Difficult game to rate.
The simple part is the gameplay, music, and overall structure of the game. All three are fun, fast, and punchy. I personally didn't think the game was that much harder than 1, or maybe any harder at all, but it's been awhile since I played 1 so maybe I'm misremembering. At any rate it wasn't insanely difficult -- sometimes if you're willing to just dick around at high speed you can create combos that will nearly clear out a level by pulling basically everyone straight to you. Other times you'll have to be far more methodical and those were the levels I had the most trouble with, but they were never unfairly difficult, just frustrating when I realized I missed that one last guy who was patrolling the area in a circle with a gun and killed me with one shot from a distance.
The story is the thing that makes this game tough -- it seems pretty good and well thought out, as well as intricately and intimately tied into the first game. For one thing, you will have some difficulty getting the meat of the story of some of these characters without having played the first game (and ideally with enough dedication to unlock a secret ending). Even if you have, though, if you didn't pay a lot of attention to that story the impact of this one will be lost on you, as you struggle to vaguely remember what the point of that one was and how these characters and events were presented in that story, if at all.
Unfortunately the story struggles don't stop there, HM2 introduces several new characters to play around with in new themes, with their own narrative links, and to make it even more difficult on you it jumps back and forth in time as wildly as a double pendulum. The outcomes of some characters are never plainly stated but only showed by context hints in short gameplay sections as other characters... etc.
It's a story that requires a very high level of player engagement to even follow the events of. This is an interesting move and one that I don't disagree with as a creator (hell, do whatever you want if you're in charge) but it is one that to me borders on pretentiousness simply because it demands so much effort to understand. While I think that intentionally obfuscating your plot does create a fun mystery for people to solve, my cynical side says it's something you do to make your story only accessible to the ultra-dedicated who would find it compelling anyway because of the high effort and high interest in the game required, no matter what the quality of that story was. My optimistic side says it's just a story-telling choice like any other and that I'm overly cynical.
At any rate, this game is fun and frantic and would be enjoyable even if you skipped every cutscene in the game. You shouldn't though, because the story is interesting, but I guarantee you unless you play the first one, keep a notepad log of events and dates and characters, play the second one, do the same, and then play the first one again, then maybe the second one again, you will never unravel this story in its entirety on your own.
I personally chose to read three separate story synopses of this game and the first one instead of putting in actual work (the curse of modernity). They all reached different ultimate conclusions about the point of the game and even the arcs of some of the characters, with different things they noticed that the others didn't. Is that the result of good storytelling on the part of the storyteller? You decide for yourself -- my unhelpful answer is: "My gut says no. But maybe. I don't know."
4 - Great: A solid, memorable game with standout features
The simple part is the gameplay, music, and overall structure of the game. All three are fun, fast, and punchy. I personally didn't think the game was that much harder than 1, or maybe any harder at all, but it's been awhile since I played 1 so maybe I'm misremembering. At any rate it wasn't insanely difficult -- sometimes if you're willing to just dick around at high speed you can create combos that will nearly clear out a level by pulling basically everyone straight to you. Other times you'll have to be far more methodical and those were the levels I had the most trouble with, but they were never unfairly difficult, just frustrating when I realized I missed that one last guy who was patrolling the area in a circle with a gun and killed me with one shot from a distance.
The story is the thing that makes this game tough -- it seems pretty good and well thought out, as well as intricately and intimately tied into the first game. For one thing, you will have some difficulty getting the meat of the story of some of these characters without having played the first game (and ideally with enough dedication to unlock a secret ending). Even if you have, though, if you didn't pay a lot of attention to that story the impact of this one will be lost on you, as you struggle to vaguely remember what the point of that one was and how these characters and events were presented in that story, if at all.
Unfortunately the story struggles don't stop there, HM2 introduces several new characters to play around with in new themes, with their own narrative links, and to make it even more difficult on you it jumps back and forth in time as wildly as a double pendulum. The outcomes of some characters are never plainly stated but only showed by context hints in short gameplay sections as other characters... etc.
It's a story that requires a very high level of player engagement to even follow the events of. This is an interesting move and one that I don't disagree with as a creator (hell, do whatever you want if you're in charge) but it is one that to me borders on pretentiousness simply because it demands so much effort to understand. While I think that intentionally obfuscating your plot does create a fun mystery for people to solve, my cynical side says it's something you do to make your story only accessible to the ultra-dedicated who would find it compelling anyway because of the high effort and high interest in the game required, no matter what the quality of that story was. My optimistic side says it's just a story-telling choice like any other and that I'm overly cynical.
At any rate, this game is fun and frantic and would be enjoyable even if you skipped every cutscene in the game. You shouldn't though, because the story is interesting, but I guarantee you unless you play the first one, keep a notepad log of events and dates and characters, play the second one, do the same, and then play the first one again, then maybe the second one again, you will never unravel this story in its entirety on your own.
I personally chose to read three separate story synopses of this game and the first one instead of putting in actual work (the curse of modernity). They all reached different ultimate conclusions about the point of the game and even the arcs of some of the characters, with different things they noticed that the others didn't. Is that the result of good storytelling on the part of the storyteller? You decide for yourself -- my unhelpful answer is: "My gut says no. But maybe. I don't know."
4 - Great: A solid, memorable game with standout features