izigame.me

Like the previous game, Kindergarten 2 is a humorous-gore-filled story that now forever takes place on Tuesday. I really enjoyed the game, and it had improved on many of the short comings of the previous game. In spite of all this, to me, it fell short compared to its predecessor.

Despite what I previously said (which I will get to later) the game really was fun. The interactions between characters new and old didn't feel repetitive and regurgitated, but new and fresh, with the new additions creating humorous dynamics with the old characters the most note-able example being the war of the janitors which obviously had our loveable deranged janitor come out victorious. The same thing with the questlines, they were funny and fresh and there wasn't a moment where I was wishing to just reach the end of them.

There were also some quality of life improvements to the game. One of note was the ability to restart from a previous room. Before, the only option was to restart the current room or to restart the day. This made the gameplay frustrating later in the game when more steps were required to complete a quest line. If you forgot to acquire an item or do a step in a previous room you had to restart the whole day. In Kindergarten 2, allowing us to restart from any previous room removes this stress from the gameplay.

Despite the praises I have for the game ultimately, to me, it fell short of its predecessor. I think I felt this way because the tone wasn't there. The most prominent example being the art style, in this game the details are way more simple and colorful, the added pixel count in the previous game allowed for more detail which accentuated the grimy and shady nature of the school which is an art style I prefer. I get that it's a new school and that the previous one was a dump, and that the change isn't that big, but for me this affected my experience. Another thing was that the overarching villain the principal didn't feel as present as in the last game. In the previous game every questline (or almost every) felt like they were involved in some way and we got a lot of interesting dialogue and actions from them. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the one in the sequel which felt rather flat to me. My last complaint and one of the biggest changes in my experience to the first game is that it was just too easy. The previous game I got my character killed way more and got to experience the humorous death sequences which added to the tone, theme and I think one of the identifying characteristics of the game. Because of this change of difficulty, I experienced almost none of the "out of pocket" deaths that were abundant in the first game. I think the game was easier because compared to the first game there were more actions done for us rather than the need to problem solve. I remember in the previous game most of the my deaths came from forgetting to make an action in one of the previous rooms or forgetting to grab an item. I don't think this ever happened to me in the sequel, everything was laid out well so you wouldn't miss it which made things too easy resulting in one of the most prominent elements of the previous game being undermined.

In the end, I really did enjoy the game. And if you loved the first game you will definitely enjoy this title. Can't wait for Kindergarten 3, I hope some of my complaints will be resolved in the next one. If they aren't, I'll still most likely enjoy it regardless.