Recent reviews by ext

Not as innovative as the first game but still a solid game

Mouse not working at all, cannot use it for movement or clicking. Sometimes a cursor is present which I'm able to move but not interact with anything.

Tried a few tricks I found by googling but none seems to work. My understanding by googling is that the game latches on the first input device it comes across. I have legit reasons for having multiple input devices but not even disconnecting everything works.

What is up which that weird logic? What if you are on a laptop with touchpad? Should you really have to disconnect all controllers/gamepads to play this?

Additionally, the default graphics settings was causing the monitor to go out of range. That was "easily" fixed by using alt+enter and going to the display settings which had a weird refreshrate my monitor didn't support.

By this point it doesn't matter if the game is any good or not, this gets a negative review and possibly a refund.

EDIT: workaround: get really really long usb extension cords, physically unplug everything else, start game over remote desktop, use mouse/keyboard connected to usb extensions to play. Horrible game, review stays negative.

Does not recognize keyboard or mouse input. Does not play well with proton (using nvidia driver). Does not play well with controller. Will probably request refund.

EDIT 2020-12-20:
The 1.0.5 patch (two weeks after release) resolves the keyboard/mouse input issue. I still have issues when having a steam controller wireless dongle connected at all (even with controller off) presents all buttons as if it were a controller which makes it kind of hard to know which button to press. Disconnecting the dongle and restarting the game works as a workaround (But really? Come on, that is just a silly thing to have to do).

The keyboard controls also feels really out of place, like holding tab and pressing f puts strain on my fingers. I'm not used to using the alt button in games either, not very ergonomical at all. Trying to remap the keys presents a UX issue as pressing "Control scheme" present on all option menus presents you with an image of a xbox controller (I don't use xbox controller on PC), I have to navigate to "Key bindings" instead. Which in a way makes sense but still presented me with a way to do the wrong thing.

Cant stop honking

First of all I should say overall I did enjoy this game and I think it was worth the money. I did however expect more out of it and since the recommendation is binary yes/no I have to go with no.

First a summary:

- Graphics not much of an improvement, More usage of bloom, blur, particles made it a worse experience for me.
- Story was really shallow and much worst than the original.
- Music still great and immersive.
- Controls made it difficult
- Lots of bugs

The first impression was that it was a total ripoff of Hollow Knight down to even having the cartographer. It features a lot of more combat and action compared to the first game which I mostly played exploring and just ignoring enemies. But In my opinion the combat system lacks control and a defense mechanism. Almost all fights were just tanking and button-mashing plus the light burst skill makes most fights too easy. In Hollow Knight I felt in control but here I never felt like the game responded the way I wanted and lacking in combat mechanics. It is possible I never understood the mechanics but why would I learn it when I can just tank even the final boss?

As with many other games it so full of bloom and other graphical effects that you cant really see details, some enemies and fights you can even see how they actually look. I disabled motion blur after about half the game and it made it slightly better but not much. Overall the graphics does is only slightly better than the original. It is a beautiful game but the amount of blur and bloom just feels cheap.

The story lacks depth and both the antagonist and NPCs feel very shallow. It felt like there was much room for story-telling but even after the ending I was much unsatisfied. In the original game you could understand the antagonist and her motivation but this time not so much. In a very broad sense it is just a repetition of the original, nasty evil bird threatens you, go defeat her and restore the light to purge the world of corruption. It features lots of NPCs but most do not provide anything storywise, they are just there to give some side-quests.

The game is full of bugs of varying severity, some of which I cant understand how it went past QA. You need to learn how to play this game with the action selection screen open and the game in the background because the skill selection screen pops up all the time and covers the entire screen. Especially "useful" during the escape sequences. DId not hit any game breaking but some close calls. Many cutscenes repeat themselves and had more than one clipping through walls which resulted in deaths.

The sand worm escape sequence was just insane (in a very bad way). A two minute long sequence of perfect jumps, if you miss a single one you are instant killed. At least on a controller many jumps alternate between R and L buttons and while burrowing you have very little control and dashing even a few degrees mean you miss the jump. Combined with using the same button to dash and burrow mean you often dash instead i.e. instant death. Took me about an hour and lots of failures to pass and was about to give up before finally finishing.

Much of the difficulty in this game lies in not knowing how to do something or knowing the path. Some skills are completely useless outside the dungeons you get them in. "Stomp" is never really told how to do so many areas are unavailable until you by accident figure it out. Controls feels unpolished, having bash and dash on different buttons seems weird and makes it very difficult at times (see sand worm above)

Just like the original game the music is really good, maybe a bit too much of the same as the previous game. Some tracks where really similar to other games such as the Ni no Kuni series, not sure if intentional or not.

The maps and world in general seems a bit larger than needed, I prefer smaller well thought maps over large just-another-area there only to make the playtime longer.

Can't figure out to get 100% completion, stuck at 99% both in overall progress and some areas. Finished all quests, collected all items (even got archivements), trials etc but stuck at 99%. As a completionist that really sucks.

While very similar to Hitman 2016 it makes a few improvements. The maps are very full of details and holds many surprises. All the different ways to kill the targets and the story missions makes it very replayable. The only downside is that finishing all challages (and mission mastery) sometimes feels like a chore.

This game probably appeals to a small group of players but unfortuenly I'm not part of that group so I got bored very quickly. The leveldesing was a bit tiresome with some checkpoints before "stay-on-a-moving-platform" moments so if you fall down you need to roll a few meters and then wait 10-15 sec for the platform to move. On the later levels I often felt I had no idea what to do and would just spend lots of time moving back and forth trying to figure of what general direction I need to move in. The graphics is a bit dated today but didn't bother me too much.

If you played the first game then the first half of this game is a bit tiresome with lots of tutorials and introductions but once you get past that this is a nice game. Story is a bit weak but can easily be skipped. Had trouble finding other players for multiplayer. Overall it was a nice experience. Satisfied, but probably won't play again.