I can't help but feel as though I owe a lot to the first PixelJunk Eden game. In 2008, it was the first arthouse title I'd ever bought; it played no small part in easing me into becoming more adventurous with the games I try - and what better game to do that than one where a goblin cultivates and expands their worldview to reach new heights.
This sequel doesn't do a lot to shake up the original formula, but features a greatly improved control scheme that allows the greenthumb audiovisual serenity to take centre stage, where it would originally fall victim to frustrations and lost progress. It has been pretty emotional skipping through these floating lantana fields while hearing familiar remixes to tunes I consider formative!
My sticking point would be my suspicion that this is essentially just a repackaging of the mobile game Eden Obscura, which brings to the forefront far too familiar to the mobile territory progression systems and clunky UIs. Where there was once a central hub that grew around you to connect to new garden zones is now a Level Select filled with gems and exp and skins and uuuuugh. It doesn't ruin anything of course, the encroaching shadow of The Phone consumes the best of us.

I have a lot of admiration for Baiyon's creative vision and the holistic way he develops his multimedia art universe. I get so excited when musicians explore games as communication vessels for their work this potently! The Pixeljunk Eden series feels like Bionic Commando enveloped in a Stan Brakhage terrarium set to a minimal house soundtrack that is spacious, cold, and truly mesmerizing. Eden 2 isnt a "rhythm game" in any conventional sense, but it has a lot to say about Baiyon's relationship to music. The way the organic floral illustrations exist in harmony with the syncopated nightclub/VJ background abstractions makes Eden feel like a visualization of the private and communal experiences that drive so much electronic music: it's empathically feeling the bodies of everyone in the crowd micro-reacting in unison while lost in a dj set and then walking home alone at 5 AM feeling hazy-headed and contemplative all at once. The tweaked controls and abilities here are great improvements to the sometimes unforgiving original, but part of me would have liked to have seen even more evolution between titles after such a long stretch of time. However, I also appreciate the continued singularity of focus and dogged obsession with a specific, borderline mantric set of images happening here--I felt totally beholden to this lush, fully realized visual world, presented exactly as desired with few caveats or concessions. The humble but confident sense of scope really establishes this as the expression of a driven voice rather than some bloated, desperate-to-impress tryhard studio project. It's totally up to individual taste whether you click with a title like this, but I was grateful to return to a vision this hypnotic and sensorial. The remix of 637 volpe made me emotional!