Playtime: 5 Hours
Score: 3/10

Not a fan of this one at all sadly. Its a shame since I recently played the first game earlier this year and its DLC and I thought it was a fun indie Dishonored-style game. This one sadly misses the mark by a lot.

To start with the positives, the movement is improved as your character feels much better to control. Also you can knock out enemies and not just be forced to kill them which is great for a passive run. I also like that you can select classic mode as a difficulty which is more akin to the first game where you can't really be spotted by guards as its a one hit kill if they catch you.

That's sadly it for my positives. This game while not a live service has the stink of that genre all over it, from the terribly designed Destiny like UI with that stupid mouse cursor like interface (thats always terrible to use with a controller), the home base where you accept missions, has that MMO like feeling with the way you interact with NPCs and just the very multiplayer focus of this game. While the first game had co-op it was done in a fun drop in, drop out sort of way which is my preferred style. This game just has that more live service multiplayer feel and I don't think it served this title that is a mostly stealth game. They also added in combat so you can take on enemies directly but I didn't really like the feel of this at all and like I said classic mode makes this mute anyway.

Otherwise they introduce cosmetics in this game rather then just having the skins you unlock after completing challenges like in the first game. The cosmetics just look awful imo and don't make sense in the context of the game. Much of them are these very bulky looking armours which I'm just like why would I wear that if I'm supposed to be a ninja assassin? The game's artstyle is also a bit of a departure from the first game which was made on unity like this one, but it had that cool water color, cell shaded artstyle that still looks very visually striking today. In this game it just looks like a generic unity engine game, with some of the artstyle retained, but characters just look unfinished and rough looking especially your main character. Its like if the first title was a cool looking PS2 game, this is an early, ugly looking PS3 game where they didn't know how to take advantage of the hardware properly.

The story also just fell flat for me and it plays into the Destiny style presentation that I touched on earlier. It just doesn't work for me. I bought this game to play in co-op with my buddy as him and I both love stealth games, but even that wasn't enough to save this one for me. It's a shame the devs had to close their doors as they could have made some great future games, but the direction they chose for this title is just disappointing.

All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/