July '21 Play Log

Overall a relaxing exploration game that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Pros:

• Gorgeous graphics
• Great background music
• No threats - enemies, ability to fall or otherwise die, etc
• All areas are immediately accessible - no tools or upgrades required, etc
• No missable achievements, and you can go back and explore after beating the game to finish getting achievements
• Getting collectibles on large buildings is often puzzle like, but it’s never overly difficult to figure out how to one

Cons:

• Does get boring after a while - a lot of the small climbable buildings are very similar. Thankfully the game doesn’t outstay its welcome

Verdict: 7/10

Overall this is a very good game and IMO better than the first. Warning though: despite the appearance from the steam store, this game does not support VR, it only supports VR in one small DLC.

Pros:

• Decent story
• Great graphics
• Good voice acting
• Good evolution and variety of new weapons/abilities/upgrades
• The constant sliding from the first game don’t exist here
• You don’t have to play the first game to understand this game - despite being a sequel they don’t seem terribly related
• The chapter replay modes and challenges provides some replayability for those who don’t mind repeating the same areas/levels

Cons:

• Some areas force you into a fight without an opportunity to stealth at all
• I encountered some bugs. In chapter replay, restarting level causes a crash. Also,
• I found certain parts of the Baba Yaga DLC too challenging after playing for 30+ hours I had a weird thing start where the screen would randomly go black but the game keeps going (sound is there, menus work, but I can’t see anything in game). I haven’t seen anyone else reporting similar issues though.
• I don’t like the whole ‘cards’ for upgrades bit in chapter replay. More importantly, I really don’t like the fact that you can apparently buy card packs (many of which are one time use) with real money. It’s gambling and has no place in games.
• You have to wait a few seconds to skip cutscenes - find in the main game but a nuisance in chapter replay

Verdict: 8/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It has a great story will lots of exploration that slowly unravels the past. There’s always more to discover. After my first playthrough I’m tempted to start a new game right away to see what happens if I do things differently, and to answer questions I didn’t get to answer the first time around.

Pros:

• Good graphics
• Very well voice acted
• Excellent story that keeps you guessing and leaves you with questions to answer and theories about what happened
• Lots to discover and explore
• New Game + lets you replay but keep the translations you have so far
• Depending on your responses and actions you can learn different information and I think have some people act differently

Cons:

• You can’t go back to places that you’ve been to unless you have a reason. This can be an advantage because it prevents you from exploring unnecessary places if you get stuck (unlikely IMO), but if you miss something or want to explore it more you can’t.
• Six constantly asks if you want to leave a place. It makes you feel rushed. IMO you should be able to ask it to take you back, and only have it ask if you actually find all there is to find.
• The walking speed is fairly slow. Granted this is briefly explained in game, but it’s still frustrating and can effectively discourage exploration, which is the whole point of the game.
• In some circumstances - especially when flying - it’s not always clear who’s talking until something is said to give you a clue.
• Once you leave a moon you can’t go back down (even if it’s a place you can always revisit) without going somewhere else and going back.

Verdict: 9/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It’s very artistic and open to interpretation to a certain extent. The gameplay is a mix of platforming and puzzles, neither of which are particularly difficult. I generally don’t like platformers because I’m very bad at them, but I didn’t really have a problem with it.

Pros:

• Graphically gorgeous
• Platforming sections aren’t difficult
• Puzzles are provide a bit of a challenge but are not difficult
• Enjoyable music, very atmospheric
• After you beat the game you can go back and replay any chapter, including from checkpoints throughout the chapter. This makes getting missed achievements/collectibles significantly less painful than they could be

Cons:

• The memento collectibles don’t seem to serve any purpose. It seems like it may have been a ‘most other games have collectibles so maybe we should too’ sort of decision.

Verdict: 9/10

I quite enjoyed this game overall, but there were several issues that prevented it from being great. I didn’t enjoy the DLC as much as the main game, though it did like the ending.

Pros:

• The graphics (once fixed) are quite good, with some gorgeous scenery
• Decent story
• Likeable characters
• Good voice acting
• Doesn’t suffer from the Assassin’s Creed problem of randomly jumping to your death. If you try to jump, you’ll either make it or you’ll not jump - no accidental deaths.
• I liked the ‘cheats’ that unlock when you beat the game - it makes subsequent playthroughs (for achievements, difficulties, etc) much easier and doesn’t lock you out of achievements like most games with cheats do.

Cons:

• My main complaint is the camera. Quite a few games take the approach this game does, and it almost never works well. I’ll be going in one direction and the camera will suddenly turn and I’ll now be running in a different direction. It’s confusing and frustrating. While you can control the camera to some extent, you can’t always rotate to the view you want.
• One graphics issue - grey banding on characters in cutscenes. There’s a fix for it in a guide, I’m not sure if it works or not though.
• I found counterattacking very difficult - getting the timing right was too tricky for me
• There are costumes that unlock after beating the game - one for Trip and 2 for Monkey, but you can only use one at a time (without a manual hack). It’s not possible to have both Trip and Monkey changed at the same time. This is probably because the costumes are combined with the aforementioned cheats - you can’t only apply a costume without the cheat.

Verdict: 8/10