This game comes with all the strengths of the previous games: good ghost stories, fun, likeable cast of characters, striking, creepy art, and good atmosphere created through sound effects, music, writing.

It also improves over the others with better pacing and handling of the Suspense Acts. They come up with an odd RPG-ish solution that gives the player multiple chances to guess the right answer instead of an immediate "Game Over" screen. It cuts the frustration I felt from playing the previous games way down. There are collectibles in the game to help improve the odds and amount of attempts during Suspense Acts. Thankfully they place them along the main path, so I didn't have to search the entire map every chapter. I was able to find most of them without having to resort to a guide.

It's the smoothest, most enjoyable Spirit Hunter game. I've been loving playing this every night, and it's been making time fly by quickly.

Boy do i have thoughts about this game. I got my physical copy on feb 12 somehow so i blasted thru it.

general non spoiler review:

gameplay: 4/5
overall aesthetic: 3/5
story premise: 3/5
story execution: 1.5/5
new character concepts: 4/5
new character execution: 3/5
spirits: 2.5/5
returning characters: 3.5/5
cgs: -500/5
Yashiki: 3.5/5

gameplay is simple and solid, the 2d sidescrolling is visually a cool change of pace !! it kinda plays funny when turning around though but its endearing to me so i like it a lot. Also i like seeing chara height differences directly its super cute. i do like the story premise since it had a lot of potential. keyword had. the art in general is still nice but i am not a fan of most of the cg content.

if i had to rate the 3 spirit hunter games so far of best to worst (generally speaking): NG (peak) > death mark 1 (foundation) > death mark 2 (looks into camera)

i will say though i have room for Tolerance for this game because the devs did experience (haha) data corruption that wiped all of their work at some point. so that probably affected how the final game ended up being. this is my copium. (source: https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2021/06/09/109355.html)

if anybody wants my unhinged long ramble review i put it on my tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/iunner/744360498081021952/this-is-my-full-death-mark-2shibito-magire?source=share

I was really looking forward to this new entry in this series, as I loved both previous installments. While NG was more like a side story, this one (as the title implies) is a full-on sequel to Death Mark, so we get to play as the ‘Spirit Doctor’ once again. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like this newest chapter could live up to its predecessors, but still, it wasn’t bad, either.

The new gameplay elements include walking around in 2D environments, collecting and using stuff, sometimes with a companion who we can also interact with. This part reminded me of The Coma games (without anyone actually chasing us), and was a great addition, in my opinion, as the whole thing started to feel more like a classic, old-school point ‘n’ click adventure game rather than simply a visual novel. More interaction in these types of titles is always a big plus for me. With that said, the atmosphere somehow wasn’t as creepy as in the previous entries, and I believe it was not a good idea that 90% of the main plot took place in one location and its direct surroundings. Running back and forth between the same rooms and buildings in each chapter became quite tedious for me after a while, and not even the jumpscares worked too well. Though I must admit, the evil spirits still look terrifying, and we get many brutal, gory scenes, some even depicting suicide, so keep that in mind.

Overall, the story was OK, but the twists are not that surprising if you pay attention, and the puzzles are not that crazy difficult, either. It was nice seeing the old characters again, and some fun new ones. If you liked the series so far, give this one a try, but don’t expect anything too memorable.

i literally JUST finished the game and i will start with my honest kind of negative opinions first then delve into the positive ones.

The sexualized images of female victims, women in danger or even almost naked depiction of underage girls that appeared every now then, although a huge shock, was nothing I didn't see in the first game but I still thought it would cease to exist or at least not happen as frequently with the second game so I was looking forward to this new installment.

Unfortunately, I've been let down. The focus on sexualizing women and girls who aren't of age is taking away from the horror and making the game feel more like an objectification simulator to me. I wish they would consider a change of direction and find new ways to tell a creepy and compelling story without resorting to cheap shots and fanservice. I feel like the game is losing its charm by trying to appeal to a certain type of male player rather than focusing on making a great horror game. The gratuitous sexualization of women who aren't even of age gives the game a creepy and perverted vibe instead of a scary one. It makes it feel like a game that's not meant for everyone, but only for a certain type of player to enjoy. It really takes away from the experience and it makes me sad to see a great game become this.

Now that I have said it all, again like the last game I loved seeing the team work together to fight off spirits, the mystery building up and the plot twists. I very much enjoyed the plot of the spirit we have been trying to destroy hiding in our circle as one of MC's friends. Although the parts where the two high school girls were hitting on the MC made me uncomfortable, I realized later on they were being possessed the whole time. I thought being in the school the whole time would be boring but it never was. I loved seeing Japanese traditions and rituals taking place in the game especially the last quest was very creepy. Overall, when the game doesn't focus on cheap horror game tricks like showing constant female nudity, it does a very good job of being creepy and mysterious.

Hopefully, if there ever is a 3rd installment, we are not exposed to any unnecessary indecent depiction of female characters.

Death Mark II brings us back to the spirit hunter series' trademark creepiness. While its highs never touch those of NG, or probably even the original, this game does spin an enjoyable mystery. I enjoyed this game myself, but I had a few gripes, most of which are probably explained when finding out the game was crowd funded. The first entry did get decent sales in its release, and NG, less so. I think given the stats, it's pretty cool a third game was released. That said, placing the game entirely in the school makes some sense given the overarching narrative, but I found the variety of creepy locales lacking. Schools are overdone, and I couldn't help compare to Another or Corpse Party. I wasn't really too into the running around aspect, but I think it does make sense--I remember becoming annoyed with some of the circular backtracking in the dungeon crawling way it was handled in the first two entries. So I think this is an improvement in gameplay held back by the budget. It could've had more atmosphere, I think. I think this style is almost too cute, contrasting with the horrible deaths & grotesque things this series is known for.

I have a lot I could say about this game because I feel like a lot of it can be summarized as "the potential to be more."

I think it's really easy to see where they want to change things and improve but in the end it all kinda felt unfinished. I did give it 4 stars because I still felt it was an enjoyable time, but it still felt kind of an empty feeling compared to the first two games.

The use of side scrolling felt like nothing other than a time filler because it was never truly utilized in chase scenes or anything of the like to make it feel necessary, and the atmosphere of the game feels significantly less scary while having it. The spirit designs felt like a step down compared to the other two games as well, including the surrounding stories of them which felt weaker as well. The game also felt like there were almost no stakes in terms of right or wrong actions and answers, the rng & retry system for suspensive acts messed with tension during confrontations. The answers were spoon-fed to you during the investigations rather than relying on the player to take clues and piece the entire story together. While I was glad to not play the game with a guide for once, it removed a lot of the feelings of accomplishment that the first two gave from slowly uncovering elaborate ghost grudges and theorizing what happened.

Once again, I still found the game itself enjoyable (unnecessary fan-service aside) but the changes they made did no real favors for the series.

I did enjoy the presence of the past characters (even if it caused the new characters to suffer by not getting developed), and I enjoyed Yashiki's presence in the story. I think Yashiki was probably the best part of the story but I think a bulk of this entry was establishing him further as his own character more solidly.

Don't know if this one is on my replay list but it did make me want to replay the first two that's for sure.

Death Mark II dares to ask the question we’ve all been wondering: what if, after improving the series with NG, they made a Spirit Hunter entry where everything got worse?

Amateurish sidescrolling environments and character animations instead of the spooky, heavily detailed visual novel screens of the previous two games?

Live or Die situations but your chances of succeeding, even if you pick the right choice, are randomly generated?

Spirit encounters where your options are so limited it’s easy to pick the right one, but far more boring than the Death Mark and NG encounters because of it?

Sidelining new characters for the sake of using the Mark Bearers as the protagonist’s partners?

Constant back-and-forth exploitation of the misery (for player discomfort) and physical bodies (for player horniness) of teenage girls?

I can’t even say I was ever really scared as a player or absorbed by the intense atmosphere of the game, so everything I loved about Death Mark is out, and everything I found distasteful is in. Although the first Death Mark could get very horny about female bodies in horror situations, somehow they made it feel even worse in this game. It doesn’t help that almost all of these exploited bodies are of high schoolers.

Only one of the spirits in the game is male. His body is only a source of terror, and his backstory is the least explored. The rest are used for as much misery as possible, definitely adequately explaining their grudges, but also going over the top in depicting what someone with the role of “girl” in society can go through and (of course) resolving it with the violent deaths that made them a spirit.

Plus, if there’s a situation where they can make a living or dead female body sexy while they’re suffering, you can bet they’re going for it in this game. More than once the protagonist was about to see something “scary” and I could immediately predict how undressed the victims were going to be. I don’t know — it felt consistently disrespectful of situations they wanted to call terrible, scary violations of human rights. After NG went waaaay down on the horror-horny, I had decent hopes for this game that were crushed early and decisively.

At least I’ll always have the first two games to go back to. As for Death Mark II, I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone. It sufficiently made me feel gross, but never afraid.