I respect the hell out of Life is Strange 2. It feels like this game was developed with such raw determination to prove that Life is Strange is more than just the story of Chloe and Max, of Arcadia Bay, that this can work as an anthology series and they can tell more kinds of stories in this world.

This game knows it can't be the first Life is Strange, so it sprints in the opposite direction with brazen confidence and a "look what we can do". It knows its got something to prove, and it goes all out in trying to differentiate itself from the first game, even if it risks isolating its players.

And I think this is pretty rad. Doing something like this takes guts, it takes vision, and most of all -- it takes love.

But as much as I wanted to fall in love with this game the same way as the first, I can't. It's well-intentioned, but in many ways, this game is a cauldron of bizarre choices of what to change and what not.

Life is Strange 2 feels less like a Life of Strange game and more akin to something like The Last of Us wearing Life is Strange's skin. And that would be fine, but I really think for such a drastic change in both presentation and story structure there needed to be greater changes to gameplay. This feels like a game where I should be fighting, gathering resources and crafting, something to enforce how different these boys' lives become and how brutal the wilderness can be. And instead, we have a game that's all about travel and surviving and living off the grid trapped in the body of a choice-based mystery game. There's so much to interact with and investigate, but why am I still investigating when Life is Strange 2 has no mystery to speak of?

Additionally, I don't know what it was about Before the Storm that convinced LiS we didn't need a new supernatural mechanic tied to the L2 button, but as was the case there, the lack of one and indeed any sort of gameplay loop that adds a layer of complexity to this game's light puzzle solving makes the adventure feel dull in parts. Because you can't fuck it up, everything feels so scripted. And unlike Before the Storm, Life is Strange 2 doesn't have the excuse of being a prequel about a beloved character it would be contradictory to the story to give a supernatural ability.

The first Life is Strange and all of the content surrounding it has become very important to me. It holds a special place in my heart, one that Life is Strange 2 could never live up to. I love the colorful cast of Arcadia Bay, its familar locales, and most all, the story of Max and Chloe. But ultimately, I'd be a terrible liar if I said I didn't enjoy the story of these two brothers on the road fighting to survive. It's slow to start, but in the end, I am all around satisfied with Life is Strange 2.

So long, Wolf Brothers.

Life is Strange 2 é uma obra especial para mim; aqui se trata de muito mais do que um simples jogo. Após jogar 'The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit', eu tinha muitas expectativas para o que viria a ser LIS2.

Life is Strange 2 é emocionante do começo ao fim. Cada capítulo dessa jornada te faz sentir de verdade; ela é tão dolorosa em diversos momentos, e a história contada aqui é algo que sai da ficção e, infelizmente, está presente na vida de muitos de nós.

Ao longo do caminho, você cria laços reais com os protagonistas dessa trama — Sean e Daniel —, te fazendo sempre repensar sobre qual escolha você irá tomar. Você também encontra almas incríveis durante a campanha, personagens que não estão ali apenas por estar; cada pessoa introduzida aqui tem um papel importante e te marca de uma maneira diferente.

O jogo é marcado por cenários perfeitos, músicas lindas que ficam na playlist mesmo após você terminar o jogo. Além disso, são introduzidas mecânicas diferentes do que tínhamos nos LISs anteriores, sem contar com as referências aos antigos jogos da franquia.

Independente de qual final dentre os 7 você realizou, tenho certeza que ele te marcou de alguma forma e pode até tê-lo feito chorar. Life is Strange 2, como eu falei no início, se trata mais do que um jogo, mas uma obra de arte que critica problemas presentes no cerne da nossa sociedade. Mal posso esperar para jogar outras obras como essa.

What a shitshow. This is an utterly terrible story and experience. It's a nonsense story that feels like a 14 year old "woke" kid wrote. All characters are annoying and unlikeable, especially the little kid brother (little shit). I guess the first one was a fluke, it's honestly UNBELIEVABLE that the same people wrote both games.

Feels like a bad PS2 game with current obnoxious social commentary as deep as "racism is bad" or "cmon guys don't be xenophobic", plus overly dramatic dumb scenes. The premise is already stupid but it just gets dumber and dumber every episode.

Reminded me of Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit. lmao.

This game does tell a good story, but it spends way too long trying to tell it. The pacing is bad and the way the game's structured makes the whole thing feel disjointed. I liked the dynamic between the two brothers as that aspect is really relatable to me, but that's probably the only thing I like about this game. It introduces cool characters but gives them too little screentime; and fills that time with trying to tackle political issues but doesn't delve deep enough into them to make it interesting which as a result makes them feel like an afterthought.

We all make mistakes. Especially in the name of protecting those you love.

The wolf brothers. Two against the world. Bearing their mistakes, the scars and bruises they earn, the ghosts they leave behind, all in the name of protecting themselves; in the name of brotherhood. How we learn, who we learn from, the friends we make along the way and how we will never forget them, no matter how many years pass on by.

I'm tired. A bit crushed. Many thoughts. Always the feelings a masterpiece leaves you with.

If I had my name attached to this game I would honestly be so embarrassed. It is an awful experience start to finish. And this isn't like with the first game, where I just felt like it wasent for me, yet I could acknowledge all the positive aspects it has. No this is something much worse.

It should be noted that the release schedule for this game did not do it any favors. For whatever reason there were just massive gaps in release dates, some lasting up to 5 months. This is not an issue anymore since all the episodes are out, but at that time, it created a very disjointed experience.

It's difficult to even decide where to start because basically everything here is wrong. I think to start, the gameplay this time is not nearly as interesting as before. In the first game you had the rewind powers. So you could guage everyone's reactions and which choices you like the most. But there really isn't anything like that here. You just walk places and things happen and you make a decision. To the games credit, the choices do matter a good portion of the time, and the ending can be very different depending on what you did. Thats probably the only positive the game has.

This dosent feel like a full narrative. But rather 5 disconnected segments that they very loosely stitched together to call a game. They are always in very sporadic locations, with no real rhyme or reason as to how they got there. One episode they are in the woods, the next in a desert. This is a general theme that we see throughout this experience of just skipping through parts of the story to get to more interesting stuff.

The writing is somehow even worse than last time. This is probably my least favorite dialogue and script in any game. The references to pop culture and such were a bit off in the first game, but at the very least they didn't over stay their welcome. This game leans so heavily on its political and social refrences that it gets exhausting. This is the most one note experience I've ever seen in a game. Every single character is racist, rude, arrogant, sexist, obsessed with a cult, whatever negative trait or stereotype that exists, this game has it. And they only exist and appear in random moments to give the characters a hard time. They created such low blow characters: no investment or buildup was made at all, they are just evil for evil's sake. At the very least with the first game, you had an antagonist like Nathan, but there was also a lot going on with the character already? He was unstable and dealing with family issues.

The idiots in this game don't have any complexity. They are just awful people who serve as a roadblock.

This would still be fine if you actually liked the main characters. Or ANYONE really. Sean can be seen as similar to Max. He is very soft spoken and quiet. And you could also argue why he does what he does in the first episode is because he's scared. But he's still such a massive idiot, he never operates on any logic whatsoever. It dosent help that the awful voice acting compounds the awful dialogue. I am unsure who to blame here because every single performance is terrible. So I'm going to assume the direction is the issue. The way Sean talks in particular drives me insane. These long, exaggerated, pointless pauses before exposition. "Man...." "wow...." "no way...."

Daniel is somehow even worse than Sean. This is honestly one of my most hated game characters of all time, because every single episode is exactly the same. I will break it down

-Daniel and Sean are shown to have a brotherly bond and connection.

-A very stupid and contrived moment happens that seperates or causes a rift between the brothers.

-Daniel turns his brain off and just goes crazy and hurts people.

-Daniel has crocodile tears and apologizes for making a mistake.

-Repeat until the last episode. I just described the whole game. No matter what happens, Daniel always goes against Sean. He never learns, or grows, even if you make "correct" decisions. He is just a walking plot device to create conflict. The whole game you are arguing and being yelled at by this obnoxious brat. There is writing realistic children, who are rebellious, and then there's writing Daniel who just blindly believes anything he hears and immediately leaves Sean. It is so forced, so unnatural. The writers just wanted to take shortcuts to create a narrative. They didn't want to buildup to anything.

All the side characters are terrible. They are all flat and lifeless. There are so many that you forget who's who.

I could go on but just writing about this game is exhausting. I'm not a fan of the first game, but this makes the first game look like a modern masterpiece.

One of my most hated titles ever. And no, it has nothing to do with the political or social commentary in the game. I happen to agree with a lot of it. It is a terrible game not because of what it's saying, but because of how it says it. It has no tact, no charm, no soul. It is corporate, pandering, forced, and inauthentic.

I really wanted to like this game, regardless of the change of characters that everyone critiqued upon reaveal.

However, hearing the line in Episode 2 'You're the reason that we gotta build that wall' absolutely killed any enjoyment i could've had

Fuck Trump, btw