izigame.me

Maybe it was a mistake to start this game up while being in a bad mood. Usually I'm more open-hearted and not this emotionally distant and my responses reflected that. Listening to strangers oversharing or peeking into their personal affairs unwantedly, raises anxiety in me, which makes me more distant. It appeared as if Jacob was constantly flirting with you, goofing around, saying cringe stuff and then going back to doubting himself. I found that to be very irritating. But nothing happend to get me out of this initial frame of mind. I wasn't intrigued because nothing I witnessed or heard seemed relevant. As in, why do I need to listen to that now? Where is this coming from? Who are these people? Oh, okay, I guess we go through this mindfuggery again now. Am I supposed to learn something profound? This has no meaning to me. There is no context. You know, I don't have a button on my belly you can press so I feel something. Most people don't.
This game lacks an emotional core. And I deliberately use the term core. All I saw were tangents that only added to the confusion. The first game established the setting and the character dynamics first and the supernatural stuff that followed revealed more about what you know or challenged it. Meaning, it is secondary, but it deepens what the game is actually about. In the second you are on a job the protag doesn't care about, meeting random people that have no business being there or just hear their voices and you can't fathom what this has to do with anything. Also, your first and nearly entire concern are the anomalies that you are told to investigate, not hanging out with friends and sorting out emotional baggage deriving from that. The deep dive into the souls of these unknown people feels out of place. They got it backwards. Not only makes this a big difference, but ALL the difference.
The premise is unbelievable and contrived. The world is not cohesive and vapid to traverse. The characters are poorly established. And all of a sudden you are given a task or forced into agreeing with something but you don't know how you got there. Many things are taken for granted. There is no one to care about. Oh wait, that's your family? In that case of course I care! I guess? As for Jacob, if you don't like him very early on─genuinely and not because you are manipulated into liking him─then you may find the lack of variety pretty boring. Oh and what I really despise is how information about yourself, that you declined to give him, turns out to have been conveyed to him regardless. Because the game needed that to happen, I guess.
Just what happend between the first and the second game? It feels like they threw the baby out with the bathwater. It's so underwritten and unmotivated. And I don't get any mysterious vibes. I get the feeling they wanted to ride that vaporwave train before people stopped caring. That may drive some sales at first but ultimately it will be remembered as artificial.
Wait, were we to watch some television show first? Has this game's narrative been crippled because they expected you to do homework? Are we really doing this Final fantasy XV crap again? Because that turned out to be such a great idea, right?