Oxenfree II: Lost Signals Review (blackguard)
Let's get this out of the way first. Oxenfree 2 is a downgrade in every respect but has a lot of the vibe of Oxenfree 1.
It's still a good game and if you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one.
But it ultimately gets a thumbs down, and here's why.
The questionable stuff:
The first game had a lot of cosmic horror. That works best when there are unanswered questions. Oxenfree II lays out all its cards on the table shortly after the game starts and there's no suspense of any sort. Even if you didn't play the first game, or you did so a long time ago and don't know what's going on anymore, that's not a problem. The real baddies, their motivations and their modus operandi are spelled out for you almost immediately. It tries to throw you off a bit but there's never any reason to believe its clumsy attempt at deception. There's no real sense of mystery.
The characters are also questionable. Despite, or maybe because of only having one companion NPC with you the whole game, none of the other characters are really fleshed out. The game said in the endings screen that I befriended some characters... when I just thought they were a footnote. Only standout character for me was Nick the amateur sailor, if only because I'd have rather experienced what he was going through instead of what the writers had in store for me with the game; this is horrible - something happening off-screen, that you're being told about, should never be more interesting than what's happening on-screen, what you're being shown. Worst of all, everybody just kind of takes the insane things you're saying, as well as the giant floating triangle in the sky, as just a bad Tuesday. None of the supernatural things happening seem to have any impact for almost anybody.
With cosmic horror out the window and any notable writing for the NPCs (Nick aside), that just leaves the main character. This was really a game about Riley instead of the crazypants shit you're going through. You only see glimpses of her real deal here and there, and I'm assuming that whether or not you get invested is determined by whether or not you can relate with Riley's motivations. And I'm stressing the fact that this is my assumption because personally, I was not invested in Riley's plot so I can't give you any other perspective.
Given all of the above, the ending choices felt entirely meaningless too. In the sense that I didn't really care what happened or how the game would end. The ending section felt more like an ending selector to the tune of Deus Ex Human Revolution or Mass Effect 3.
Pacing is really odd as well. Between the lack of mystery, lack of interesting characters, and lack of motivation, there's only maybe 3 times in the whole game where there's any sense of urgency, but even that is quickly deflated every time you realize it was all smoke and mirrors; if you're anything like me, you'll only be successfully fooled once. The game constantly broke my suspension of disbelief.
The actually bad stuff:
The visuals are extremely muddy. The game is zoomed out 99.9% of the time presumably so you can see the pretty landscapes but... the visual design and the art direction are a step down from the first game. Characters are higher poly and higher detail, but because everything's so zoomed out, noisy and muddy, they suffer too.
Last but not least, the NPC you spend almost all of the game with is on par with the NPCs in the first game. Why's that bad? Because there's only one, and he only has so much to say. I won't go so far as to say he's two-dimensional, but his writing is fairly one note, and your first handful of conversations with this person will be pretty much the same as your last handful of conversations. You don't have different companions with different interactions to keep things fresh, no multiple perspectives on the things that are going on. This NPC doesn't even comment on any radio conversations you have other than the one sidequest radio character added just before the endgame, where the devs seemingly try to address the potential ludonarrative dissonance by having your companion comment on it saying that might not be the best use of your time. Directly drawing attention to something like this doesn't make it being there in the first place any better.
You might've noticed that I didn't specify this character's name. This is not out of any desire to keep things vague, but because I forgot his name despite writing this review immediately after finishing the game.
"Forgettable" defines Oxenfree II for me.