I love how they took the critique to the first game and actually listened. We now have female guards, witches, Emily as a protag and I loved it. Still think the Outsider is a dick for giving Emily her mother's heart but that's who he is so what did I really expect? :/

Found the villainess to be rather sympathetic which was also nice!

I was this close to writing "the wasps made me antsy!" holy shit. I mean- they did but...yeah.

I also enjoyed Emily's powerset and the tiny ways the player got to explore who she is. Feels like a continuation from what Corvo got in the first part.

The songs the bards played were also really, really nice!

Everything Dishonored aspired to be, Dishonored 2 just is.

It's better than the first without ever losing sight of what made the first work. Possibly Arkane's finest game--though Prey is up there too--but it's not well-optimized. Still, the level design is some of the best I've ever seen, and it kept me playing through the occasional stuttering and frame drops.

Speaking of level design, wow. That's all I'll say about that. There are a couple levels that'll blow you away conceptually, and the rest will probably blow you away with how sophisticated and engrossing they are. I found myself excited to get lost and hunt down every trinket I could see in a way that the first game--and most games--often failed to make me. Wow.

Importantly, this game offers an even more exciting toolkit than before--two, in fact, since you can choose Emily or Corvo, both of whom have some exciting possibilities for any playstyle. It's a much less simplistic affair this time around if you're going for a nonlethal run (like I often try to), since the possible solutions are cranked up tenfold with all the different abilities on display, and the levels feel even more branching and liberating to compensate. Don't be fooled into thinking this means it'll be easy, though. I played on Hard and found it a tough but fair challenge (a marked step up from the equivalent difficulty in Dishonored 1), since the stronger and more varied tools at your disposal are constantly matched up against new and exciting puzzles, obstacles, and enemies each level. Dishonored 1 had a few too many invisible walls and a few too few solutions to a lot of problems to compete with the best immersive sims, leading to it either being so easy that it felt frictionless or, in rare moments, a bit frustrating. This game, however, ticks every box I want. I look forward to going back someday to play it a totally different way, which is perhaps the highest praise an immersive sim can get.

While many fans compare this game's story unfavorably to the first, personally it worked better for me--though neither of them got me too emotional, I found myself more invested in what would happen by the end of this one, even if it resorts to the same basic high/low chaos binary as before. The returning characters from the original game and its stellar DLC helped build attachments to some NPCs who didn't do as much the first time around.

All in all, it's Dishonored, but more, and better. It's Arkane at their best, and few do it like Arkane.

Not as good as the first one, but still a very good immersive sim.
It doesn't have the same problem of limiting your powers on non lethal runs (at least with Emily) and the morality system now opens more options and gives more space for getting your hands dirty. Plus you now can play as either Corvo or princess Emily.
It also picks up on some bits of lore that the previous game established, so overall the story is a bit better than the first game.
However the level design leaves a bit to be desired, there are times where your only option is gonna be to use a railcar to move on and the architecture of some levels is very samey.
Still a very good game, BUT it suffers some poor optimization, so you might need a bit more than the minimum requirements to run it.

It is aesthetic and they game does not punish you for killing people as much. However Emily as a new addition is pretty lame considering that her powers do not synchronize as well as Corvos powers that are more mechanical and less based on enemy behaviour. The game looks better, but the bosses or targets are not as fun too kill because they pretty much all expect you or have taken into consideration the fact that you also have powers. Some levels feel a bit like a chore too play sadly, like the puzzle room and the time bending room too me those levels sucked also hate. The robots they suck because you can not kill them as cleanly they levels are also too linear in their level design.

I struggle to find a way to talk about this game in a way that won't seem like I'm just playing it wrong, because that's what's happening. I'm playing it wrong. However, I think there's a lot of elements of this game that just don't work if you don't play it "correctly", and if you aren't already in the groove, it's nearly impossible to get there.

It took me two attempts to get through the first Dishonored. The first time, I tried to do stealth no-kill because I try to play games the way I myself feel like I'd go about it in real life, morally. This went... awfully. It's hard. Extremely so. I got frustrated, put it down, and didn't come back for years.

The second time, I tried to drop all of that, killing when things went wrong, and enjoyed it a good bit more. I still didn't fully engage with everything the game had to offer, but I felt satisfied with my playthrough. Then the dlc decided to up the difficulty, so I dropped out and didn't play Dishonored 2 until now.

As soon as I started Dishonored 2 (on normal difficulty), I realized that the game immediately decided that I had to have retained everything I learned and that there was no warm-up necessary. It's SO much harder. SO MUCH. So I should just get good, right? Well...

So my problem with Dishonored 2 is that it does not ever give you time to catch up to its skill level before throwing new elements at you... and that's if you even learn how to use the base level gadgets and powers effectively at all. I was constantly dying despite shedding any pretense of full stealth/no kill, and it kept compounding frustration to the point that I always took the easiest route, linking enemies then shooting with sleep darts, followed by crossbow bolts as soon as I ran out of the darts.

That's such a lame way to play, right? I'm very aware. What else was I supposed to do, though? It felt like every attempt at experimentation lead to frustration, so I took the path of least resistance every time. This also had repercussion on non-combat scenarios- why would I spend time reading the extra lore if I felt like I was going to be stuck on the next part for 20 minutes? The game became something that I tried to rush through, and this game is absolutely NOT meant to be played that way.

I blame the game for some of this, but I already know that some of the issues are still on me. I wasn't playing for immersion or just to explore, I was playing because I wanted to experience Dishonored 2, probably in just one playthrough. I'm not the target audience. These games are made for people willing to go through multiple times, just soaking in everything and seeing all the crazy stuff they can pull off. I think there's a world where I could be one of those players MAYBE, but it just felt so overwhelming all of the time.

It's still a good game, though. I can see how a new game+ playthrough could allow crazier combos of powers, I didn't even touch bone charms really outside of applying the ones I found, and there's a lot of paths I didn't even explore. I had some of those crazy revelatory moments that you're supposed to have, such as when I discovered an easy way to take out all the clockwork soldiers in the mansion with just one rewired trap. I just wish I could actually consistently pull off that stuff, instead of panicking as soon as I get caught and killing everyone just so I can get back to the task at hand.