Dropping a TL;DR because I rambled way too much when the actual verdict on this game is pretty obvious. It's more Puyo. It's more Tetris. It's more story mode hijinks. Unless you're some uber Tetris tryhard who winces at the idea of slow DAS/ARR and is still @ing the official Puyo Twitter account asking for combo tables to be nerfed, you'll probably enjoy this game to some extent. If you don't know what any of that even means, then there's nothing to worry about. Full thoughts below.

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Hmm. I had about 600+ hours in the first game across all platforms. I say "across all platforms" because I own 3 separate copies of it, and even had the 3DS version pirated to boot (it's Japan-only, okay?!).

It had some clear problems. Unfortunately for our IGN reviewer friend, "the Tetris player is at a slight disadvantage" spread as a meme in the community - one look at the leaderboards disproved that brutally. Many top Puyo players didn't enjoy the hyper-defensive, vertical play necessitated by the frenzied barrage of T-spins and Tetrises they'd encounter every game. There were no filters to matchmake you with only other Puyo players. By contrast, most good Tetris players didn't really care. They just continued playing the crack cocaine, DPS-fiend game of competitive guideline Tetris relatively unfazed.

That's like, stuff only 1% of the playerbase really cares about though. And they ended up getting Puyo Puyo Champions as a stopgap measure to play quick, easy, arcade Tsu-style online Puyo matches on modern consoles. I was good enough at Puyo Puyo Tetris that I enjoyed sinking many hours into it, grinding ranked (there's a good chance you saw my name if you ever checked the top 20 UK leaderboards on any platform). I was scrubby enough at it that the balance issues didn't piss me off like they did many others. It reignited my love for Tetris and it was the entry that forced me to finally get good at Puyo. Now I spam GTR like 90% of the players online because I'm too scared to actually think. But it looks big brain to onlookers. Hooray?

Anyway, onto the game I'm actually meant to be talking about here.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 didn't need to exist. I'd accepted this back when I was entertaining the idea of this game as a hypothetical way before it was ever announced. But like, you could make a strong argument for every post-Tsu entry not needing to exist. With that thought in mind, and knowing I'd probably just chill out and enjoy the singleplayer and quality-of-life improvements, I bought it day 1 like the whipped consoomer I am. I then proceeded to shelve the game for 10 months after playing half of the story mode. I was just too burned out from the first game, which realy drove home just how much this didn't need to exist. I also wasn't enjoying the changes made to Tetris in a feeble attempt to improve balance (let's make Tetris slower! What do you mean it feels worse to play?) (They also reverted this change in a recent patch, it's the same as PPT1 Tetris speeds now lol. I'll probably play it more just because of this).

It's fine. The story mode starts a bit slow but has its funny moments. And its Schezo moments. A lot of the same assets are reused. And the original was already heavily reusing 20th Anniversary assets. Skill Battles return from Chronicle. They sure are a thing. Oh hey, they added filters to matchmaking so now you can specify if you want to play against Puyo or Tetris! But Puyo Puyo Champions and Tetris Effect already kinda exist by now, and most serious players already left to play those.

Okay, I need to bring up one of the funniest patches I've seen in a game. So somehow, launch PPT2 had a song that just straight up goes horribly off-key. A fixed version was patched in. Hobbyist mashup makers can feel vindicated knowing that actual pros fucked up this badly.
The rest of the music is thankfully not off-key. It's also nothing special really.

The fact this game isn't getting horribly slammed proves just how genius the core Puyo and Tetris gameplay designs are. You can serve them on the same paper plates you served them on 4 years ago and people will eat it up. Seriously, the package itself reeks of phoned-in cash-in. You could've just patched Puyo Tetris 1 to have those filters people have been begging for instead of releasing 2 more asset flips (counting Champions here). There's nothing substantial this offers that the first game doesn't other than those filters and some new characters (thank you for FINALLY ditching that stupid 24 slot tradition). A lot of people probably skipped this and I don't blame them.

But fuck all that I'm still giving this a good rating because you can play as SONIC. That's right. He's supposedly the fastest hedgehog around.

felt it was worth mentioning that a lot of the reviews here mention Rondo of Blood, and how this is a bad port of that.

it's not. for some inexplicable reason, the art is ripped from it (as much as they could anyway), and the entire soundtrack consists of SNES renditions of the rondo one but... it's a completely different game. "play rondo instead" is a misnomer, since it's a completely different experience (outside of the soundtrack, which is easily one of this game's strengths. the SNES renditions are legitimately really good. i highly recommend checking them out if you like the rondo ost)

that being said! is this good? no! you might notice that I've marked this as "Abandoned", but I'll note that I did actually play to the end. but hahahaha that final boss. it's still kinda fun at the start though, but maybe worshipping classicvania gave me brain damage

so instead of saying "play rondo instead", i'll instead say "play any other classicvania instead". though i still enjoyed this more than 4

God Hand sets out to answer a question that I was perfectly happy not knowing the answer to. "Is the Danganronpa soundtrack good to beat people up to?" And while it answered that, and then some (to sum things up: don't trust chihuahuas, do trust a mysterious girl when she shows up with some dead dude's arm, gambling will solve all of your money problems quickly and efficiently), I was left feeling pretty empty at the end. Where is God Foot? Where is God Head? If this game had sold more and gotten sequels, I would've been able to form Exodia. Fucked up that the powers that be are preventing me from doing that, but I see why they deemed this game too powerful and sought to undermine its influence.

PROS:
- case quality-wise, easily the best in the series alongside AAI2. case 2 in particular has to be my favourite filler case in the series
- everything good about dgs1 is also good here (the cast, the presentation, just the overall feel of 19th century Ace Attorney)
- fully delivers on the amazing set-up of dgs1, making this duology the peak of the series, and very accessible for people who have never played ace attorney before (while also offering a lot of twists and subversions on the usual formula for those who have!)
- contender for funniest game in the series, every sholmes deduction section had me dying, and van zieks' reactions to the shit you pull out of your ass are still gold. even the throwaway witnesses are all great here. 90% of my playtime was spent smiling
- the port and localisation quality is very good. though there's a couple mods i recommend playing with (one allowing animations to be 60fps, another improving music quality)

CONS:
- much like dgs1, DO NOT GO IN ON AN EMPTY STOMACH. i made this mistake and ended up dining with my husbando, gregson, unexpectedly. so the price of this game may be deceptive.
- goes hard on the asset reuse. which is fine since it does it well, but it also makes it the only ace attorney game that heavily reuses the soundtrack of another. which is also fine because DGS has one of the best OSTs in the series. but damn it i want more. (EDIT: actually upon checking, this game had like 2 hours of new music which is more than i remembered. still wouldve liked a different cross examination theme or something tho)
- pacing not the smoothest. i think Scarlet Study (the fan TL people) said that these were meant to be 3 games, but budget issues and lack of popularity meant we only got 2. dont remember what their basis for this was but it does kinda feel like there should've been more.
- upon finishing this, you will immediately begin to despair at the thought of ryunosuke, sustato, sholmes, van zieks and the rest of the cast never appearing in an ace attorney game again.

FINAL VERDICT:
Guilty... of being a sick ass game and miniseries that everyone should play. i still cant believe i actually finally got to play this and it didn't let me down at all

This is the only MOBA I've ever enjoyed. None of the others are this chaotic or have this much punk energy behind every patch, where half the playerbase routinely wonders every few months just what the fuck happens in Icefrog's head and how he's come to ruin the game for the 5th time this year. No rating can do this any justice. It is one of the few games on this site where any rating can theoretically and justifiably apply to it (as reflected in the distribution). Methodical and technical, yet every game is at the whims of the very toxic people you've been queued with (the most I've seen from any playerbase). You'll spend 200 hours learning the game (yes), and for what? Someone on your team to decide that you're now playing 6v4 out of the kindness of their heart? You're always the 4, of course.

The highest highs and lowest lows. Play this long enough, and you'll eventually get a really tense 2 hour game that tells a fucking award-winning story through the many coincidences that happened to align. Play it with a friend group, and you'll all be constantly quoting this one guy from this one game 4 years ago who said this one ridiculous thing. And yet for every moment like that, you'll have 10 more games where nothing seems to go right. You have to play this with friends to opt out of some of those lows.

Maybe I'm rating this from the perspective of a brainwashed cultist. Maybe I went too low and it truly is uncontainable kino. I put 1700 hours into this before I realised I needed to do something with my life. Truthfully I still haven't done whatever that thing was meant to be, and I also miss the feeling of being flamed by Russians from back when I actively played in 2014.
The abyss stares back.

After all these years, Cave Story has cemented itself as a legend and titan of the indie game scene. This must've set a hell of an example back in '04 as a type of game that AAA was moving away from (that we appreciated was still being made), and as something truly accessible to anyone with a computer, while being consistently quality throughout. A one-man passion project that somehow manages to hold its own in a fair few ways - the music slaps, the gameplay is solid and has cool ideas, the theming of the game is cute with a lovable cast... who knows how many creators this inspired. It being free ensured that so many people were able t- wait shit this isnt that one. yeah fuck there's a + on the end of the title lmao i goofed hard. uhhh lemme fix that rating real qui

i think people are missing the point by complaining about filler being present (would you consider your own fucking around as a 10yo with your friends 100% vital to your own story arc as a person?) but a certain character whose name begins with "sweet" and ends with "heart" just has too much screentime and the game thinks it's being funny by doing this. it isn't. characters like this peaked with wendy oldbag.

the game every quirky indie jrpg looks up to, earthbound, has godtier filler. undertale also nails this. omori is one-half a decent attempt at this and one-half a pretty compelling story. the way both halves work in conjunction and the contrast between them is actually very good. it's just that this game can only gain from its filler being made more fun.

that being said it's still pretty great and i enjoyed my playthrough overall. maybe the long dev process made the devs overconfident in how good the two dream world "protagonists" are though