Hit and miss.
Spends an embarrassing amount of time trying to recapture Psychonauts 1's campground aesthetic, never does so perfectly. Sometimes strikes out on its own, doesn't do that amazingly well either.
A few of the minds are very well made, a few of the character stories are profoundly touching. A few of the minds are just as bad as the Stratego board, some of the central characters are extremely bland.
They tried to vary the combat a lot more, but it still feels just as wonky as it ever did, so putting more attention into the combat was probably a mistake.
The voice actors all do a fantastic job portraying their characters, but everyone talks so much that you either have to stop and wait for each one to say their full line or just deal with them cutting each other off, a problem from the first game that is much, much worse this time around. In particular Raz is way chattier during gameplay than before and I suspect that he cut off mission critical dialogue a few times because other characters would talk to me as if I'd already had the goal of the level explained to me.
They succeeded in developing the ideas in the original Psychonauts in all directions, but they should have cut some out and focused their efforts on the others instead I think.
Spends an embarrassing amount of time trying to recapture Psychonauts 1's campground aesthetic, never does so perfectly. Sometimes strikes out on its own, doesn't do that amazingly well either.
A few of the minds are very well made, a few of the character stories are profoundly touching. A few of the minds are just as bad as the Stratego board, some of the central characters are extremely bland.
They tried to vary the combat a lot more, but it still feels just as wonky as it ever did, so putting more attention into the combat was probably a mistake.
The voice actors all do a fantastic job portraying their characters, but everyone talks so much that you either have to stop and wait for each one to say their full line or just deal with them cutting each other off, a problem from the first game that is much, much worse this time around. In particular Raz is way chattier during gameplay than before and I suspect that he cut off mission critical dialogue a few times because other characters would talk to me as if I'd already had the goal of the level explained to me.
They succeeded in developing the ideas in the original Psychonauts in all directions, but they should have cut some out and focused their efforts on the others instead I think.