Among the more frustrating sequels I've played. The first is an uneven but fascinating portrait of Taisho era Tokyo; it stumbles but continues moving, unveiling unique locales and situations at a fairly even pace. It's a bizarre game, as it should be.

This sequel follows the age old trend of sequel design: refinement and abundance at the cost of everything else. It's slow, littered with obvious and repetitive dialogue, and any sense of character the previous game had is flattened and made banal. The preexisting environments are largely unchanged, several are barely used. Much of the game is set out in a country village, which feels like it should provide some visual diversity, but it mostly amounts to muddy looking vegetation and underground tunnels.

I'm skeptical of the game's attitudes on country people as well. As in most countries with an urban core, tensions between rural and city life are a defining part of Japan's identity, and this game regularly personifies its rural denizens as superstitious, cagey, and self destructive. The city slickers seem to make the right decisions once they figure out what's being hidden from them.