a miserable slog and not because of how increasingly bleak everything is, believe it or not. the game is like 15-20 hours long but it felt like 50.
i'll take what i said in my review of Innocence (i was much more charitable with that game as a first effort) and i'll repeat myself here:
"A game with instant fail states all over the place mixed with mechanics that are at times in shambles isn't a good mix."
it was one thing to have the mechanics not improve significantly but it's another to focus so heavily on its weak points like combat while weighing itself down with more and more bloat elsewhere.
a three tiered skill tree (probably the most baffling/useless one i've seen in a game since Shadow of the Tomb Raider?) on top of equipment upgrades on top of braindead crafting because fuck it, why not? for a game that is primarily a narrative based experience that lives or dies on its characters and story i find myself wondering why they bothered.
some of this would be more easily overlooked if i was fully engrossed in what was going on elsewhere but unfortunately the bloat problems extended to the narrative too. this could've easily trimmed 5-8 hours and nothing of value would've been lost.
really wanted this to be a surprise improvement on the first but it wasn't meant to be for me, i guess.
i'll take what i said in my review of Innocence (i was much more charitable with that game as a first effort) and i'll repeat myself here:
"A game with instant fail states all over the place mixed with mechanics that are at times in shambles isn't a good mix."
it was one thing to have the mechanics not improve significantly but it's another to focus so heavily on its weak points like combat while weighing itself down with more and more bloat elsewhere.
a three tiered skill tree (probably the most baffling/useless one i've seen in a game since Shadow of the Tomb Raider?) on top of equipment upgrades on top of braindead crafting because fuck it, why not? for a game that is primarily a narrative based experience that lives or dies on its characters and story i find myself wondering why they bothered.
some of this would be more easily overlooked if i was fully engrossed in what was going on elsewhere but unfortunately the bloat problems extended to the narrative too. this could've easily trimmed 5-8 hours and nothing of value would've been lost.
really wanted this to be a surprise improvement on the first but it wasn't meant to be for me, i guess.