some of the writing especially early on comes off as overly twee earthbound-derivative shit a la undertale BUT the third act goes into some really surprising places, with some memorable sequences that explore when one becomes uncertain of who they are. and then its "figured out" nice and neat by the ending, which wants to feel revelatory but just comes off as whatever to me. im hesitant to say the game is not worth playing at all, but i wish its cooler aspects werent layered under gameplay and storytelling sensibilities that are the essence of "quirky yet largely unchallenging", becoming too comfortable with predictability in its conclusion when its much more compelling at doing the opposite.

e: kinda want to keep this review mostly intact to give credit to my disappointment with the game, but now i feel like i shouldve turned down the vitriol a bit, so ill elaborate and chill a little. if you asked me whether i liked or disliked the game, no in between, id probably just barely say i liked it, bc the highs, the parts of the game that feel outside the scope of the main story but arent, are SO high. the writing just annoys me w its preciousness often, and i feel like the conclusion of the game rides too hard on that writing being better than it actually is once you center back onto the main story. i know its part of the charm of its influences as being awkwardly written yet evocative nonetheless, but in this case i was left wanting by this game's central argument. idk. maybe could use a replay but im not confident my opinion will change

The best out of all the Analgesic games. The 2D visuals retain the 16-bit quirkiness of the first Anodyne, and the 3D environments bring a nice PS1 feeling of loneliness and simplicity.

The story is a bit predictable, but the character interactions are what make it. The second half of the game is really strong, with the secret ending tying things up nicely and leaving you wanting for more.

My only critique is that, like the PS1 games it was inspired by, some of the environments feel kinda barren. This is somewhat fixed by metacoins on the second half (they even show up out of bounds!) but it's still not enough of an incentive in my opinion. Some spots just scream secret collectible, makes you wonder if something was cut out late in development.

I didn't really care for the Anodyne 1 references in the post game, but that's probably because I don't like the first Anodyne all that much to begin with. Maybe someone who enjoyed it more than me will find them at least neat.

The range!!! This studio always makes games that tell wonderful, nuanced stories about existing slightly outside of systems, but also: the games are funny as hell. They are weird and delightful and silly and cutting and satirical. Also, mechanically, they are super diverse and do a great job of setting up interesting elements, making you stretch your brain a bit, and then moving on before beating you to death.
And yet every time, I spend years agonizing over "am I in the right space to play this?" Yeah, man, they're excellent. You should be running towards their latest release, not letting them languish on a backlog.

This game is super underrated. Its ps1 retro atmosphere and sound design is strangely encaptivating. The NPCs that inhabit the world go from humorous references and silly meta comments, all the way to philosophical dialogue. The writing is amazing at creating profound encounters. The game also does not stick to one thing for long and changes mechanics around when you least expect them, such as the ability to go out of bounds although not required.

Great enlightening piece of work that encaptivated me into its world and troubled characters.

There's a dichotomy in Anodyne 2. It's constant. In the same ways it asks us to break away from our complacency, the systems that bind and pull us to accept simple easier truths, it plays its hand through various fundamentals of the games that make it. In its commentary on trends it plays on trends, has you walk through trends, blasts away trends with trends. It forges its own path full of its own dust and blemishes. It too is trapped within its own cycle, hoping for more. Hoping to be better than it is. Hoping we can all be better than we are.

All of this is so viscerally poignant to me. It's almost nauseous to me how melancholic and constantly on your shoulder it is. It seeks to understand you as much as you're trying to understand it and there's constantly a bit of friction. It swaps between very clear explicit tones and vague musings. It wants to touch on as many facets of life and experience as it can but in some ways it almost commodifies that idea. There's a sort of 'contradiction' in it all.

I think that's better for Anodyne 2, though. The journey is hard but we'll be free, I believe that. Even if none of this makes sense to 'you', the story is crystal and upfront, we must choose the path to walk forward between some perfect communion full of Limitation vs. accepting us all for our little frictions and attempting to think more Beyond. Also just kind of genius how that's all distilled, whether some of that was intentional or not. All up to you anyhow. Go forth, Nova!

In a year of what feels like 5 all-time favorite games to me, Anodyne 2 stands out for its nostalgic, childish approachability, but also its surprisingly mature themings and sharp writing. Over the course of about 12 hours, I remembered what it was like to be a kid again, and also re-experienced some painful parts of growing up. Theming-wise theres a lot going on here, too much for me to recognize it all on one playthrough, but I feel like something will resonate with basically everyone.

A recommendation for Pathologic 2 or Disco Elysium would come with lots of qualifiers but I think I could recommend this game to anyone. It's at the same time progressive and immediately charming.

It's been a while since I finished playing Anodyne 2 but the game, which centers around taking you through fantastical vignettes detailing beautifully written stories tied together by a strong central plot, continues to stick around in my head in the same way a nice song does (the soundtrack is also a joy to listen to). Even more laudable is how well the writing manages to bypass the more irritating genre conventions that other indie media from similar spaces often have. I think going in without any specific knowledge helped endear it to me, so all I'll say otherwise is that it's very, very good.

Brilliant conceptually, but unfortunately it falls a little short gameplay wise. It's absolutely genius to have an open-ended 3D hub world for linear 2D levels, but these 3D areas end up feeling pretty boring due to how non-interactive they are- it'd go a long way if the spark ability had any uses outside of just entering levels. The 2D levels aren't perfect either. They start off really strong with some great, textbook examples of introducing and expanding on new mechanics in a short timespan, but they quickly start over-relying on Very Special sections that completely veer off from the established gameplay. Of course, it's a comedy game, so sections like these are expected, even welcome, but frankly there's not enough of the "normal" game to justify how many "weird" sections there are. Non-sequiturs that deviate harshly from the norm are only meaningful when it doesn't feel like most of the game is non-sequiturs- I think I played two levels in a row where all I had to do to win was talk to several NPCs.

It's a game that has a lot to say story wise, and the story is generally well integrated with the gameplay, aside from when it matters the most. There's one sequence about halfway through that sticks out in this regard- it's a crucial and genuinely pretty powerful story beat that gets told almost entirely through a really length sequence of text boxes. In this way the story's pretty representative of the game as a whole: a fantastic vision that wasn't able to end up becoming a fantastic final product.

I archive the history of the Orb. Games are my specialty.
Have you ever felt like you're playing the same game, over and over again, year after year? That, despite the newness, you're playing the same thing?
It's so easy to be consumed by this cycle, only to find years of your life gone. Staring at your reflection, scrambling to justify your past. Is it possible for all of the hours to mean nothing?
I was once that way...but through the field of game history, I found personal growth. Detecting trends and following artistic movements...it's beautiful.

(Outdated review, will make a new one eventually)

I have played many games, and as such, it took me a while to find a game that I could say was truly my favorite of all time. However, after deciding to give the sequel of Anodyne (a game I was lukewarm on due to some underdeveloped gameplay despite having incredible audio and atmosphere) a chance, I found it.

Anodyne 2: Return to Dust is a culmination of everything Analgesic Productions learned in the years after making Anodyne, and it shows. This is a game that draws you in from the title screen alone, and keeps surprising you until the very end. The crux of the game is, of course, the gameplay, and it's outstanding for the most part. There is much more going on than Anodyne 1, yet it still feels simple at its core in terms of controls. You play as a Nanocleaner, who shrinks inside people to remove toxic dust from them. The gameplay is split into two sections: The overworld, which is adventure-oriented with PS1 styled graphics, which you use to find people who need to a Nanocleaning. The Nanocleaning is done in a top-down Zelda style with 16-bit visuals. The dust removed is used to open up new areas along with cards collected from various sources (As a side note, I love how when you shrink, the resolution of the game shrinks from 32-bit to 16-bit styles). The overworld is pretty fun to explore. There's no battles, and you'll mostly just be looking for collectibles. It does have a problem which I'll get to, but the Nano sections really shine. Each level introduces new mechanics that are excessively creative, and many levels do things you would never expect. I don't want to spoil any of it, but it will make you rethink how you play games. I haven't played a game with such a variation of levels that are both interesting and well designed.

There's also the story, which is pretty good, but is elevated by the atmosphere and some subversions. You work for a deity called 'The Center', which supposedly created all life, and the dust you clean sullies the sanctity of life, but this sanctity is seemingly extremely strict. The story is essentially about meaning in life and nihilism, and does some interesting things with your preconcieved notions of videogame stories (Although not on the level of Undertale or the like). As I said, the atmosphere and direction really elevate this aspect, and there was a particularly disturbing moment halfway through. There's also the contained stories of all the people you jump inside to nanoclean. Some are basic, but some are very interesting and are reflected in the levels themselves. The game also has a very meta sense of humor, and can be pretty funny. Another interesting aspect of this game is that it has lore. While you can play this without having played the first, there is a post-game section tied to the first game, and it hints to a possible origin of the world the second game takes place in, New Theland. The next paragraph will be a spoiler, because there's some interesting things I want to talk about.

As I said, the story is about finding meaning and freedom in the world, but halfway through the game, something very interesting happens. You meet a seemingly glitched character named Desert-NPC, and when you try to dive into him, you're sucked in. You then go to this more realistic-looking world where you play as Nora, a normal person working a 9-5 job who is tired of the monotony. It's suggested Anodyne 2 may be a game Nora is playing. Eventually, she is chased by a giant Griffon creature, and the only way to get away is to start playing Anodyne 2 again. Some may see this as nonsense, but I think it's a hyperbolic symbol of escapism, as if to say Nora is avoiding her problems by playing games, and she is rejecting nihilism by thinking that she has purpose in this game world. That's an element of videogames that isn't touched on a lot, so I thought it was a great extra message.

Of course, any great game needs to give reason to keep playing and replaying, and Anodyne 2 has an extensive and interesting post-game, although it may be the one aspect the first Anodyne trumps it in. You have to collect meta coins that are hidden in the overworld, and here's the kicker: Many of the (seemingly) 585 are hidden out of bounds and in level geometry. It's a very cool side quest, and the rewards are great, but it has one big problem: Did you notice that "seemingly"? Well, I actually don't know how many there are in the game. There's an NPC that says I have ALMOST every metacoin, so I guess I'm missing some. There's a metacoin tracker, but it doesn't work in the nanolevels, and there are a select few hidden in some nanolevels. If they would patch the metacoin tracker working in nanolevels, that would be great, because this is the biggest problem with the game. However, there is seemingly no award for collecting them all, and the developers are known to troll, so it's possible I do have them all, especially since I can't find anyone online with more than 585.

The audio and visuals are pretty great too. I already mentioned the meaning behind the visual changes when shrinking, but both styles can be beautiful in their own right. The Pastel Horizon and Outer Sands East stick out especially, and I like how the overworld integrated modern lighting into its retro style. The audio contributes a lot to that atmosphere, and most of the tracks are ambient ones, but there's still a decent amount of variety here.

Overall, Anodyne 2: Return to Dust is a game that hits pretty much every mark. It's a once in a lifetime experience that you need to play, and my favorite game of all time.

An amalgamation of micro-worlds, bound together by human connections and pain, in order to escape the homogeneous void and uniformity of the world. The system won't give you resolution, only a small comfort until your demise. A 32-bit/16-bit/8-bit adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The smaller you go, the more concrete these worlds seem, but also more constraining. They might also hide bigger possibilities, new ways of rethinking live and community.

At times, this feels like a search for limitations, instead of actually being limited by software/hardware/manpower. That's why the little card-hunting there is didn't bother me, it went as far and wide as it wanted to.

It’s not like the ideas Anodyne 2 lives off are totally unique, but the way they are built so wholeheartedly, so creatively will make the entire time you play this game a pure joy. It doesn’t matter if it’s PS1 aesthetics open world or the 16 bit top-down snes era vibes, exploring the world is simple but addicting. It’s such a welcome change to play something so cozy and wholesome, listening to a wonderful soundtrack. I can’t recommend the game enough, If a weird little rather experimental indie sounds like it’s something for you.