in a lot of ways, this is a legitimate step up, maybe even a leap over the first game, but i do have a few major gripes with it that hold it back from being absolutely perfect
first is the story. now largely the story is pretty great, but, without spoiling, there's so much contrived shit to the story, everything just HAS to be connected, and everytime there was some twist that was like "this thing from the first game actually happened because you see the psychonauts blah blah blah" i just rolled my eyes. the burger king kids club side characters are also pretty lame. they start out as unlikable assholes and then once you spend more time with them, they just kind of fade into nothing as you realize there is nothing to the characters. except sam, she's good.
then there's the combat. it's one of the things thats largely a step up on the original, however the flaw is the emphasis on it. the combat gets grating fast, it is not what makes this game great, but it feels like the devs don't really realize that, so just about every step you take, you'll need to swap, change your loadout (i'll come back to that) and start doing piss damage to waves of enemies (unless you turn on story combat or whatever, but that just ruins some bosses), and there are more types too, which should sound better, variety is the spice of life right? well, i kinda prefer the lack of enemy variety in the first game, because the first game knew it wasn't a combat focused game, the enemies were largely obstacles and the actual combat sequences were far and few, and could be defeated by just about any way. but in this game, each enemy needs their weakness to be exploited to do any real harm to them. flying enemies need your laser, fast enemies need your slow down, gooey enemies need to be burned, hammer enemies need telekinesis, theres even an enemy that can only be defeated with clarevoyance for SOME reason and it means lots
and lots
and lots
of weapon switching
which is where my main gripe of the game comes in. see, this game gives you 8 powers to use. about half are used for traversal or just general use in the field and the rest is more combat focused. technically all can be used for combat, but they're more or less useless against any enemies not weak to them, dont go through the game thinking you can deal with what you currently have without swapping powers constantly, you NEED to swap and swap and swap, and it is just easily one of my biggest gripes with the game. granted this problem was also prevalent in the first game and i don't know why they didn't fix it for this one. it's not a hard fix either. the up button on the dpad currently brings up the weapon wheel, right? well, why not just have 2 power loadouts, to swap between with the up button? and hold up if you really want to bring up the wheel to rebind powers. hit square to swap between the loadouts, boom there i saved the game, well mostly, because while that would make the combat bearable, and fix the stop-go pacing the game has, it still has one more major issue, and that's the pacing of the levels, as they go on for far, far too long, easily 3 times as long as i feel they should, especially if you're hunting for collectables (and it is a collectathon so lets face it, you will) and you'll really feel it. there are levels that feel like they should be bite sized, but then they just go on for longer than any level from psychonauts 1. the worst offender of this is easily the game show level. that stage has one gimmick and it just repeats it 3 times until you get to the boss. and then the boss is just the worst in the series, not for being hard, but by just being a waiting game until you get the chance to interact with the thing that hurts them. the hub worlds end up being the most fun areas of the game, and i can't help but feel that the actual levels, or at least some, should have had that more sandbox approach to them.
it's still a great game, and i can't even say i was disappointed by it even after god knows how long of wanting a psychonauts sequel, it does legitimately live up to the hype as i do prefer it to the original largely. but i do wish these issues weren't a problem at all. here's hoping we get psychonauts 3 someday to fix some of these problems
or even just a patch to make the power switching less tedious by implementing loadouts
first is the story. now largely the story is pretty great, but, without spoiling, there's so much contrived shit to the story, everything just HAS to be connected, and everytime there was some twist that was like "this thing from the first game actually happened because you see the psychonauts blah blah blah" i just rolled my eyes. the burger king kids club side characters are also pretty lame. they start out as unlikable assholes and then once you spend more time with them, they just kind of fade into nothing as you realize there is nothing to the characters. except sam, she's good.
then there's the combat. it's one of the things thats largely a step up on the original, however the flaw is the emphasis on it. the combat gets grating fast, it is not what makes this game great, but it feels like the devs don't really realize that, so just about every step you take, you'll need to swap, change your loadout (i'll come back to that) and start doing piss damage to waves of enemies (unless you turn on story combat or whatever, but that just ruins some bosses), and there are more types too, which should sound better, variety is the spice of life right? well, i kinda prefer the lack of enemy variety in the first game, because the first game knew it wasn't a combat focused game, the enemies were largely obstacles and the actual combat sequences were far and few, and could be defeated by just about any way. but in this game, each enemy needs their weakness to be exploited to do any real harm to them. flying enemies need your laser, fast enemies need your slow down, gooey enemies need to be burned, hammer enemies need telekinesis, theres even an enemy that can only be defeated with clarevoyance for SOME reason and it means lots
and lots
and lots
of weapon switching
which is where my main gripe of the game comes in. see, this game gives you 8 powers to use. about half are used for traversal or just general use in the field and the rest is more combat focused. technically all can be used for combat, but they're more or less useless against any enemies not weak to them, dont go through the game thinking you can deal with what you currently have without swapping powers constantly, you NEED to swap and swap and swap, and it is just easily one of my biggest gripes with the game. granted this problem was also prevalent in the first game and i don't know why they didn't fix it for this one. it's not a hard fix either. the up button on the dpad currently brings up the weapon wheel, right? well, why not just have 2 power loadouts, to swap between with the up button? and hold up if you really want to bring up the wheel to rebind powers. hit square to swap between the loadouts, boom there i saved the game, well mostly, because while that would make the combat bearable, and fix the stop-go pacing the game has, it still has one more major issue, and that's the pacing of the levels, as they go on for far, far too long, easily 3 times as long as i feel they should, especially if you're hunting for collectables (and it is a collectathon so lets face it, you will) and you'll really feel it. there are levels that feel like they should be bite sized, but then they just go on for longer than any level from psychonauts 1. the worst offender of this is easily the game show level. that stage has one gimmick and it just repeats it 3 times until you get to the boss. and then the boss is just the worst in the series, not for being hard, but by just being a waiting game until you get the chance to interact with the thing that hurts them. the hub worlds end up being the most fun areas of the game, and i can't help but feel that the actual levels, or at least some, should have had that more sandbox approach to them.
it's still a great game, and i can't even say i was disappointed by it even after god knows how long of wanting a psychonauts sequel, it does legitimately live up to the hype as i do prefer it to the original largely. but i do wish these issues weren't a problem at all. here's hoping we get psychonauts 3 someday to fix some of these problems
or even just a patch to make the power switching less tedious by implementing loadouts