Editor's note: the following is a revision of a review I wrote earlier this year because I reread it and had issues. Once again, I've archived that review in case anyone's curious enough to seek it out. I don't expect anyone to care about this, but I feel like disclosing this is necessary on some level.
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Lucius II, separated from the context in which it was created.
Describing Lucius II as hilariously broken is charitable. This is the kind of 'so-bad-it's-good' game that legends are made of. Had this not been a niche indie title sold for twenty dollars on Steam and nowhere else, I honestly believe it would have the same notoriety that Ride to Hell does.
This isn't a sandbox game; it's a compromise. The original Lucius was a low-budget adventure inspired by horror greats that its gothic exploitation film turned playable stylings inevitably fail. Above all else, it stands out because of how egregiously linear it is. It's a game that opens up on a tutorial that spends a not insignificant amount of time telling you there's a skill meter in the corner, only for each kill scene to play out in exactly one way. Lucius II opens with the developers pitching you on a version of their debut title without the roadblocks they enforced on the player. "What if," they say in a commanding voice, "you could have poisoned the maid with a box of doughnuts without us telling you to?" At first, it's somewhat enticing. Imagine a version of Postal 2 that's not only more overt with pushing the player to kill everyone in sight, but gives you tools to do it in more devilish ways. On paper, that's what Lucius II is.
In execution?
There's a level in this game where, on one corner of the map, surgeons are operating on a patient's heart. The door is locked. You could use your powers to get in and find ways of picking off each of the surgeons until you've widdled it down to one terrified medical professional and a corpse with a gaping hole in its chest... or, you can pick up an acidic blood bag that's conveniently nearby, and use it to replace the one that the surgeons are using, and watch as everybody in the rooms dies in a way that's almost reminiscent of the often-forgotten Warp. You technically don't have to do this, but you're missing out if you pass on it, nudge nudge (there's an achievement for doing this) nudge nudge.
All of the creativity you'd hope for in a sandbox is replaced with inventory puzzles so streamlined that the items you need for them are typically right next to each other. Creativity outside of what the developers reeeeeeeally want you to do typically boils down to waiting for an NPC to be in the spot you want them to be, and then interacting with something that launches a projectile that kills them immediately. Most of the time, you won't be doing this. To say that the sandbox mechanics in Lucius II are unrefined is an understatement. In a game about systemically killing your way through sprawling environments, the only thing about the NPCs that differentiates them, apart from their scripting, voice acting, and jaw-droppingly stupid AI, is a name and biography that appears above their head. Otherwise, they all have the same preferences for food, can barely hold their pee in, are all addicted to cigarettes, are all thieves who steal wallets, and hold an affinity for caffeinated beverages and coffee. The game might tell you that somebody's personality veers in one direction, and then show you the complete opposite of that when it suits your needs. Whether it's thirst or hunger, they feel it as soon as you hand them something to eat or drink. What ends up happening is thus: you are locked out of an area you need to be in, and somebody halfway across the map has the key. There is another person who has a key that is blocking your access to this person. How do you solve this confounding puzzle? By poisoning the same box of doughnuts and throwing it twice. I swear to god, the poisoned doughnut method is not just a meme. It's so effective that the items required for it almost become ammunition. If the NPC you threw the doughnuts at acts scared? Simply mind control them so they eat them. If you can't find doughnuts around you, check for sandwiches. Failing that, coffee is an acceptable substitute. Rinse and repeat as much as you need in the five levels to come. But compared to the other busted methods of progression in Lucius II, the doughnuts only stand out because they represent this game's most immediate flaws. Should you choose to upgrade the mind control ability and find an axe in the level you're in, you'll soon discover this game's other immediate flaws. Killing people while mind-controlling them rewards you with Mana, you need Mana to keep using mind control, and nobody has enough situational awareness to actually defend themselves. Add onto this the fact that there's a bug that will let you pick up a fire axe to pull out whenever you need a large gathering dead, and hilarity (plus monotony) ensues. This lack of a self-defense mechanism for the AI also comes into play when you pull a nail gun that can instantly kill whoever gets shot with it, and when a ton of people near them start mysteriously walking into a giant fire and killing themselves for no apparent reason. This game is a sandbox not because it encourages dynamic, emergent gameplay in an environment the players are encouraged to search to the nth degree, but because the developers insist on it.
And yeah, the presentation kinda blows, too. Whenever somebody gets scared, the same stock sound effect plays. Whenever you're in front of a stereotypical patient in an asylum, they play an even worse sound. It gets annoying
very fast. The music's not bad, even if it lacks the character that some of the whacker tracks in the first game had, leaving only a slew of generic, unimpressive songs to fill the roster. Voice acting somehow manages to be worse than the fake Irish accent they used in the first game. I know that cr1tikal is a funny guy and all, but when he's the only voice actor that's noteworthy, that says a lot. At least the voice actor for McGuffin is slightly better than his predecessor, but that's not saying much. Blood particles can look neat, but gore often looks blocky and unnatural. Character models and environments weren't fantastic in the first game, but at least they felt hand-crafted there. Here, everything feels painted on artificially. The most awe-inspiring sight is a chunk of a town that has half the detail that The Dante Manor had despite hosting just as many residents. And let me get another elephant out of the room while I'm on this note: in Lucius II, Lucius does not hold objects in his hand. For some reason, he levitates them right next to his hand. In many instances, this is impractical. But hey, it allows you to break an elevator by throwing a can at it, so that's... something, I guess?
Two gay men have sex in a bathroom you can unlock and they're both portrayed as insane people. That's not relevant at all to this discussion, I just find it a little odd that that's in there. Oh, and in Lucius III, another character is implied to perform satanic rituals because he's gay. You know, I'm starting to believe that the movies these developers are inspired by could use to be just a little bit newer...
On that note, the narrative is just as much of a nothingburger. Stylistically, it's definitely a step down from the overly cinematic, kinetic violence of the first game. But in its place is something that holds almost as much, if not just as much, value. Instead of using in-engine cutscenes, the developers opted to tell their story by making everything look like it was cut out of cardboard. This looks neat and definitely makes up for the fact that the substance of those cutscenes doesn't hold up as well. Lucius II is a pulpy, gore-laden adventure with horror-themed elements about a sibling rivalry. While that description might make this seem worth trying, the brother you're going after rarely shows up, doesn't have much of a presence, and doesn't feel like a threat. Lucius is never knocked down and rarely faces adversity. His character is just as bland and generic as it was in the first game, except here the lack of notes means he has less than nothing to actually say. The story is just a thinly veiled excuse for you to get to one location after the other, and outside of that, exists only so the developers could make their other dream game.
If you want to laugh at Lucius II's myriad technical issues and design oversights, like how forcing somebody who has an item that you need down an elevator makes the item fall with them, this is a hoot and a half. But if you're looking to play this out of curiosity, don't.
2012 was a rough year.
It almost feels like punching down to say that this absurdly unfinished, overly ambitious murder sandbox developed by only five people off the meager savings they earned from their first game after their publisher gave them a cut is unquestionably not good.
Although I have no real insight into the development of this game, I'm willing to say that I can theorize about what happened behind the scenes. Five developers making a sandbox game with over a hundred named NPCs that you can kill is already somewhat of a red flag. Five inexperienced developers? Now come on, that's unfair. But the killing blow is this: this game is made on Unity, and released less than three years after the first game. The first Lucius ran on Esenthel, a game engine so niche that its creators have to resort to using screenshots from Lucius just to market the thing. It uses C++, has a UI that, from what eyewitness accounts I could find, is "butt ugly," and is so different from Unity that almost all of Lucius's assets are uncompressed. If you want to, you can find developer notes that were never deleted a few directories away from its .exe file. Unity uses C# and Javascript, and has a completely different UI. On top of having to learn all of that in two years' time, the developers also had to model entire locations, props, and characters without reusing any of the assets they made for their other game. They had to deal with sound design and voice acting. And the cherry on top, they had to design a game that was open-ended enough to cater the same critics who derided their previous effort for railroading its players while also maintaining some DNA from that previous work so what they were making could technically be considered a sequel.
Does it really come as a surprise to you that the poisoned doughnuts always work?
Don't get me wrong, I do not like this game. I have a strange obsession with this series, but not because any of the games are good. They all teach a really specific, hard-hitting truth that should hit home for any creative out there looking to follow their dreams. There is a divide between the worlds of the imagined and reality. Imagination says that all of the work you've done is great, no matter the progress you've made because the destination will be worth it. Reality is the fucking journey. Throughout all three games in the Lucius trilogy, you can see time and time again what these developers were trying to get at. Something to be cherished by horror aficionados the world over, a cinematic mark for the genre in gaming. The first game got close, but not close enough. It needed more of its wrinkles ironed out and a more concise vision to give its head-splitting violence more than the mark of a passing novelty. For two games, they chased that high with dwindling budgets. As fewer and fewer people bought their games, they found themselves forced to release their worst work to date just to make ends meet. They haven't released another game since then.
As somebody who likes to see the critical side of people because the insight fascinates them, the only praise I have to give to Lucius II is a back-handed compliment. But as somebody who wants to live much of the same dream, and ride the coattails of success I know is never coming... I pity it. I feel genuinely sad, disheartened even, that anybody that was even remotely like me was put in this position. It's unenviable, to say the least. But for as heartbreaking as it all is, there's a silver lining, a sliver of optimism.
Dreams do come true.
(If you would like to see how I feel about the other games in this series, please feel free to check out my list ranking them from best to worst).
///
Lucius II, separated from the context in which it was created.
Describing Lucius II as hilariously broken is charitable. This is the kind of 'so-bad-it's-good' game that legends are made of. Had this not been a niche indie title sold for twenty dollars on Steam and nowhere else, I honestly believe it would have the same notoriety that Ride to Hell does.
This isn't a sandbox game; it's a compromise. The original Lucius was a low-budget adventure inspired by horror greats that its gothic exploitation film turned playable stylings inevitably fail. Above all else, it stands out because of how egregiously linear it is. It's a game that opens up on a tutorial that spends a not insignificant amount of time telling you there's a skill meter in the corner, only for each kill scene to play out in exactly one way. Lucius II opens with the developers pitching you on a version of their debut title without the roadblocks they enforced on the player. "What if," they say in a commanding voice, "you could have poisoned the maid with a box of doughnuts without us telling you to?" At first, it's somewhat enticing. Imagine a version of Postal 2 that's not only more overt with pushing the player to kill everyone in sight, but gives you tools to do it in more devilish ways. On paper, that's what Lucius II is.
In execution?
There's a level in this game where, on one corner of the map, surgeons are operating on a patient's heart. The door is locked. You could use your powers to get in and find ways of picking off each of the surgeons until you've widdled it down to one terrified medical professional and a corpse with a gaping hole in its chest... or, you can pick up an acidic blood bag that's conveniently nearby, and use it to replace the one that the surgeons are using, and watch as everybody in the rooms dies in a way that's almost reminiscent of the often-forgotten Warp. You technically don't have to do this, but you're missing out if you pass on it, nudge nudge (there's an achievement for doing this) nudge nudge.
All of the creativity you'd hope for in a sandbox is replaced with inventory puzzles so streamlined that the items you need for them are typically right next to each other. Creativity outside of what the developers reeeeeeeally want you to do typically boils down to waiting for an NPC to be in the spot you want them to be, and then interacting with something that launches a projectile that kills them immediately. Most of the time, you won't be doing this. To say that the sandbox mechanics in Lucius II are unrefined is an understatement. In a game about systemically killing your way through sprawling environments, the only thing about the NPCs that differentiates them, apart from their scripting, voice acting, and jaw-droppingly stupid AI, is a name and biography that appears above their head. Otherwise, they all have the same preferences for food, can barely hold their pee in, are all addicted to cigarettes, are all thieves who steal wallets, and hold an affinity for caffeinated beverages and coffee. The game might tell you that somebody's personality veers in one direction, and then show you the complete opposite of that when it suits your needs. Whether it's thirst or hunger, they feel it as soon as you hand them something to eat or drink. What ends up happening is thus: you are locked out of an area you need to be in, and somebody halfway across the map has the key. There is another person who has a key that is blocking your access to this person. How do you solve this confounding puzzle? By poisoning the same box of doughnuts and throwing it twice. I swear to god, the poisoned doughnut method is not just a meme. It's so effective that the items required for it almost become ammunition. If the NPC you threw the doughnuts at acts scared? Simply mind control them so they eat them. If you can't find doughnuts around you, check for sandwiches. Failing that, coffee is an acceptable substitute. Rinse and repeat as much as you need in the five levels to come. But compared to the other busted methods of progression in Lucius II, the doughnuts only stand out because they represent this game's most immediate flaws. Should you choose to upgrade the mind control ability and find an axe in the level you're in, you'll soon discover this game's other immediate flaws. Killing people while mind-controlling them rewards you with Mana, you need Mana to keep using mind control, and nobody has enough situational awareness to actually defend themselves. Add onto this the fact that there's a bug that will let you pick up a fire axe to pull out whenever you need a large gathering dead, and hilarity (plus monotony) ensues. This lack of a self-defense mechanism for the AI also comes into play when you pull a nail gun that can instantly kill whoever gets shot with it, and when a ton of people near them start mysteriously walking into a giant fire and killing themselves for no apparent reason. This game is a sandbox not because it encourages dynamic, emergent gameplay in an environment the players are encouraged to search to the nth degree, but because the developers insist on it.
And yeah, the presentation kinda blows, too. Whenever somebody gets scared, the same stock sound effect plays. Whenever you're in front of a stereotypical patient in an asylum, they play an even worse sound. It gets annoying
very fast. The music's not bad, even if it lacks the character that some of the whacker tracks in the first game had, leaving only a slew of generic, unimpressive songs to fill the roster. Voice acting somehow manages to be worse than the fake Irish accent they used in the first game. I know that cr1tikal is a funny guy and all, but when he's the only voice actor that's noteworthy, that says a lot. At least the voice actor for McGuffin is slightly better than his predecessor, but that's not saying much. Blood particles can look neat, but gore often looks blocky and unnatural. Character models and environments weren't fantastic in the first game, but at least they felt hand-crafted there. Here, everything feels painted on artificially. The most awe-inspiring sight is a chunk of a town that has half the detail that The Dante Manor had despite hosting just as many residents. And let me get another elephant out of the room while I'm on this note: in Lucius II, Lucius does not hold objects in his hand. For some reason, he levitates them right next to his hand. In many instances, this is impractical. But hey, it allows you to break an elevator by throwing a can at it, so that's... something, I guess?
Two gay men have sex in a bathroom you can unlock and they're both portrayed as insane people. That's not relevant at all to this discussion, I just find it a little odd that that's in there. Oh, and in Lucius III, another character is implied to perform satanic rituals because he's gay. You know, I'm starting to believe that the movies these developers are inspired by could use to be just a little bit newer...
On that note, the narrative is just as much of a nothingburger. Stylistically, it's definitely a step down from the overly cinematic, kinetic violence of the first game. But in its place is something that holds almost as much, if not just as much, value. Instead of using in-engine cutscenes, the developers opted to tell their story by making everything look like it was cut out of cardboard. This looks neat and definitely makes up for the fact that the substance of those cutscenes doesn't hold up as well. Lucius II is a pulpy, gore-laden adventure with horror-themed elements about a sibling rivalry. While that description might make this seem worth trying, the brother you're going after rarely shows up, doesn't have much of a presence, and doesn't feel like a threat. Lucius is never knocked down and rarely faces adversity. His character is just as bland and generic as it was in the first game, except here the lack of notes means he has less than nothing to actually say. The story is just a thinly veiled excuse for you to get to one location after the other, and outside of that, exists only so the developers could make their other dream game.
If you want to laugh at Lucius II's myriad technical issues and design oversights, like how forcing somebody who has an item that you need down an elevator makes the item fall with them, this is a hoot and a half. But if you're looking to play this out of curiosity, don't.
2012 was a rough year.
It almost feels like punching down to say that this absurdly unfinished, overly ambitious murder sandbox developed by only five people off the meager savings they earned from their first game after their publisher gave them a cut is unquestionably not good.
Although I have no real insight into the development of this game, I'm willing to say that I can theorize about what happened behind the scenes. Five developers making a sandbox game with over a hundred named NPCs that you can kill is already somewhat of a red flag. Five inexperienced developers? Now come on, that's unfair. But the killing blow is this: this game is made on Unity, and released less than three years after the first game. The first Lucius ran on Esenthel, a game engine so niche that its creators have to resort to using screenshots from Lucius just to market the thing. It uses C++, has a UI that, from what eyewitness accounts I could find, is "butt ugly," and is so different from Unity that almost all of Lucius's assets are uncompressed. If you want to, you can find developer notes that were never deleted a few directories away from its .exe file. Unity uses C# and Javascript, and has a completely different UI. On top of having to learn all of that in two years' time, the developers also had to model entire locations, props, and characters without reusing any of the assets they made for their other game. They had to deal with sound design and voice acting. And the cherry on top, they had to design a game that was open-ended enough to cater the same critics who derided their previous effort for railroading its players while also maintaining some DNA from that previous work so what they were making could technically be considered a sequel.
Does it really come as a surprise to you that the poisoned doughnuts always work?
Don't get me wrong, I do not like this game. I have a strange obsession with this series, but not because any of the games are good. They all teach a really specific, hard-hitting truth that should hit home for any creative out there looking to follow their dreams. There is a divide between the worlds of the imagined and reality. Imagination says that all of the work you've done is great, no matter the progress you've made because the destination will be worth it. Reality is the fucking journey. Throughout all three games in the Lucius trilogy, you can see time and time again what these developers were trying to get at. Something to be cherished by horror aficionados the world over, a cinematic mark for the genre in gaming. The first game got close, but not close enough. It needed more of its wrinkles ironed out and a more concise vision to give its head-splitting violence more than the mark of a passing novelty. For two games, they chased that high with dwindling budgets. As fewer and fewer people bought their games, they found themselves forced to release their worst work to date just to make ends meet. They haven't released another game since then.
As somebody who likes to see the critical side of people because the insight fascinates them, the only praise I have to give to Lucius II is a back-handed compliment. But as somebody who wants to live much of the same dream, and ride the coattails of success I know is never coming... I pity it. I feel genuinely sad, disheartened even, that anybody that was even remotely like me was put in this position. It's unenviable, to say the least. But for as heartbreaking as it all is, there's a silver lining, a sliver of optimism.
Dreams do come true.
(If you would like to see how I feel about the other games in this series, please feel free to check out my list ranking them from best to worst).