Psychonauts 2
Wonderful game. Game of the year candidate? Nah. Worth the 400 year wait? Ehhh. I mean, it was really really good, but I mean we’ve been waiting for 15 years.
It’s weird, but the worst part of the game was the combat. Plot, setting, art, music, size/scope, diversity, puzzles, that was all pretty outstanding. The combat sucked, though. I don’t remember the combat sucking this much in Psychonauts. Good news, there’s barely any combat, and most of the combat is puzzle-based and not . . like . . combat-y. I don’t know.
Barely any issues in the game. I distinctly remember Psychonauts 100% shitting the bed mechanically when you got to the Meat Circus, nothing like that here. The only thing I can really call a “problem” was that the game did a bad job hinting that “oh this platforming isn’t hard because it’s hard, it’s hard because you don’t have an upgrade that you don’t know exists yet”.
Thinking back to Psychonauts, there was one really stand-out level in The Milkman Conspiracy. Psychonauts 2? Damn near everything is standout. Ram it Down was great. PSI King was amazing. Later levels? Pretty good! Hell even the intro was great. And the size of the hub world was super shocking. The world just keeps going. They set you up to think it’s just the HQ, then it’s the HQ and the campgrounds, and then it just keeps gooooiinngggg. That said, it wasn’t a super long game. 16 hrs to get to the endgame, with a bunch of sidequesting and obsessing.
Strong recommend. I might go back for some remaining achievements, but some of them look pretty unfun.