i don't really have anything good to say about this game, unfortunately. i find that it feels very lazy overall, there's very few attacks/combos in general, and that's not the biggest deal in the world but when the level design is as barebones as it is (it's just a huge rectangle with no obstacles or interactables whatsoever) I feel like you should probably have a bigger focus on the combat and making it more exciting or interesting. it also seems pretty poorly designed for multiplayer. only one person gets each orb so you have to decide who gets the best ones awkwardly. you also can't revive teammates in any way without finding a dedicated room or beating a boss, but the problem is that rooms/bosses scale to players so if like in our case your two friends die in a boss you do borderline no damage and kinda just have to die or sit there for way too long watching one person slowly chip away. the way orbs work after death is also frustrating, I think making the transform/equip option be a hold down for 2 seconds option so there's a sense of risk + you don't accidentally break a friends orbs would go a long way. ideally though reviving would be a traditional beat em up style where you can just mash a button on a friends knocked out body and they get a small bit of health or something, because otherwise it's a lot of just watching someone play if you die and it's frustrating. the biggest positive i have is the art, the game looks pretty good! hat kid is a funny cameo although comes off a bit weird and out of place especially in story moments but i think it's silly enough for me to not care.

i don't know, i feel kinda bad being so negative about it but i also just don't really like/appreciate a lot of decisions made and i didn't even mention some pretty frustrating bugs we experienced as well. i wish i liked this more than i do overall, and I'll admit I'm also not the biggest beat em up fan in the universe so maybe if you're a huge beat em up fan you'll find some enjoyment me here but even as a casual fan of the genre this is very far on the lower end for me.

I don't really have that part of my brain that wants to spend 200 hours grinding for the ideal item and min maxing all of your stats. I saw a lot of people mention how this game "doesn't really start until level 70/adventure mode!" which just isn't particular how I would want to engage with this game. The campaign was decently fun to run through with some friends, but it had a pretty big fall off near the end for me. I realize that isn't really where the meat of this game comes from, but I was hoping the campaign would feel a bit more fulfilling. Once you unlock most major abilities and stop having that to look forward to it's very very mindless. Most dungeons/caves were pretty uninteresting and didn't have much going on, and bosses looked pretty cool but didn't have much in the way of interesting attack patterns or engaging strategies. Again, I realize that's something for post game but strictly as a person who just wanted to run through the campaign with some friends, it wasn't great.

Would never go as far as to say I think this is a bad game or anything and I'm glad I finally got around to it but I much more prefer the Hammerwatch style with these dungeon crawlers. Decently fun, but ultimately not for me!

I have a lot less to say about the legacy of this game, not that it doesn't have a massive one, it's just also not this mythical figure I'm not confident I'll be into like the first one was. That being said, it fucking rocks! It's great, better than the first in pretty much every way. Most improved is the gameplay, it's still nothing phenomenal and there was a lack of bosses IMO but the ones that were there all were a lot of fun and generally moving around/being stealthy/using gear or weapons just felt absurdly better. I liked the shell location as well, I was a bit worried about the concept initially but I quickly realized it was fine and really well designed. It's silly thinking back at how kinda tiny the map was but I don't think that's a bad thing as it's all utilized really well. The story was IMO a bit better here as well, but that's also just helped by being attached to some characters and buying into the world a bit more immediately. The last hour or so was a bit overwhelming with a barrage of new information and twists thrown at you pretty quickly but it works surprisingly well and plays into a lot of the feeling of being out of the loop the game constantly has. I also really liked the weird eerie turn the Codec's in particular took by the end. There's also a lot less sexism which helps lol. Characters are as great as ever, Raiden being a huge standout and great addition. The voice acting is amazing, cutscenes look really good, the music is great.

These seem like pretty tough games to review if you aren't interested in diving super deep into the story and your thoughts on various moments. I'm not interested in doing that personally, especially because I think everyone should experience it themselves if they're at all interested. So I'll just say it was a great game and one of the more engaging video game stories I've experienced. Really excited to get to Snake Eater!