AI 2 isn't without charm, but in order to make a certain late game meta twist work, the rest of the game suffers. Characters act weirdly. Any number of dialogue lines or lore have been awkwardly written to hide the twist. Most investigation leads go either unadressed or nowhere for many hours of playtime, leaving you feeling like the story is dragging you in random directions. Four separate characters have to wear masks all the time. One of them is too dumb an inclusion to be believed, but she had to be like this to have the twist work at all, so in she goes.

Scenes end and transition abruptly. Instead of elaborating on the previous games' sci-fi elements like, you know, AI and the somniums, they had to introduce entirely new, unrelated ones. There are plenty of bizarre retcons to the first AI Somnium. Things that in the first game were just jokes or red herrings are serious plot elements here. On top of all this, one of the viewpoint characters has to be an unreliable narrator who is established to hallucinate and have short-term memory loss. You seeing all the nonsense they had to do in order to set this dumb twist up?

AI 1 had a plot that could feel meandering as well, but funny banter would help alleviate that frustration, especially the dialogue between the two main characters. The new playable characters in this game, Ryuki especially, just can't measure up. The action sequences, which in the first game were funny scenes where Aiba helped Date do some trick shooting, have changed to boring, long-winded martial arts Quick Time Events. Somniums still vary widely in quality and can feel like roadblocks to the story rather than the selling point of the game.

Iris and Mizuki were standout side characters in the first game, and I thought guys like Moma could be pretty funny. While they're all here in the sequel to some degree or other, there haven't been any new side characters introduced that are as strong to give a heart to this new story. Kizuna and Lien in particular fall completely flat for me at least, and the less said about Komeji the better. A lot of jokes and elements from the first game get brought back and repeated, but you can't just tell the same joke 10 times and still expect to get a laugh.

AI Somnium 2 is an annoying game that only sometimes has the charm of the first one. It keeps undermining the funny parts to cover up a pointless plot twist, repeats old elements without interesting changes, and has an underwhelming new cast. It ends on a good note - but only because once the twist has finally been revealed, it's free to pay off the drama before having a silly and funny finale. Would've been cool if it was more like that all along.

" are you ready for your zenith of the medium lessons? "

super mario brothers wonder gulped.
spider-man 2 kneeled.
baldur's gate 3 sweated profusely.
tears of the kingdom shuddered.
armored core vi fi- nah who am i kidding

" yes hiori, mano, meguru, kiriko, mamimi, kogane, sakuya, yuika, tenka, chiyuki, amana, chiyoko, rinze, kaho, natsuha, juri, fuyuko, asahi, mei, hinana, asahi, madoka, koito, nichika, hazuki, mikoto, hana, luca, and haruki. GLORY TO 283PRO !!!! "

god i wish i could write something more formative about this, but like,, just.. everything is so perfect :(

i've never felt more appreciated by a developer for being a fan of a series than i was when playing this game, fanservice can be hit or miss a lot of times and i know a lot of people hate it when devs seemingly try to make you point at your screen by making a reference and a lot of the time i do as well, but holy shit it was just so perfect here. everything from small references to older games, to fight callbacks, to long dead locations being used again, to seemingly forgotten side characters showing up after so many games, and of course to huge plot lines finally(!!!) being covered after years of nothing, just, aaaaaaa it was so satisfying

since i dont think i have the right words for all i want to say about this, i think the most important thing over anything i could possibly say is how well they treat kiryu, a character who’s so incredibly important to so so so many people, a character a lot of people look up to & a character who often puts on a guise despite dealing with so fucking much, i can only speak for myself but the moments where kiryu breaks that guise and shows his tender side are always my favorites, and now i have this, which is 10-20 hours of kiryu showing that side of himself, but even though the whole game had that softer version of kiryu that i love & adore at the front of it, the last 20 minutes or so was the peak of that & was the most satisfying and heart wrenching moment i’ve ever experienced in media. sitting at my monitor at 4am crying into my shirt using all the strength that i have to not start wailing, failing that, & crying until my eyes were dry is something i don't think i'll experience again for a really long time, and is something i don’t think ill ever forget, even writing this days after finishing the game, i still tear up when i think of the finale, and that's something really rare & special to me

i can't express how happy i am through just a review that this series is still in such good hands, made by people who still very much care about these characters and this story that means so much to so many people. thank you rgg

I thoroughly enjoyed base ToA, With a satisfying story and a memorable cast. I was surprised to see what this DLC had to offer as it is a sequel of sorts. I was excited to see more party banter and potential relationships develop among the party members.

Was this DLC necessary? No, no it was not. For $40 I didn't expect a full gameplay overhaul, but I wanted to see if for such a price, they'd have capitalized on delving more into the characters and their individual stories.

I wasn't expecting a grand new story considering the conflict was pretty much solved in base ToA. So this new addition of character Nazamil was not as important as I'd hoped.

To no one's surprise, this is mostly filler DLC with mostly teasing and whatnot. Though character interactions are still great and fun with their moments, and the music was still fantastic, I felt as though there was close to little thought put into writing this expansion.

There really isn't much new story as opposed to more side quests to fill time. I did do most of them, and I completed this DLC in about 13-15 hours. This seems like a fair time frame for DLC, but taking all the side quests away, it'll amount to maybe 6 to 7 hours of main story.

I was even more disappointed that I spent all that time invested in the EX quest and watching the setup unfold, excited for the payoff, just for it to be another quick tease at the end without any fulfillment. I would've been fine paying $40 in all honestly if they went all the way with that.

Overall, watch this DLC on youtube or something, or wait for a sale. Don't spend $40 on this. Trust me, you're not missing out.