A step up from the first one in pretty much every way. On top of the vastly increased level of detail, far more naturalistic animations and character models, better lighting, and improved gameplay camera, the New Orleans-inspired setting of New Marais is far more colourful, varied, and lively than anything in the first game's drab New York City analog. The sound design and score are far better here, as well. Most importantly, it runs much better than the first game, still dipping an unfortunate amount but it’s in the mid 20s more often than not which is a huge step up. Again, a remaster would definitely be appreciated.
Cole's voice actor has been replaced, which initially bothered me but Eric Landin's performance grew on me as the game went on, in the end surpassing Jason Cottle from the first installment. The writing and voice direction is a huge step up in general, even from the returning actors, moving beyond just the bare minimum of periodic, awkward exposition dumps to keep the that the first had. The faux handheld camera style of the cutscenes adds a much needed visual personality to the narrative presentation, combined with the far improved animations making for some genuinely great moments (I quite like this scene in particular, seeing what characters do in their down time is always an effective tool to flesh them out and make them more relatable: https://youtu.be/VStkpB22_zw).
Zeke is actually somewhat charming here, still a flawed person but he feels like he really cares about Cole which the first game didn’t convey all that well. There’s a central villain who is actually kinda developed, and instead of each section of the game having a separate villain faction with its own leader barely connected anything, the various factions spring out from this main villain as the plot moves along, adding even more enemy variety while cleaning up the disjointed structure of the last title. The supporting cast is far more fleshed out than the first game, and there’s some levity sprinkled throughout that makes it far more engaging than the grimdark nonsense of the previous game. Cole even makes jokes once in a while. It’s still mostly self serious, but the added colour and energy make it feel so much more alive and the emotional beats hit harder as a result.
The morality is far more nuanced, too. Though there still are some very silly binary choices sprinkled throughout, the major narrative ones feel like believable approaches to achieving your goals instead of just playing a moustache-twirling maniac. This feeds further into the powers now as well, with many of the good side upgrades even giving options that minimize collateral damage. There’s a narrative choice about halfway through the game that gives you a brand new subclass of power type in addition to your electricity, distinguishing the karma paths even further, with drastically different arsenals available by the end of the game. On top of the enemy variety, this makes the already solid combat of the first game even better. Missions are more varied, the side missions don’t have weird police brutality shit for no reason, the different districts are not only visually distinct but also have varying architecture; all in all it’s a much better game to play.
It’s certainly not a perfect game. There’s some issues with getting side missions to appear when going for full completion, and the dead drop audio logs get interrupted whenever you do pretty much anything and then require you to dive back into a menu to activate them again, which became tedious to the point where I stopped caring about them even though they have interesting background information. The UI for when you beat a mission is still annoying and intrusive even if it doesn’t actively stop you from playing the game like the first one did. There’s major physics bug which will cause you to clip through an object and instantly die (this has happened to me multiple times within the same boss fight, though luckily it goes both ways and I’ve dispatched some minibosses in this fashion), and of course the aforementioned framerate issues are no small annoyance. The camera, while an improvement, still blocks your view sometimes and glitches out in tight spaces. Otherwise, though, almost every aspect of this title is a massive step forward from the first game, and it made me care about characters and a world I was completely univested in before, while looking, running, and playing better to boot. And it has a grappling hook.
Cole's voice actor has been replaced, which initially bothered me but Eric Landin's performance grew on me as the game went on, in the end surpassing Jason Cottle from the first installment. The writing and voice direction is a huge step up in general, even from the returning actors, moving beyond just the bare minimum of periodic, awkward exposition dumps to keep the that the first had. The faux handheld camera style of the cutscenes adds a much needed visual personality to the narrative presentation, combined with the far improved animations making for some genuinely great moments (I quite like this scene in particular, seeing what characters do in their down time is always an effective tool to flesh them out and make them more relatable: https://youtu.be/VStkpB22_zw).
Zeke is actually somewhat charming here, still a flawed person but he feels like he really cares about Cole which the first game didn’t convey all that well. There’s a central villain who is actually kinda developed, and instead of each section of the game having a separate villain faction with its own leader barely connected anything, the various factions spring out from this main villain as the plot moves along, adding even more enemy variety while cleaning up the disjointed structure of the last title. The supporting cast is far more fleshed out than the first game, and there’s some levity sprinkled throughout that makes it far more engaging than the grimdark nonsense of the previous game. Cole even makes jokes once in a while. It’s still mostly self serious, but the added colour and energy make it feel so much more alive and the emotional beats hit harder as a result.
The morality is far more nuanced, too. Though there still are some very silly binary choices sprinkled throughout, the major narrative ones feel like believable approaches to achieving your goals instead of just playing a moustache-twirling maniac. This feeds further into the powers now as well, with many of the good side upgrades even giving options that minimize collateral damage. There’s a narrative choice about halfway through the game that gives you a brand new subclass of power type in addition to your electricity, distinguishing the karma paths even further, with drastically different arsenals available by the end of the game. On top of the enemy variety, this makes the already solid combat of the first game even better. Missions are more varied, the side missions don’t have weird police brutality shit for no reason, the different districts are not only visually distinct but also have varying architecture; all in all it’s a much better game to play.
It’s certainly not a perfect game. There’s some issues with getting side missions to appear when going for full completion, and the dead drop audio logs get interrupted whenever you do pretty much anything and then require you to dive back into a menu to activate them again, which became tedious to the point where I stopped caring about them even though they have interesting background information. The UI for when you beat a mission is still annoying and intrusive even if it doesn’t actively stop you from playing the game like the first one did. There’s major physics bug which will cause you to clip through an object and instantly die (this has happened to me multiple times within the same boss fight, though luckily it goes both ways and I’ve dispatched some minibosses in this fashion), and of course the aforementioned framerate issues are no small annoyance. The camera, while an improvement, still blocks your view sometimes and glitches out in tight spaces. Otherwise, though, almost every aspect of this title is a massive step forward from the first game, and it made me care about characters and a world I was completely univested in before, while looking, running, and playing better to boot. And it has a grappling hook.