Psychonauts 2 is the type of game you have to respect purely for the amount of ambition and creativity that came from so many talented people.

Many platform games will merely use story to justify gameplay (ie "X was stolen! Jump from point A to B!!"), but Psychonauts prioritizes story and gameplay equally. In fact, these two elements are intertwined such that your objectives within a given level directly correlate with a turning point in the story. Facilitated by the fact that each level is a literal manifestation of each character's mind.

While this is not necessarily profound, its definitely enough to set it apart from most 3D platformers. Raz doesnt control quite as enjoyably as Mario, but his story is what allows the game to stand a chance against Mario Odyssey, whose story was "Collect the _____ to save the princess!" once again.

Though don't get me wrong, Raz controls well enough. Not the acrobatic fluidity of Odyssey, but it didn't really need to be. The levels are what steal the show, anyway. Creativity and originality ooze from each level. From a dental horrorscape to a casino hospital - there's nothing quite like the twisted feverdream levels of Psychonauts. Each one strengthens the characterizations of the people whose minds you inhabit.

And this game is BEAUTIFUL.Great artstyle, executed perfectly makes a great visual experience. Its always impressive how these mental spaces twist and connect in mind-bending ways.

Only imperfections I noticed: sometimes slow model loading, and some dialogue awkwardly cut by transitions/loading. But does this bother me? Nah. Im just impressed this game exists at all. You should play it tbh

Big improvement over the first game. They try so many things, making each level feel pretty unique. Level design is pretty good, sound track is bangin', and Dixie is a great new character with a standout "ez mode" for jumps.

I found most of the animal buddies to be really fun to play as, except for one in specific circumstances, which I'll get to later.

The game has a ton of bonuses and collectables. They did feel a bit inconsistent on how well hidden they were though. Sometimes they had a literal arrow pointing at them, or a stray banana(s) that tells you an otherwise dead-end may hold secrets. Other times you better hope to catch a glimpse of the 1 pixel that showcases that there's a secret in an otherwise bottomless pit, or worse yet, have a random ass wall that you can just pass through for no reason with no indication it is any different from other walls.

I went half way through the game getting every secret before it became a challenge just to pass the level, never mind trying to squeeze into every nook and cranny. I really feel like the harder ones are designed for people who already know the levels inside and out.

My complaints mostly come down to a few things that make it harder than it really should be. The first is that the screen can often feel too far zoomed in, and enemies or obstacles come too fast to react properly. It's not the worst case ever, and I'd even say it's definitely a problem in the minority of levels.

The other thing is that hit boxes can feel a bit janky at times. The hornet enemies, and brambles stages definitely highlight this (and God help you if you're playing as the parrot in a brambles stage - which is the animal buddy thing I referenced early).

Both of these things wouldn't be too bad by themselves if it had a system like Sonic where you could easily power through if you kept your 1 safety ring, but this game has a maximum of 2 hit points at any one time. The game is already hard (in a very fair way) just by design, so having these 2 things costing you health, can really make this game walk the line between masterpiece and fucking annoying piece of shit.

The final form of the musou based on existing franchises, in which their always escalating efforts in translating mechanics from other series to the this genre straight up reached the point of simulating an entire game.

This genuine sequel to Persona 5 does not exactly retain all of the systemic level interactions from the RPG, but always tries to reproduce its intent, mostly in a more scripted way, while the presentation does the rest of heavy lifting. The most palpable differences are in the fights, where they hid all the musou bits, but even in this less graceful aproach to combat the game cleverly captures the feel and distinct motions of Persona battles.

All of that to serve the bigger purpose of giving you more time with these lovely, lovely characters. To have many group meals, cheerfully play on the beach, travel across the country in a cozy van and confront how in the interconnected age our fear of living unfulfilled lives can lead to outsourcing our happiness to apparently successful figures that are just as broken as any of us and wield that validation as an unhealthy shield against their own traumas. Just as freinds do.

It was one of the best and fun 3D platform game that I've ever played. As all can think about, this game have a lot of jokes of sponjebob and your universe and in the stages there are many things that lead you to remember of cartoon. And about the mechanics I thought It's great and fun too and I was surprised by metroidvania mechanics when I got an ability and I could return in back stage to get a hidden item because of it.
This is a remake and I didn't play the back version, but playing It the first time was awesome.

Ok, three big things and one weird tangent.

Big Thing 1. I’m yet to find something in a video game that I get more pleasure from than moving quickly and precisely in 2D platformers, and my god does this game do traversal like a dream. Despite its somewhat overwhelming controls you never feel outside of the character, it's floaty when you expect and sharp when you want, always flowing beautifully between the many traversal options it presents throughout the game that consistently complements the previous ones.

It's obviously very similar to Blind Forest, and doesn't introduce anything as groundbreaking as the Bash, but honestly I could just do this forever and never get tired of it.

(also other games should totally just steal Bash, what are you waiting for)

Big Thing 2. So, I have this long standing silly debate with some folks I know about whether Ori is a metroidvania or not. The crux of my argument against it is that the game has no real interest in exploration, it is very linear, guided and progression always comes from story. But Moon Studios clearly loved Hollow Knight, and while I appreciate the added complexity to combat and the quirky characters with charming voices populating the world, it still isn't a game about exploring. And that becomes very clear when you look at how the map guy works. While in HK he is basically just selling you paper so you can draw your routes, making it so you can only see where you’ve already been through, here it's like he’s the one playing a metroidvania and just selling you the results of his work after he’s done.

I really do love these games as platformers, but they got nothing on really good metroidvanias, and trying to double down on that without really committing to it just seems like a waste.

Big Thing 3. It’s wild how they’re just straight up repeating the same tricks from the first game with the story here. Kinda feels like they can’t do anything other than ‘first five minutes of Up’ type of storytelling.

Weird Tangent. Is this the best Spider-Man game ever made!? I really think the only way we’ll ever come close to replicating the acrobatic, fast paced and precise mobility of that character in a video game is by limiting the movement to two axis. The 3D games always reduce the more extravagant traversal scenes to cheap QTEs because it would be impossible to control a character in situations like that, but we do it with Ori all the time! And he crawls on walls! And has this glowy rope thing he shots at stuff to get closer and he fights animal-like beings and… you get the idea.

This is one of the best games that I've ever played and I can describe as a breathtakingly. Ori and the blind forest (the first one) had some problems about your simple combat and low duration, but the same had a emotional and fantastic history and good mechanincs as a metroidvania. The new game - ori and the will of the wisps - show us much more quality about mechanics, art and new features like big bosses and stores compared to first one. You can find many place with great aesthetic and each one have a specific and amazing soundtrack. So, I recommend this game for everyone.

This game got me when many of my decisions changed the history and even other side quests. The fighting is not really good, but sometimes you need to use oils, runes and other things to improve your combat and win your battle. This game is a RPG but you'll play with a char made and ready to start. You will just up your char, craft some itens, change runes e making choices that may change the history. It's not bad, but if you are waiting to create a char you can't do it in this game. However, this game is pretty good and the theme seems like I was playing D&D. This magic open world has a lot of things to do, peoples to help e places to explore, and it's just a piece of thigs that you can do and find on this game. I'd finished this game with 57 hours just playing the main history n looking for some treasures, but you can take more if you enjoy all the things that game delivery.