Usually, the reviews I make on here are shitposty in their nature and my more serious takes are on my Pastebin (and YouTube hopefully), but I need to make an exception for Psychonauts 2. I can't really say that I have a deep personal attachment to the first game. It's a fun game I have some appreciation for, but it's not a game I can talk about in any meaningful capacity like I can for a lot of other games. However, with Psychonauts 2's announcement, I was optimistic out of the sheer possibility of seeing an IP from the 6th generation of consoles brought up to 8th gen standards. Keep in mind KH3, by this point, was a ways off from releasing, and DMC5 wasn't announced yet. My optimism came from the fact that we were getting titles like these again after so long. Since its announcement, however, my gaming takes have changed significantly, and I feel they've become more nuanced as time went on. After replaying Psychonauts 1 in 2019, while the game does have some rigidity to it, I thought it was great, if a bit thematically lacking. After that replay, I got excited thinking about how Psychonauts 2 could build on 1 and explore whatever unique themes it wants to tackle. 2 had genuine potential to take the unexplored themes of 1 and recontextualize them in more thought-out and meaningful ways. And just like that, I got hyped. I already had high hopes for the gameplay, but I felt that with the gap in release between the 2 games, the themes of 2 would be explored to a much greater depth than 1. For a sizeable period of time, I earnestly believed that Psychonauts 2 would offer up something enriching, thematically, incorporating the themes into the gameplay in a way that 1 didn't...

Which is why it breaks my heart to say that I haven't been this disappointed with a game since Final Fantasy XV. It's not as soul-crushing or as abhorrent, but it certainly made me feel as empty. I genuinely feel like a madman for saying this, because I've seen almost nothing but praise for this game. After my initial and most likely only playthrough of the game, a lot of it felt woefully underdeveloped in every department. It tackles a lot of themes, but I feel it is only really explored at just the surface level and never in any meaningful capacity. It all leads to a very confused game that suffers from an identity crisis in what it's trying to say. There isn't much in this game that feels like it coalesces with anything. It claims to be a game about healing, but it doesn't really end up playing as much of a role as it's supposed to. The only real instance where the game does this at any level beyond the surface is with Ford Cruller. I feel it's the only time where it'd be appropriate to say that Psychonauts 2 is doing what it sets out to do well enough. However, beyond that point in the game is where the game really started going downhill for me.

I want to talk about the levels themselves for a bit, as it's another reason why I'm so disappointed with the game. The game introduces mechanics very early in that involve different means of traversal throughout the levels. For the level it's introduced in, it's utilized in an interesting manner by connecting thoughts together and seeing what should be the correct thought, and I thought it could be used in the future to flesh out other characters with how their thought process works. It's never used again after that first level, and it is only used as just a means of traversal from then on, and even then, it feels limiting. It doesn't mesh well with the other mechanics and feels very disjointed. It's only meaningfully used as a tool for combat, but, and I'll be blunt, combat sucks in this game. It wasn't good in Psychonauts 1, granted, but combat didn't play much of a role, or at least, nowhere near to the same extent as 2. The amount of enemy encounters in this game are ludicrous and border on insane, and the combat hasn't evolved nearly enough, both throughout the game and in comparison to the first, to make any of them enjoyable. I actively dread fighting enemies in this game because not only are they far too simple to get the most out of your toolkit, it takes a while to put them down. I'd be less miffed if enemy encounters were far less frequent, but they take up far too significant of a portion of the game's runtime. They also lead to my issue of all the levels feeling very samey and feeling like there's a drought of content, especially in the final 3rd of the game.

In Psychonauts 1, the levels felt varied and made full use of your toolkit in fun and interesting ways. There's still a bit of that in 2, but it's downplayed significantly and is never utilized in an inventive way like in 1. I never felt like I needed to think at all in this game. Now, all of this could be salvaged if the levels themselves had its design could be used to explore the depth of its characters and themes, but outside of 2 instances, it's again done in a very surface level. It hurts, because there are some genuinely really good moments to get from these instances, but they're so miniscule in the scope in this game, and that's what is so disappointing.

The part that disappointed me the most was the big reveal of the identity of the main villain being Raz's grandmother. As I reached it, I felt that this could bring everything together, and the game could be completely redeemed if it takes this opportunity to have everything coalesce into its final act. All it really did was add onto the amount of muddled themes this game doesn't explore well at all. This hurt the most because the entire game had a side arc involving the Aquatos and their conflict with Raz after running away at the start of the first game. Finding out that his grandmother was the reason he got to go to the summer camp in the first game sets up a more complex problem and could result in something intensely meaningful and beautifully tragic. It's not like the first game where the final boss is a figment of Raz's mind, no, it's his grandmother as she used to be. However, it's not really built upon and is emblematic of every problem I have with this game. When this happened, I couldn't help but think of 2 specific examples when all of this was playing out that did what this game is trying to do to a much better end result. Those are Devil May Cry 5 and Kill la Kill. Both series deal with having the final major antagonist being a parental figure of some sort, and the protagonist has to be the one to stop them. In the case of DMC5, Nero finds out that Vergil is his father, and he goes through a mix of emotions that is shown in his tone and his mannerisms. However, he comes to the realization that he finally found his family, and he aims to protect that family at all costs, resulting in Nero finally getting his Devil Trigger and gaining the power to stop the bloodshed once and for all. It caps off both Nero's character arc and the series up to this point in the most beautiful way possible. In Kill la Kill, the entire plot is kicked off from Ryuko losing her father and only family left, or so she thought. In the final 3rd of the anime, she finds out that Satsuki and Ragyo are her sister and mother, respectively, and she is understandably sent to the edge. When she finally snaps out of her rage and despair, she realizes the value of humanity, teams up with her sister, and finds a way to change Ragyo's worldview and bring her home. It's not as successful, to say the least, but it brings out the themes in a heartwrenching and sobering manner.

I bring these two up because I feel they both do what Psychonauts 2 attempts, but does it in a more powerful way than what this game does. It's more focused on telling us how Raz feels and not showing how he feels, which is goddamn absurd considering this is Psychonauts we're talking about. It makes the moment of Raz and his grandmother more weightless than it should be, because not only was there not enough time in the story for this to land, but it's, again, woefully underdeveloped and lacks the hardhitting emotion of the examples I previously listed. It all leads to a very flaccid finale, and I got absolutely nothing out of it. I feel if Raz got to emote anywhere near as much as Nero or Ryuko, it'd elevate both the finale and the game itself by an incredibly large margin for me. As it stands, it's very uneventful and forgettable.

I know I've been intensely mean and cynical towards this game, but that's just how I genuinely feel about Psychonauts 2. A lot of this may have sound like nitpicking to some of you, but these are things I value the most out of a game, and I couldn't get the same thing most people got out of Psychonauts 2. This review is more of an abridged version of everything I want to say about this game one day, because I know my thoughts are gonna evolve more with time.

Because I don't want to leave this review on such a negative note, I want to list off some things Psychonauts 2 does really well. First off, Raz feels great to control outside of combat. There's a nice flow to his moves that wasn't there in the first game. It leads to some very fun movement that, for the most part, is complemented by the level design well enough. Presentation is pretty stellar, but goddamn, the performance suffered immensely as a result. The Cruller levels are honestly pretty great, even if a part of that is because I'm a sucker for tragic love stories (look at my PFP for crying out loud), but they were definitely the high point of the game for me. The final thing I want to acknowledge is while yes, I do think the themes are very muddled and are underdeveloped, the fact that it wants to talk about them with full sincerity and not be self-aware and Borderlands-esque is admirable if nothing else. I value sincerity in video games, hence why I give so much shit to other games like Ratchet and Clank 2016 and, again, Borderlands, for not being that at all.

With all that said, I hope I was able to get my point across to some extent. I don't blame you if you think this is just rambling, because all of this is coming from the top of my head, and it is extremely early in the morning in my timezone. One day, I'll update this in a new format, but for now, I said my piece regarding this game.