This game is a tightrope act of balancing the most serious and most well written drama with the goofiest side content ever in a game. The most impressive part is how it manages to seamlessly flip flop between the two and makes everything worthwhile to do. No other game has brought me to the verge of tears with the most heartfelt character writing only for me to hire Michael Jackson into my real estate empire moments later. You can spend hours upon hours just messing around in the city, encountering silly characters, playing fun minigames and encountering silly characters by playing minigames. One of the most entertaining games I've ever played.

I made it through ~50% of the story and I just don't feel like playing it anymore.
Don't get me wrong, the start of the game was pretty promising and I was hooked, but the longer I kept playing, it just felt more and more boring/pointless.
As the logs suggest, I gave this game a chance for a whole month, but it just couldn't catch my interest.
This game keeps using these game-stretching techniques such as "Press R2 to open a door" or adding some meaningless cutscenes, which is unexplainably annoying.
By far the best thing about this game is combat. Clean and visually impressive combos, compared with pretty big range of customization. It is pretty good overall.
It's not THAT bad of a game, but considering how many other good games I have on my backlog list, I just won't bother finishing it.

Rayman, I'm sorry I neglected you.
Oh, I never expected you to run away and leave me feeling this empty.
Your "YEAH" right now would sound like music to me.
Please come home, 'cause I miss you, Raymany.
(Rayman, come home)
Rayman, come home
(Rayman, come home)
Rayman, come home

I love this game dearly.

It's one of my favourite, if not my absolute favourite, games that Ubi has released in the last decade.

Is it a little cringy? Yes.
Is its approach to internet culture a little "how do you do, fellow kids?" Yes.
Does it try a little too hard to be funny at points? Yes.
Is it somehow sweet and sincere, in spite of all that? Absolutely, yes.

Much of that sincerity comes down to the cast of characters that make up DedSec San Francisco itself, including the protagonist Marcus Holloway (my personal favourite), engineering specialist and mask-wearing bad-boy Wrench, artsy activist Sitara, autistic sweetheart Josh and their man on the inside, Horatio. Together, they come across like a motley crew of ne'er-do-wells who don't exactly exude toughness and grit. However, that's definitely part of their charm and why they do most of their activism remotely, so it does work.

Compared to the first game, WD2 definitely does lack a strong villain, trading an old, intimidating mob boss with his hands on every part of the city for a douchey tech CEO with clout and connections. In some ways, he does fit for this particular story, but the stakes aren't quite as high for these characters as they were for Aiden in the first game.

To that point, I do take umbrage with a particular plot point where a certain character exits the story. It's clear from the buildup and the scene in question that this is the 'actions have consequences' turning point; however, this character isn't really brought up again past that point, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem to go anywhere, which is a shame.

Still, the writing and story beats are strong enough overall that these issues don't quite kibosh the whole narrative. I wouldn't say its overall as strong and put-together as WD1's story was, but the characters here are certainly more engaging.

Gameplay-wise, on the whole, I do enjoy Watch Dogs 2 much much more than the first one. Much of that is thanks to how beautiful and vibrant this
game's recreation of San Francisco is, especially in regards to dynamic NPC interactions and scenery. It sounds like Ubisoft is paying me to say this but you really can just walk around the streets, listening to the fantastic radio soundtrack and not doing anything besides that and still have a great time.

The rest of the gameplay's fun factor comes from how they've rebuilt the core mechanics of the first game here to an impressive extent. Hacking is no longer a one-button affair, and is instead its own mini menu with several sub options that each do different things to help you get through a particular area. Parkour is also way more fun than it was before. True, it's perhaps a bit slower since they focus on more flashy, acrobatic movements but it's just so fun to run into obstacles and see what Marcus will do to get around and over them.

When it comes to combat however, my feelings are mixed. Shooting is still more-or-less still foundationally the same as the first game and can be fun with its repertoire of weapons, however melee is a bit slower and, much like the first game, you don't have direct control over it and its just a one-button takedown.

My biggest issue with combat in WD2 though is ludonarrative dissonance. While I don't usually have a problem with this, especially when it comes to Uncharted games, as I understand you have to take some liberties with the story you've set and separate it from the gameplay so it can still be fun, here it kind of hinders this side of the game to a degree. Marcus doesn't seem like a cold-blooded killer like Aiden Pearce was/is and using the game's vast array of lethal weaponry on enemies, regardless of whether you feel they're deserving, just feels wrong and doesn't fit him as a character, or indeed the rest of DedSec too.

Thankfully, there are some non-lethal options in the form of stun weaponry, including guns and grenades. These do get the job done, but you need the extra ones that come with the DLC to even approach a level playing field with the enemies in the game's mandatory combat segments.

Weirdly also, Marcus's melee count as lethal takedowns and there is no option for a non-lethal version of it. The game doesn't even tell you this, either.

I call this ludonarrative dissonance, because that's all it is. Whether you choose to engage lethally or non-lethally has absolutely no baring on the story or Marcus's character development and is just there to give you more options. It's a shame that they opted out of keeping the reputation meter this time around as, in my view, this game deserves the use of it far more than WD1 did, since that game just canonically assumed that your Aiden was killing with reckless abandon anyhow.

Still, even though it sounds like I have big problems with WD2, I do love it a lot, certainly more than its predecessor. It could absolutely be a better game if you take my aforementioned gripes with it into account, but as it stands, it really is peak Ubislop open world goodness that I unabashedly enjoy.

8.5/10

What makes The World Ends With You so special is how it uses its medium and genre, which is often aimed at a specific kind of introverted youth, to encourage them exit their comfort zone. Everything from the story to the mechanics tells the player that yes, video games are cool and fun, but go out and experience life and interact with others too. The battle system is an extremely unintututive simultaneous dual screen action game, mirroring the difficulty of communicating and cooperating with others, but is also incredibly rewarding to those who put in the effort to overcome said difficulty. Just like real relationships. The progression system is centered on mastering as many abilities as possible, encouraging you to constantly cycle out your moveset and experience new ways of play. Difficulty can be modified on the fly, but you are incentivized with more and better loot for trying to make things as challenging as possible. There's a wide range of music genres, fashion styles, and youth subcultures influencing the game's setting, hopefully introducing the audience to new interests. The game even rewards you for not playing and going outside; just have your DS closed in your pocket as you go about your day. The message of the game truly shines because you can see the devs practicing what they preach: creating something so weird and different from the average RPG, basing its setting on real life locations and cultures outside of gaming. The World Ends With You is a title that does reflect this overall theme, but personally I think the original Japanese title illustrates it more beautifully: It's A Wonderful World. Go out and experience it.