Town of Salem 2 is a remarkable improvement over its predecessor in terms of presentation and mechanical depth. Everything I like about the first game is here, and better.

But anyone who is giving this four stars is not contemplating what the New User Experience is like. There are no tutorials, and the last time I played, all I was really given was a series of YouTube videos that a) were questionably outsourced to a streamer, and b) did not adequately explain any of the question marks I had. There's an exhaustive list of all of the roles you can play and what their mechanics are, and I'm really stressing the exhaust part of that word there. If you want to sit and read it all, you can, but it's hardly an intuitive solution. If you ask for help in any of the lobbies you play, people just ignore you. It's like the first time you play a new board game with your family if the rulebook was written with written in the style of a foreword by an adolescent individual who expects you to already be familiar with the game, and everyone at the table knows what the game is but you and they deliberately ignore any questions you have about the game itself. Fuck it, it's just Mao at that point. I think that's how it's spelled? You know, Mao. That card game where the one rule is that you're not allowed to tell other people the rules, the one that assholes practically hold dominion over. I'm sure you can learn to play Mao, and for some, that's rewarding. But, from my perspective, I prefer games that are welcoming. I want to both be challenged, and have fun. Fucking crazy, right? Nobody has ever thought of that before!