izigame.me

Spoilers for both games

Anyone who plays this game has probably already played the first one or is aware of the story beats and inconclusive ending so I feel justified in not recommending this game despite it being independently a high quality experience, this sequel fails to bring a satisfying conclusion to the vast majority of the plot threads established. Instead of focusing and building on the parts of the first game that i enjoyed such as the exploration of the time loop, the branching choices that come with the loop and the characters relationships, it moves instead to a new set of characters that, to me, felt even shallower without the interesting complication of the loop
In the first game you have the five teenagers, the ghosts and, sort of, Michael, so 7 characters, in the sequel you have Riley, Jacob, the three teenagers, Rex, Alex (again), Evelyn, the old fisherman, the teenage radio host, the park ranger, the amateur paranormal investigator and Riley's dad so 13 characters. With the loop's removal and loss of any major choices (I include the final decision in this given that the consequences are limited to a brief conversation and a pie chart) there is no incentive to get to know any of them and so, despite the technical improvements in sound, graphics and being able to carry conversations through load screens I have no interest in any of the characters outside of maybe Jacob and Riley.
Pacing was an issue the first game never really dealt with, at times it felt like the game was lamp shading this by skipping large sections of the walk and talk in sequential loops, and the sequel drops the ball even further in this area. The overly long cave sections and embarrassing retread of the puzzle within Maggie's house seemed dull filler at best.
The over sharing and nervousness of Jonas and Alex's interactions made a kind of sense from the perspective of people suddenly, involuntarily, thrust into a familial relationship who are both trying to make it work. In the sequel though it is just two co workers on their first ever shift suddenly revealing their souls to each other, this just didn't line up for me as well the original did.
And my final issue is Alex, despite having a literal infinity to come up with a plan for escape, or in which to go mad in, she is either shockingly sane or shockingly incompetent. There was a moment towards the end where Jacob notes how remarkably lucky that they were there with just the tools to prevent a disaster and I thought for sure Alex was going to be ground hog daying us but nope another abandoned plot thread and instead she decides to convince Riley to functionally kill herself and her child because their relationship will be bad??? Alex has to be the biggest idiot alive for any of the plot to make sense at all, I mean if she was in communication with the Olivia before the events of the night and her plans are effectively ruined by Riley and Jacobs presence why not just have the teenagers disrupt the schedule using the fact the fact that she literally knows the future?
It could be that i'm completely blinded by nostalgia but I feel like the first game made so much more sense than this and despite the general improvements I would trade a thousand Rileys for one Alex.