Little Nightmares 2, finally! I vividly recall my playthrough of LN1 and while quite liking it and being blown away by the ending - feeling like there was definitely a good amount of growth available for a sequel. Is Little Nightmares 2 that amazing follow up? Yeah, sort of...

So, Little Nightmares 2 main strengths is most certainly its encounter/level design and its monster designs. The art direction OF COURSE is 11/10 just like the first game so I won't gush over that element too much- the forest feels almost too mundane in how normal it is except it then contrasts with how weird and fucked up the City proper is so it does its job well. I do think the game's color palette is a liiiittle too monochromatically gray, which I think the first game did a pretty solid job at having a decent variety so I'm a bit sad that was a step back. Otherwise, LN2 fuckin' kills it. And one of the main weaknesses of 1 was the monsters - are they all great? Yes. But there are only like... 4 of them? Maybe 5? And they all overstay their welcome a bit. The sequel fixes that issue with style - there are definitely a dozen or so monsters, if not more, and each is paced fairly well (perfectly, in many cases) so that once all the interesting things have been done with them they make their graceful exit. So visually each part of the level is just fantastic to look at or interact with... except there are some difficulties.

My problems with the game, thankfully, are almost entirely things that can be patched up in due time. The controls are still a bit wonky however this is exacerbated by the AI companion who is with you for half~ of the game - you can hop into cover and she will come and push you out to make room for herself, alerting the monster. And if the monster alert that is basically game over except in some edge cases. Yet again, they provide very little slack from the monsters in terms of alerting them - you MUST have your route planned out and if you catch on some geometry (basically never a fatal issue in 1, fatal several times in 2) then tough shit you're dead and back to the autosave point with you. Also the game has a strong minimilist streak to it - there is no HUD on display and there are no control directions either outside of a tiny amount of prompts. This plays along very well with the strong art style but... there's one sequence in particular that requires you to do something that is not really intuitive with the controls or you will die many, many, many times until you figure out, utterly annihilating the tension of the scene.

While this game may have some significant strengths over its predecessors, the new drawbacks are also a bit too hard to ignore. While much of the gameplay is the same solid traversal through spooky environments solving relatively straightforward puzzles and obstacles, the sections of the game where I had growl in frustration for one reason or another added up far too many times. The art design being superb and an engaging story between our two main leads makes this more than worthwhile but I do wish the game hadn't fought me to a standstill so many times. In a year or so with a bunch of patches this game can be legit great with little holding it back and I do envy those folks a year+ from now who pick it up on sale and get that far smoother experience.