The Room Two Review (FullyAutomaticPants)
I'm making this a negative review, but realistically, the game is fine. My biggest problem is how much of a downgrade this is from the first one. Most of the puzzles in this one aren't even puzzles. It's just find the thing that obviously goes to the other thing. There are a few genuine puzzles thrown in that made me go, "Oh, that was neat," but not nearly as many as the first.
In the first game, there were only a couple moments where a puzzle piece was hidden somewhere that felt unrelated and unnecessarily obscure. In this game, that happens at least once a stage. There were many times that something was tucked away in a soulless corner of the space, or behind something that you had already used and had no reason to believe it would be relevant a second time. As a general rule in puzzle solving, you should make it very clear to the player when an object will be used more than once. (For me, the worst instance of this was instage four with the viewfinder. You use it, then it moves your view to the other side of the camera, then you're supposed to go back to the viewfinder and spin the ring, which doesn't even look that much like a spinable thing now that the viewfinder is attached.)
Another thing that I didn't enjoy was the way things were spread out. The first game felt like a puzzle box, whereas this game felt more like an escape room. I love escape rooms, but the last one had such a unique feel because it was always focused on one specific location. There are a lot of competent escape room games, but the puzzle box aspect was unique. I get that there is a feeling that you need to go bigger in the sequel, but this was a step too far I think.
My last complaint is a general complaint to any game that wants to have a spooky atmosphere. DARK SCREENS DON'T MAKE THINGS SCARY OR ATMOSPHERIC. STOP DOING THIS. If you have to resort to dropping the brightness down to the point where I'm squinting at my screen to try and see essential parts of your game, you're doing it wrong. So many games do this, and it feels like compensating every time. It's like you're ashamed that your game might not convey the tone you want, so you keep dropping the brightness. All it does is make my eyes hurt and create a sense of frustration. Even on the brightest setting, some sections of the game were nearly unplayable to my eyes.
Like I said at the beginning, it's a fine game. I didn't hate the experience, but this is such a downgrade from the first game. It doesn't inspire hope for the rest of the series.