the game involves a very stupid late 20's man talking about movies he saw on UPN, and then occasionally he does a racially insensitive accent. There is a honest to god part of the game where York imitates a black man's speech pattern in such an offensive way that I shouted "Hell yeah dude" at my television.

It's also Michael Jeffrey Jordan of transphobia. I'm not going to defend this game, it might very well come from a place of hatred, but the way it goes about it is so over the top and offensive that I had a hard time getting upset at the game. If you were upset by it, you should be upset and I wouldn't blame you. The game opens up with ass shaking in front of the camera in weed panties and then a flaming skull. The main character then talks about how he smokes fat blunts.

Everything about this game is magical to me. Like, normally I'm a stick in the mud. I get skeeved out by people who enjoy Detroit: Become Human because that game's evil. This game in some ways is more evil, and I give it a total pass. The game runs like total shit. The plot is magnitudes less grounded than the first game. The movie talk is bigger and better than ever. If you wanna see a grown man talk to an unrelated 13 year old girl about Training Day while doing sick skateboard tricks, there's a game for that! I don't want to say that I was disappointed by the original, but this game's basehead direction is inspired, and even the dull parts of the gameplay aren't nearly as boring as the first game.

I don't know how this game got released. It shouldn't have, but he's here and we have to live with it. I love this game and recommend it to nobody, even fans of the original.

Deadly Premonition 2 was an alright game, personally I felt the game tried way too hard to capture that feeling from the first game and fails hard at it.

I did like the chemistry between York & Morgana

I also wasn't a big fan of the town Le Carré, It just felt way too lifeless compared to Greenvale.

If I could describe this game with a phrase, it'd be "not as good."

The story's not as good. The ending's not as good. The writing's not as good. The music's not as good. The setting's not as good.

It's not terrible, but it's a far cry from what the original was, and it doesn't seem to understand what made the original special in the first place.

deadly premoniton 2 is like when a person does something really well the first time by pure luck and then when they go to do it again they get overly confident and fail spectacularly.
I started playing this on the Switch back when it came out and I am now finishing it on PC so that puts into perspective the Switch port of this is borderline unplayable it is migraine-inducing idk how anyone can finish that at least with the PC version it's like you get all the bs but at least the frame rate is decent and the funny thing is this game if we look at it on paper very similar to the first game similar plot progression similar combat and exploration but and dare I make too allegories in the same review this game flew a bit to close to the sun it just does everything a lil bit too much, the combat is a lil too repetitive, the dialogue is a lil too drawn out, the exploration and moving around in the open world is a lil bit too slow. if the first game is a so bad that's its good then Deadly Premonition 2 pushes it over the edge into just being bad... A Blessing in Disguise it is not also I found the story annoying this time around lol like the first one gets away with being like this weird nod to David lynch but this one doesn't

the first deadly premonition became one of my favorite games of all time after i played it a few months ago. i can honestly say that not a single day has gone by where i haven't thought about that game at least a little, either through a funny and memorable scene of dialogue or some connection i suddenly pieced together about the game's themes and its gameplay. the second game is a bit of a disappointment. i didn't expect it to surpass the original, and while at its best moments it matches some of that game's charm, during its worst moments it doesn't come even close or doesn't try. it's about as underwhelming as i expected, but at least it's not the disaster i feared it could be.

the dialogue is still excellent. if you enjoyed the first game you will undoubtably have a great time listening to york interact with the world and comment on his situation. this is really the sole reason i don't hate this game. i was always eager to turn it on and keep playing because york's dialogue is memorable and quotable and there are many hilariously bizarre scenes that i will be thinking about for years.

unfortunately that's about the only thing the sequel does as well as the original. the world feels lifeless and there are much fewer interactable npcs, which severely limits the pool of potential suspects. the story is interesting but the payoff is underwhelming and a lot of the twists feel forced or unbelievable. the otherworld sections are completely lacking the horror aesthetic that made them interesting in the original and rather than serve as twisted versions of the town's landmarks, are completely separate locations that all share the exact same setting and assets. the main issue with the game is that it just doesn't expand the first game very much. i don't feel like i have a better understanding of this world, its lore or its characters after beating it. it was just another miscellaneous adventure starring york, and the payoff of the present-day segments is so minimal that it feels like they didn't need to be there.

there are also some really uncomfortable depictions of racism and transphobia in the game that, even if they don't bother you personally, are completely unnecessary. swery has addressed these and says he plans to change or remove them. hopefully he is able to fix the problem but it really shouldn't have been in the game to begin with. edit: problem was not fixed

overall, i had a lot of good experiences playing this game but i don't think it was worth returning to the world of deadly premonition for the game we ended up getting. the universe of deadly premonition has a lot of room to expand the setting and lore, but this game barely does that.

edit #2: upon further thought, i like this game a lot less than the thoughts i had originally wrote out led on. i gave this game a 6/10 then, which i wrote after playing it on release, but it's been a couple of months since then and i'm struggling to remember any of what i thought were standout moments. the only positive thing i had to talk about was the memorable writing but nowadays i can only remember the parts of the story that frustrate me.

The first Deadly Premonition is undeniably flawed in every way. Yet, it managed to attain an unlikely cult classic status despite all its faults due to the oddball vision and lofty aspirations of its director Hidetaka Suehiro ("Swery65"). The "Director's Cut" version I played on PS3 even stands as one of my favorite games of all time. So between that and also loving SWERY's twice as insane follow-up, the forever unfinished D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, this long-awaited sequel to his most polarizing gem was something I was massively looking forward to, with it sitting alongside No More Heroes III as my primary reasons for wanting a Switch at all. Unfortunately, now that I've finally played it the old adage about lightning never striking twice comes to mind, because this fails to recapture the weird brilliance of its predecessor.

If you look back at why the original title was able to skate by you'll find it was largely on the strength of its story and characters, neither of which are as interesting or enjoyable here. There's still plenty of borderline goofy strangeness, but the overall tone is darker and moodier which isn't much fun in comparison. Plus, the new cast is kind of flat, lacking memorability and are mostly unlikable. Your primary sidekick is a bratty little girl and the FBI agent "Aaliyah," who is regularly alluded to as potentially being the new lead in future installments, is a straight-up shrew. Thus there's no one to latch onto other than the returning protagonist York, whose penchant for endless movie references and prattling on about utter nonsense like a child has begun to become more grating than endearing. All this while having to put up with sad attempts at social commentary on race, discrimination, and American life from a man who clearly has no idea how any of that works stateside.

The area where it really drops the ball though is the gameplay where none of the previous outing's ambition can be found. This is most evident in the open-world. Unlike the believable, rich in personality small town of before, we got a dull, empty feeling expanse without any exciting sights or noteworthy landmarks that's meant to eat up your time by way of travel distance rather than giving you a reason to explore. In fact, the mission structure itself seems designed to artificially keep you playing for as long as possible by tasking you with searching random vending machines across the map for the one that has the food item you need or following a slow-moving NPC for in-game miles between multiple objectives. I enjoyed the shooting segments since I didn't have to put up with the monotony of everything else, like the constant clicking through dialog present in the visual novel interrogation segments, but I can't deny they suffer from nearly all taking place in a series of identical corridors and enemies not posing much of a threat. At least the boss battles are cool.

I've heard many state that the reason this falls so woefully short of expectations as being the result of its creator misunderstanding the appeal of his prior work. I can't agree. In my opinion the issue is him proving unable to conjure ideas compelling enough to fully bring this continuation (and expansion) to life, leading to a phoned in effort without verve or excitement. It's not unplayable or painful to complete, instead just missing the imagination to make it anything greater than dull, lifeless, and boring. Considering how crucial a sense of creativity and inspiration were to the success of its forerunners, the absence of them makes this less Deadly Premonition, and more Dead on Arrival.

Note: The technical problems you'll see referenced in other reviews (e.g. the frame rate) have either been patched out or are not a factor running on the console's Lite model which is why they aren't mentioned here.

5/10

Deary me. A step down from the original in pretty much every way.

Kinda wild that it makes the first game's setting feel so real and lived in by comparison. A very bare bones vibe to the whole thing. Runs like absolute dogshit, and gets excused by memefucks who want in on The Patter and never played the original on 360 where it's fine.

Nice to see York and Zach again.

searching for the experience that I once felt after playing the first game, it's sad seeing swery stray further and further from it.

now i'm one to put up with jank, a lot of the stuff here i fuck with but there's one thing in specific that annoyed me:
for a game about wasting time, i hate how bad is it at it; the reason being that the only way time moves is just being outside doing nothing. being inside buildings or doing minigames just freezes time, which is stupid considering how slow the in-game clock is. so if you wanna pass time you'll either wait around or start smoking to skip time, which is what you'll likely end up doing sadly.

I'll give it some points on the schizo-meter when it comes to the 400 achievos/stamps, because the requirements for them are absolutely ridiculous. Like spending 1 year in-game, shooting your little partner patty in the face 300 times or killing thousands of animals. if there's something tedious you can think of, you'll have you do it 100 times. The worst part is that there's a dedicated community that did all of this, only to find out one stamp is bugged due to one of the fetch quests not triggering properly, swery you fucking asshole.

if i wasn't so attached to york and dp in general, i would've flushed it right away, this game is worse than the first one in every single aspect but hey, it did scratch some of that itch i had for DP.

as a huge fan of the original game, this just fucking sucks

it flanderizes everything what made DP1 good and repeatedly bashes you over the head with memes and references until you have blunt head trauma, the ending in particular drove me fucking insane

if you're really easily entertained by how sloppy the whole games and overlook any problems it has cause "hehe bad game funni :)" then good for you, keep on funding ToyBox and their godawful games and ports

Right so Deadly Premonition is my favourite game of all time. Not because I think it's so bad it's good, but because I think it's a masterpiece with a couple of rough edges.

Yes there was some jank, yes the combat felt like a cheap Resident Evil 4 and yes there were some incredibly frustrating quick time events, but the voice acting was fantastic and fit with the characters, every character from the main cast to the side NPCs were all unique, Greenvale felt like a real place with a deep and fleshed-out world and it's one of the very few games to make me shed a tear with how much it grabbed me in and made me care for its characters.

This sequel was never going to live up to the original for me, I knew that, yet I'm still let down. An average of 15fps and three crashes in 20 hours isn't acceptable. Yes, Deadly Premonition was known for running terrible but only in ports on PS3, PC and the Switch prior to some patching. The original Xbox 360 version ran at a mostly stable 30fps and technically worked fine. It frustrates me that people are excusing that state it's in as part of the charm when it never was to begin with, even more so that I can imagine the devs knowing this and using it as an excuse to release it in such a state.

Even more so, if this game gets patched and works at a solid 60fps it won't fix a lot of the problems. Le Carre feels mostly lifeless and empty, the cast doesn't have anything on those of the last game, the trans character is handled pretty terribly, York impersonating an African man is needless and pointless, the otherworld sections are far worse than before as they have been reduced to a few hallways with nothing but full combat where at least the first had puzzles and was scary and the new cartoony art style just doesn't fit the tone.

As for what good I can say, the soundtrack is great even if half of it is from the original, the cast all give good performances and the 2019 sections are really intriguing even if they can drag on a bit

Even if it's patched I find it hard to recommend this to anyone unless you absolutely loved the original and need to know what happened after it like me, even if I would have preferred that story to have stayed contained.

Maybe it was low expectations, or perhaps my high tolerance for rubbish, but I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I was going to. All the hallmarks of what made the first game are present, stupid dialogue, stupid characters, stupid baddies and a stupid plot. All of which can be summarised in one word. Stupid.

Yet, it was a lot of fun. Swery once again trying to make a Twin Peaks videogame, cram it full of daft stuff and lots of weird mini games and side quests. As far as structuring goes, it's not too dissimilar from the first game, only FBI interrogation sections separate the main investigation. Kind of like the stupid animus sections in the assassin's creed games.

I thought it was quite funny how it would occasionally cut to a jazz band after something dramatic happens, with a sax player in just his pants and a cowboy hat. Lots of daft moments like that really kept me invested in this stupid game.

Yeah, there's a lot of performance issues, especially when traversing the town. It stutters worse than me in a job interview and even the combat would pause occasionally. While it doesn't look like it would trouble a PS2, it still seems to really struggle, and the loading times were rather annoying as well. That being said, there was enough in the game to keep me interested and I enjoyed it a lot more than I didn't.

It's actually got a pretty decent art style. A cell shaded sort of look, with a canvas texture to the backgrounds and skies etc. Quite different and interesting.

I didn't mind cutting about on a skateboard and the fast travel points helped a lot. Walking anywhere felt slower than stopping so that was never an option. The additional stuff you could do like upgrades etc, never felt necessary as I managed to get through everything without much of a struggle. Only died once on a bit with a ton of alligators, and that's because I was dicking about.

Again, similar to the first game, although not quite as endearing. The music is trying to emulate the southern style rather than having the same utterly bizarre score from the first game, and therefore loses a bit of the oddball charm, despite it being present everywhere else.

I had a good time. It didn't outstay its welcome and I felt like it ended when it should have, unlike other games I've played recently that felt like they went on a bit longer than was enjoyable. If you liked the first game, and can deal with a dog shit frame rate, I really think you should give Dead2y Premonition a go.

Imagine the worst murder mystery story you can think of.

What would it contain? Perhaps it would lack investigation? Maybe the motives would be flimsy? Or maybe you have thought of the story where the villains are so painfully obvious that nothing about it is gripping?

Deadly Premonition 2 is all of those, and then some!

It's hard to describe Deadly Premonition 2 because so much of it is just a mess. Not a cute, funny, low-budget mess like the original was, but a seemingly cynical pile of garbage.

Deadly Premonition 2 has no reasons to exist. If you want a glimpse into York's future, or just want to follow him on a different case, you should probably look into fanfiction. Technically, the game does both of those things, but I can guarantee that even a free story on the internet would most likely be better written.

The premise of the game is that it's set in the modern day, but mostly takes place in the flashback, as two FBI agents question agent Morgan about his previous case. Scenes taking place in 2019 are arguably the best part of the game and should've probably been released as a light novel for people wondering what happened to the main character after a somewhat ambiguous ending of the first game.

During the first hour or so of the game you might be tricked into thinking that the game is good: it looks and sounds fairly nice, and it has that comfy feel of the original. However, as you play more, you might begin to realize that the game has nothing in store for you.

First thing you might notice is that Deadly Premonition 2 has very few characters in it: maybe half the cast of the original. Bigger isn't always better, but unfortunately the cast of the game is also a bit too cartoony. The original had its fair share of weirdos, but aside from a few residents, most were pretty realistic. The first character you meet here is a hotel chef/owner/bellboy who acts like he's three different people.

It seems like most characters were written to be quirky in a way where they have That One Thing, instead of being written as characters. There's a sheriff that talks in taglines. A half naked barman whose catchphrase is "yeaaaaaah?". Local priest who keeps repeating "pitiful". It's obnoxious and gets tiring really quickly.

Perhaps the worst of them is a tribal shaman Houngan, who appears before York to give him hints on how to proceed with investigation. I'm not an expert on cultures, so it's not my place to judge how well he was implemented (although admittedly, York quoting him and trying to impersonate him in a funny accent is fucked up), but he's not so much a bad character as he is a bad story. What I mean by that is that Houngan IS the story of the game.

York from Deadly Premotinion 1 had unconventional ideas about investigations. He trusted coffee more than anything else, but ultimately he did know his trade. The first game had you go to the police, the morgue, crime scene, then had you chase down leads.

There's none of that in the sequel. The story of the investigation is: Houngan appears, gives you a hint on what to do, you do that. What he wants from you is even more unconventional than following coffee patterns: get a strike in bowling, for example. Sure, all his hints lead to something, but it ends up feeling like you don't do any investigating in this murder mystery game, and his hints are so disjointed and weird that you only end up looking at the crime scene about halfway through the game. AFTER you know who the killer is.

Deadly Premonition 2 never cares about the "mystery" aspect of its story at all. The moment you set foot in the first dungeon, York gets a vision naming the killer. Sure, there are other people involved, so it's not that bad. Or, at least, it wouldn't be if you didn't catch the mastermind behind the whole thing before the game reaches midpoint!

Speaking of dungeons, if you thought that Deadly Premonition 2 would improve on the worst part of the original, you'd be wrong. Dungeons in the original were bad little Silent Hill-esque spooky dark world replicas of real places that always felt underdeveloped. Dungeons in the sequel are identical - and I mean completely visually identical - hallways with some checkpoints in the middle. Oh, and also there are only three enemy variations in the game and an entire ONE gun you get to play with.

Free-roaming has also received a downgrade. Arguably the best part of the original Deadly Premonition was the side content, and it's impressive how much the sequel dumbs it down. All the quests in the game are bad. At best they're an inoffensive fetchquest, and at worst they are deliberately made to waste your time.

There's a reason why I think Deadly Premontion 2 would work best as a light novel. If you cut out all the fluff, the game would be maybe 2 hours long. The quests go absolutely nowhere and include such hits as:

- Following a dog for about 15 minutes (be sure to not hit midnight in game so you won't lose track of it when the cutscene plays!)

- Getting three random items from either very specific places or places that are open on certain times and bringing them to the pastor one after one. You will receive a reward that, as far as I could see, has no use within the game.

- Talking to hotel chef. Note: nothing in the game tells you when the owner of the hotel is in his "Chef" persona, and you must only do that when he is in-character (which is about 4 hours a day)

Those aren't even sidequests. These are the main quests of the game! I wrote them down because sidequests are usually dumber are usually of "Do lots of one thing" variety. They're also as committed to waste as much of your time as possbile (do note that this game, unlike the prequel doesn't even show side quests on the map or above characters, making completion nearly impossible). However, it's likely that you would drop them after completing about 10 when you realize that the game has nothing to reward you with.

The best reward the game can give you is a new suit. The usual reward, however, is yet another accessory. Various beads, necklaces and incenses that you can use to increase everything, from firepower, to minigame luck. Those aren't a bad idea, and can even modify your gun a bit so it fires like a shotgun (although you'll probably just stick with regular bullets), but after you've received your 10th accessory, you'll probably drop the quests altogether and be sad, while you remember how Deadly Premonition would reward you with weird items, car upgrades and new guns.

Not even the ending is worth it.

Lastly, I want to bring up the big issue of the game: the transphobia. If you've heard any discussions of the game, it's probably due to York being written in a weird way. A progressive dude who cares for trans people but casually deadnames and mixes up pronouns of the only trans character in the game. Frankly, this didn't bother me much, as York is kind of an asshole, but if you thought my review made the game sound interesting in a "so bad it's good" (it's not) kind of way, I feel like I'm obliged to give a trigger warning to both this and York's ridiculous accent he makes when he impersonates Houngan.

The only way I can see Deadly Premonition 2 being worth it is if you want something to just waste your time: do random sidequests where you find spots with the help of photos and kill X amount of enemies. Even if sidequests suck, those moments are somewhat comfortable and easy to just chill to. If you're curious about the game as a continuation, however, just don't bother.