This review contains spoilers
As a sequel, it seems to do everything right at first. The technical improvements are immense, it feels like a big AAA game in a lot of chapters, looks incredibly good and feels good.
But then the biggest weakness of the first one appears again, the general gameplay.
And I don't mean the walking and exploration passages, no, the fighting and stealth sections. They did improve some things and give you more variety in what you can do against them, which is nice, but rather sooner than later that wears out fast and it starts to feel incredibly limited again.
Near the end it just gets incredibly annoying and I started to hate this damn gameplay.
But even more problematic to me this time was the story.
I'm completely spoiling the end here so if you haven't played it, you shouldn't read further.
It became very clear to me very early, around the time Hugo was sick again in the bed at the new town, that the best solution to this whole situation would be to just give up on him and let him die so no one else has to suffer anymore.
But we are continuing, and following his dream of the island and magical pond that's healing him. Which to that point, was great, to be fair.
Only for that story then to lead absolutely nowhere while thousands of people die, while we try to leave that cursed island again with no real solution and a pipe dream of living in the mountains, only for the game to end with Amicia having to kill him anyway. Great, I would have done that 20 hours ago.
It's not the fact that he had to die in the end which feels so disappointing, it's that so much leads to absolutely nothing other than death for others and then they just thought "oh well, let's just live in the mountains that will fix everything" and on top then, he had to die nonetheless.
Still a decent game with some great highs and stunning scenes, but do yourself a favor and use the easiest difficulty, otherwise you might risk abandoning the game before you're being able to finish it.
But then the biggest weakness of the first one appears again, the general gameplay.
And I don't mean the walking and exploration passages, no, the fighting and stealth sections. They did improve some things and give you more variety in what you can do against them, which is nice, but rather sooner than later that wears out fast and it starts to feel incredibly limited again.
Near the end it just gets incredibly annoying and I started to hate this damn gameplay.
But even more problematic to me this time was the story.
I'm completely spoiling the end here so if you haven't played it, you shouldn't read further.
It became very clear to me very early, around the time Hugo was sick again in the bed at the new town, that the best solution to this whole situation would be to just give up on him and let him die so no one else has to suffer anymore.
But we are continuing, and following his dream of the island and magical pond that's healing him. Which to that point, was great, to be fair.
Only for that story then to lead absolutely nowhere while thousands of people die, while we try to leave that cursed island again with no real solution and a pipe dream of living in the mountains, only for the game to end with Amicia having to kill him anyway. Great, I would have done that 20 hours ago.
It's not the fact that he had to die in the end which feels so disappointing, it's that so much leads to absolutely nothing other than death for others and then they just thought "oh well, let's just live in the mountains that will fix everything" and on top then, he had to die nonetheless.
Still a decent game with some great highs and stunning scenes, but do yourself a favor and use the easiest difficulty, otherwise you might risk abandoning the game before you're being able to finish it.