This game is a dream that makes no sense that you cannot wake up from, but instead of being personal and full of life, it's abstract and unintelligible. It's the kind of story and experience that you constantly have to shape meaning from yourself. Personally, I found it exhausting and boring for the majority of the playthrough, but that's not to say there's no value in the experience, obviously, I am in the minority here.

There were a few really nice set pieces that I felt resonated with me. I especially liked the song and walk through the forest in Act 2. And the sound design of this game is masterful and the visuals are nice.

However, I tapped out after act 3 because the game was getting so boring, confusing, and detached. The main issue for me was likely the characters. They're just not interesting. Conway is the only one that had something going for him in my opinion, but the rest I could care less about which makes it really hard to continue reading boring ass essays about random abstract locations they stuck in the world. Also, I am not a huge fan of the writing style of this one. There is so much fluff in this story that anything interesting that you latch onto gets buried in monotony pretty quickly. I get that there is a deeper meaning here about the exploitation of the poor, but I have heard this song and dance before.

While Va11-Hall-A emphasizes style, it's so much style over substance. As a visual novel, this is a game in a genre that lives and dies by writing. Unfortunately, my diagnosis for this one is a case of internet poisoning, in which a couple game developers hung out on fora and let that guide style, character, and humor.

Even so, there are still some interesting things about it - the insistence on setting up the jukebox before each shift, the main character's narrative arc that's centered around grief and fear, the way the world's events unfold around the bar rather than within it - so I would say it accomplishes some of what it means to in terms of storytelling

The bartender mechanic is one of the weakest of the genre, though, and it doesn't stand up particularly well next to the convenient puzzling of Coffee Talk or the more active and varied effects that drinks have in Red Strings Club. Honestly, the game was a little more fun on the days where I let the main character be "distracted," which meant that I at least had to remember drink orders myself. There are a few moments in each shift where there's some variability in terms of what you can serve, but it doesn't lead to much more than a small difference in dialogue or, at most, the appearance of an optional character.

Should probably give these more than one go before rating this, but man, does this seem like one of the weakest bundles yet.

Quixort feels like the mandatory bad game these packs always have, but the biggest problem here is that all the games worth playing are slightly worse iterations of games they've already done. Junktopia is a worse Talking Points. Roomerang is literally just Quiplash with the points hidden and some other round-win caveats thrown in. Fibbage is Fibbage. Nonsensory is probably the most original one here but it still manages to feel incredibly derivative of other Jackbox stuff since it falls into the "answer random prompt & people vote on it" category of games.

Not, like, offensively bad, but there's just no real reason to get this one. If you've already played most of the Jackbox games, this isn't offering anything new. If you're newer to the series, you can literally just get 3 or 7. Hope they bring the weird oddball games back for the next installment (see: weapons drawn, the devil's in the details, push the button, etc), I don't even like all of those that much but at least the mediocre packs are more interesting that way

La-Mulana 2's sole glaring omission present in the first entry was no doubt the Hell Temple - an out-of-the-way optional dungeon, leagues harder than anything else in the game. Punishing, borderline unfair masocore puzzle platforming, demanding the player makes smart use of the tools they've acquired on their main journey. Detestable stuff.
The very fact that you can purchase this DLC and spend days combing over the entire map with absolutely no idea how to even access the content should tell you all you need to know. Gets the ball rolling with unhinged puzzles that demand the knowledge of the world map's nichest details, and the ransom note just keeps on going through to the very end. As a longtime La-Mu fan, the way Oannes dishes out cruel gotcha moments by flipping the game's rules upside down sent me into laughing fits, and it never feels unbearable because there really is a sense of mastery to it all, as well as a generous checkpoint system.
I kind of forsee this to be the last piece of La-Mulana content to ever come out, it has a kind of "so long and thanks for all the fish" vibe going on I can't help but find very sweet. The way La-Mu 2 featured Eg-lana, Oannes let us visit the final unexplored area in 1's now 11 year old roadmap, you can't help but salute to the finality of it.