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Enjoyed it a lot more than the first. The relationship between Sean and Daniel was great but, more importantly, a lot of the big choices and consequences come from how you as Sean interact with Daniel. It makes even the smallest things you say feel that much more consequential. The story really goes to unexpected places, both in personal and overarching plot terms, and the finale really was great while also managing to feel very personal. Loved the callbacks in the final episode to the first game, way better than that overlook scene from Episode 1. On the other hand, I liked the money and inventory management they started in the first episode and was sad to see it neglected. It had cool effects in the second episode like getting Daniel a gift, but they really could have taken it even one step further.

I've reached the credits and dumped more than three dozen hours into this game, so I'm considering it completed. I know there's an epilogue that I'll get to sooner rather than later, but I do want to move onto other games to some degree. A lot has been said about this game and it's all been said before. The reactiveness of the characters is mind-blowing, the story is more a story than a narrative but fits not only the style of game but the medium of video games perfectly. It avoids the common roguelike problem where you just kinda... stop when you're done with the game by giving you specific gameplay goals and narrative justifications to continue. Tons of hashtag #content but, rather than just filling up time, they all have little sidestories and lore attached that you can actually view without reading a wiki like in Pyre and Transistor - two of the biggest failings of those games IMO. Really this feels like the culmination of everything Supergiant has done so far, to the point where each previous game was like a "test" of how to put this all together. The ensemble cast and character portraits of Pyre, the reactive story of Pyre, the weapons and combat or Bastion, the music stems changing on the fly like Transistor, the style of lore and setting of Transistor - yeah it's not the same setting but it does the same thing where it's a unique spin of a common setting. It even continues the themes that I think Supergiant has been so good at tackling so far - using the video game medium to tell stories of cycles of pain. Zagreus is just as stubborn and withdrawn as Hades and it affects both of them. The gods constantly stab each other in the back and then pretend everything is ok at the drop of a hat, Hades and Persephone included even though they pretend to be above it. You actually get more out of the narrative from replaying it, since continued replays reinforce the narrative theme in interesting ways. The only thing that doesn't excite me too much is the soundtrack. It's solid, but Bastion and Transistor are some of my favorites ever, even if I wasn't as keen on Transistor's gameplay as Bastion or Hades. This just kind of ends at "solid." Even the use of changing around stems on the fly was much more impressive in Transistor, both thematically and technically speaking.

This is like the fifth Souls game I've played and they all boil down to the same uninteresting formula: leave Medbay (the equivalent of bonfires), poke at the edges of the map (or rather, find the breadcrumb trail of enemies you can actually beat) to find where you're supposed to go, get a little bit further, maybe upgrade once in a while, die, repeat. Branching off of that, the setting of this game is simultaneously its best part and its biggest downside. With the limb targeting, you can loot different parts of armor and weapons and upgrade in a more self-directed fashion. You have implants that give you different bonuses - additional healing potions, health upgrades based on your core power level, drone upgrades, health when you use finishers - but use the same pool of core energy that armor does, so you can't upgrade too quickly. It's a cool system that gives a lot of variety. And I just like the setting - on one hand it's a bit too Dead Space, on the other at least it's not yet another rehash of Dark Souls. But as quickly as the second area, you start facing enemy mobs that are less and less humanoid, and the limb thing goes out the window. You start facing trash mobs that can tank way too many hits. They're not difficult, they just take too fucking long. It's one thing when it's a big boss fight, it's another when you can't walk five feet without having to spar for another twenty minutes with a trash mob. Like the basic structure is still there, but it just reveals how repetitive and banal it is that much quicker. I don't have the patience to fight the same drawn out welder bot fights over and over just to plod along a Doom 3/Dead Space plot retread and I genuinely question anyone who does. Like Lords of the Fallen, I at least appreciate that they seem to be trying a regular RPG formula with dialogue options and everything. That's a much needed improvement on the Souls franchise that's been sorely missing since the beginning.

I completed the community center and kinda dropped off this so I guess I'm as "finished" as I'll ever be. I actually much preferred this on mobile than PC - it is literally designed for playing in short sessions. Only thing I miss is mods. The marriage mechanic is kind of a cry for help and the dungeon crawling in the mine is tedious garbage, but everything else around it has some really great gameplay loops and player expression, especially when I was able to pick the quarry as where my farm was built to limit how much of that dungeon crawling I had to do (still too much). I think some of the themes - escape your monotonous routine in the city - feels not only generally cynical but also ironic considering how much of the core gameplay loop becomes about routine.

Good but surprisingly dated. Frequent visual glitches, somewhat infrequent bugs that cause quests to not mark as finished or certain quest flags not clear, enemies often get stuck in walls - walls of environments that are reused like crazy - and those Mako physics absolutely do not fit that Mako level design at all, felt like two separate games taped together and not playtested even a bit. After playing KOTOR and then this in close proximity, it's weird Bioware got the reputation as the "polished but not crazy deep" RPG house where Obsidian got the reputation as "technically flawed but deep" when Bioware is pretty buggy and unpolished. I wish it did a bit more with its RPG systems. The choices don't seem to do much for this game, but I know they're supposed to carry over to the next game. In reality, there are only six or seven actual main quests and locations - the Eden Prime, The Citadel, Noveria, Virmire, Feros, Ilos, and The Citadel again but different this time. Five out of the six companions you get by The Citadel, the second main area, and have limited variety species-wise: two humans, two more might-as-well-be humans (because I guess they can't make any female aliens look unattractive - seriously, where are the male Quarians, female Turians, female Salarians, female Elcor, female Volus, female Hanar, etc. and why does anyone accept that bullshit about Asari being monogender), a more gangly humanoid alien, and then finally the weird buff alien guy. Where's my Volus, Hanar, and Elcor companions? You fight Salarians at one point, why can't those be companions, too? One of your companions will probably never be used since they have the same class as you. It's supposed to be a vast space opera but those faults all make it feel small and cramped, which is probably why they added sidequests. But the sidequests are kind of pointless. Again, I know choices will matter in the next game so I feel like I have to do them, but so many are fetch quests and a non-insignificant amount are just randomly collecting shit. Land on planet, check map, bounce along to the anomaly, resource deposit, debris, and finally the place you're actually going. Then it's a shooting gallery from one of three options: a mine, a research base, and an army base. The same layout for each over and over and over again. Some have animated and voiced cutscenes, most don't. It's still worth playing. The main quests at least have high production values. The tech and biotic powers are a cool balance with the shooting, though I will say tech side feels overpowered since the main villain race is a synthetic race of robots. Inventory management is kind of trash but there are a lot of directions to take your character customization. It's smart to make every single response by Shepard a player choice, and all fully voiced, even if a lot of dialogue turns into the RPG menu diving exposition dumps. I wish the companions were a little more independent but they do make a point of giving them time to shine and putting only your "away team" in cutscenes.

Yeah, I'm done with this game even on a second try. Ridiculous padding, over-acted and overly-expository plot that simply retells the basic Zelda myth except now drawn out with anime tropes thrown in for good measure, horribly empty overworld with equally horrible navigational controls, a hint system that's both unavoidable and condescending to the point of ruining puzzles, broken pointer controls - controls that already worked great in the previous entry - broken combat that even if it had worked properly still would have generated an over-reliance on gimmicky combat encounters, overly generous health and saves (likely because of the broken combat), useless crafting and stamina systems, dungeons and world design so linear they make Twilight Princess look like The Count of Monte Cristo, unimaginative bosses that you fight multiple times, so much of that fucking beetle item. There's just no reason to play this game whether it's tied to the Zelda brand or not.