It's soo shoooort!.....
Ok, maybe it's not and it's actually just the amount of time I played it in a session, but holy hell I'd say it's a lot shorter than the first one. Overall easier and much quicker to get through too, save for a couple spots. Of course, in my initial playthrough of the first one, I tried to see if I could kill every guard in every level, which takes a really long time. Don't even bother with that with this one... (which is a little sad) because in probably most cases, once you reach them, nearly all the guards are the type that you can't kill by hand and also don't have a nearby alternative to do so.
And I get that part of it is that I know how to think about navigating these kinds of levels now, but overall navigating around a level, and more importantly, around guards is a much simpler task now. I say all this and yet most of the levels appear to be much larger and complex, except in this game, you're not in a massive labyrinth of a tower (which I always thought was interesting to be in and explore, no matter how long I was in it), you're now in cliffside fortifications/bases (some of which are cavernous) or just Caribbean-style shacks with hay roofs and such around the base of these tall natural rock pillars (which this universe is absolutely full of apparently). They're traveled between by these airships (blimps) which of course are of importance in the first game. Used by Styx w/ someone else, along with everyone else in this universe. But they're pretty much just the transitions between levels, and your "mobile" base that comes with you, which you have no control over. (Again, gives me a real reminder of Sly 2).
These cliffsides and caverns to me are so much less interesting or intriguing than the magnificent tower of the first game, to me. Even though both games are divided up into levels. More those who haven't played, certain levels of the tower in the first game give a strikingly similar feel to ICO/Last Guardian, even red windmills and all. Yet manage to fend off the overly-relaxing yawn you might get by playing/looking at ICO, etc. (Less extreme outdoor bloom?)
Some of the shack areas in particular definitely reveal more of a copy/pasted element to the level creation, which the first game had very little of, except for very small individual pieces (and of course the stuff you grab onto). With the shacks, it's more like entire walls, roofs, and even entire rooms. The issue this causes, other than knowing that damnit, this was clearly copy and pasted... is that you end up finding corners that you have trouble peaking around or hiding up against. Either because of some spots where there's open seams in the different pieces of barrier or because a particular wall has a fancy pillar on the end of it that either gets in the way or doesn't even let you hide up against it at all. This happens because, with all these pasted pieces that are put into a complex arrangement of rooms, they're kind of carelessly placed and you end up finding spots that the level builder didn't notice as being a problem (usually less obvious/more obscure spots).
I bring this up, but really, this is only a really noticeable issue with the shacks and airships, which only really show up in a few of the levels. The ones that are caves and rock-carved architecture (not including the cave level with the shacks in it...) are better behaved. Yet, some of the time I feel like these are the less interesting ones to navigate through to your objective. However, several of the cave ones are massively intricate, or at least feel that way on first playthrough, but here's the problem... (again, maybe just on first playthrough). I think navigating these looking for the coins (which are black(?) bulky rectangular things, rather than circular gold shiny coins from before) is going to be a nightmare, even when following a Youtube video. Most of the time, looking at a specific location or room, you have no idea where you are or where the hell you need to turn. (Helped along by an objective marker, but that's not the case with coins... unless there is a skill as a later unlockable that tries to poinpoint them, like in the first game, but still).
The first game rarely had this problem, except for some coins that were in an obscure corner room (with an annoyingly edited youtube guide), or that 1 level that was specifically designed to have as many crazy intricate routes as possible, which was a nice change of level design in that game. I could be wrong with this new game and navigating sections might not be all that hard once I learn the true layout of the level, but I have some big doubts about some of them.... Most of the rooms in the shacks look identical and even many of the rooms in the caves as well. You aren't gonna tell the difference, if you don't back out of the rooms, if you aren't physically making a sketch of where each piece of furniture is placed. And then there's also the dungeon caves that are built into some of them....
Ok, what else...
They've added at taunt from Styx towards you with every death/failure you take, like Daxter/Arkham Knight, etc... A few of them can get a cheesy chuckle from you, but very rapidly does this become a negative effect rather than a positive one. Especially since there isn't really very many of them. With the more recent crappier trailers that they've released towards launch, I was really worried that they had really overhumored this one before I got to it. This is a huge factor of it... Especially since loading times are really quick on this one, at least on PC. In the first one on PS4, you could practically get a snack with each load. Really changes the pacing of the game with these loads (which, I actually kind of preferred the old loading time..) LUCKILY, thank god... You can actually disable these taunts. I think the overdone humor that I dislike is much less a factor in the actual in-game dialogue. There's some ones though... (jokes in the game). A pretty on the nose one early on too...
I'm definitely gonna turn the taunts off when I got back to it though. No reason to be annoyed by those anymore.
Ok, "boss" battles leading into ending.... There's actually 2 "boss" sequences in this game. 1 in the middle and one at the end. And I don't think I even care about spoiling them because they are that uninteresting....
Well, the mid-game one might've kind of almost been alright for a mid-game event, had it been presented better (a common problem across most of the game and it's cutcene pacing and editing - Most action sequences in the cutscenes happen so damned fast, you have idea what the hell just happened...) and if it wasn't so problematic... The whole sequence is to navigate (and figure out how to navigate) to take out the specific things to weaken the boss... The figuring out how to navigate it thing might've been a good thing, similar to just general figuring out how to navigate the levels in the first game, which I guess is hard to in a boss fight without making parts of it seem odd unless it's paced and polished well. First problem... His first initial attack is so fast paced that you pretty much feel like it's impossible to avoid entirely. It actually is, but not in a clear reasonable way. You have to move/dodge roll around and go through the course in a specific pattern that I guess his aiming doesn't like for some really unclear reason (because your dodging does not have an obvious effect on whether he hits you or not). ON TOP of that (and that attack).... He has a tiny tentacle that he hovers above you at a few specific points that's dark colored and doesn't glow red until the moment it strikes WHILE you're trying to take time to take out the important part and while this rapid attack is still going on.... And a lot of the time, this tentacle is offscreen! All this crap all at once, it's not worth the effort to dodge the damage taken from this tentacle, which then will probably cause you to get hit by the rapid attack if you dodge wrong, because... sometimes somehow you can possibly dodge both of these while taking out the objective maybe, perhaps....
Then it switches to the liquid beam attack. Here's what I don't understand about boss fights today... Why does it seem so hard, or not a good idea for the dev to fudge a boss' attack to hit a barrier that you are hiding behind, or trying to hide behind, with zero chance of that attack damaging you? Because maybe your animated finger was waved out around the corner... and because the attack isn't snapped to the barrier or actually smaller than the barrier. A cleaner boss always causes less frustration. Don't damage me because you didn't bother or think about your area of effect hitbox going around the edge of of your barrier hitbox or your player character model hitbox poking a toe out.... ESPECIALLY when you have a wall sneak-lock feature! On top of that, there's at least 1 barrier (and other ledges) with a curved edge that you could actually move around accidentally. (This is also an issue in a few spots in the rest of the game when you're trying to remain undetected.) Every corner in the first game was square. Almost never an issue (almost). I guess I should've pointed out that Styx's movement while pushed up against a wall or rope traversing is bumped up just a notch since the first game. Same goes for the camera rotation and the FOV. Both the camera rotation and FOV they let me turn down a notch, and that's good, but of course you can't change the character movement. This becomes an issue with trying to keep from taking damage in this boss fight or being detected in the rest of the game. His movement when wall-sneaking and rope traversing is too high and too sensitive... Think of like Mario's sliding.
Navigating where you need to go in this boss fight... Very difficult to do when you have a massive beam splash filling and shaking all your peripheral vision! That and the points you need to get to aren't all easily visible from, well... behind all the cave walls that you're outside of while the boss is spamming attacks from inside it. There's 2 points when trying to figure out the proper way to navigate it that are kind of bullshit... 1 is a point that you don't really think you should get until towards the end, until you're suddenly surprised by an obstacle at the end which means you were supposed to get it at the very start... And then, midway through there's multiple upper ones with 3 routes to take to reach. It is impossible to avoid damage completely on the 2 less obscure routes. But if you do make it, you can then hopefully notice the obscure route where you were actually supposed to enter... WHICH THE CAMERA doesn't even look at when you're at that proper point in the traversal sequence!....
Oh, I'm not done... Once you're done with all the weak points and very much should be done with that all around bullshit of a boss sequence... It drops 4 deadly obstacles that are very sketchy and difficult to avoid if you don't have Amber. OH... I guess I should've mentioned that Clones cost unrechargeable Amber now!... (Hell, they made Amber vision not even bother with using Amber at all anymore, which was also rechargeable in the first game, but they made Clones cost Amber that doesn't come back??!.... They were the most important last resort in the first game and kind of are at some points in this one as well... Actually, there even the only resort at some points.) Anyways, back to these damned deadly obstacles, It gives you 4 more at the end of this boss battle to try to get past... with 1 before that which is what forces you to have to get a certain point at the very beginning rather than at the end. Oh yeah, and you can't save during this
entire frickin thing.....
It's all bullshit on top of bullshit on top of bullshit for first time players, but once you've got it down, it's not even very long... Traversing and a whole lot of bullshit. And then real fuck you bullshit right at end. It's the frustrating uncleanliness of the attacks that are the worst about most of it, and then the absolute "are you.... kidding me....." part at the end WHEN YOU'RE DONE WITH THE FRICKIN' BOSS "FIGHT!"....
Finally.... Last Boss Fight... Much simpler to talk about. Traversing once again, but much more linear, once again traversing outside (or in) the wall of a massive cave room that the boss is standing in, but just point A to point B. Throws stuff at you. Barely even saw it. A few spots, goes into flashlight mode a la Scarecrow, but
much easier.... Didn't get detected once. And... I think that was pretty much it...
Here's the problem with these 2 bosses. I call them boss "fights" because with neither of them do you, yourself, actually attack them. With the first game, I'd say that's fine and should have been the way that it actually was, though maybe could've had more to it, despite the bs AI pathing problems. With these 2... you feel so disconnected from the actual boss event/battle/whatever. Why? Because you're literally behind massive rock walls and barriers outside the edge of the cave that the boss is in.... You're not even looking at the boss through half of the entire thing. That and, yeah I kinda get it, stealth characters aren't supposed to be directly combative, but when you're outside of a wall, blocking nearly all visibility to the boss, basically cutting tethers or activating a device (only 1 in the last boss event)... You feel pretty dang disconnected or non-threatened from whatever enemy this was....
Also, I'm curious how rearranged these boss battles were, if at all. Obvious example: Styx starts commenting, directive-wise, during the final boss event.
Nowhere does he do this in the first boss... Hell, it's actually practically silent through it. Other perhaps possibly related observation... and again the point where the action pacing and editing of the cutscenes was not good and quite confusing... At least the first boss has a cutscene where he appears previously (along with statue shrines). The final boss?.... Doesn't appear, doesn't enter, doesn't approach, doesn't materialize... He's just... THERE. OH!... Ok.....
And with that, the ending... Hol-y crap, what..... Tense scene with guy you've been conversing with before and it just.... Ends... Credits.... Whaaaaaat......
There was so little sign that that boss fight had any possible reason for being a final boss fight in the way it played out, and how simple it was, and then the cutscene with the guy you need to confront and it just stops..... and not nearly in a good fashion. My god.....
And no "To Be Continued" that I saw either....
I guess one other thing that I wanted to point out that I forgot to get in there is that, I think because of the larger expanse of these levels, especially in the copy-pasted more complex levels, the AI frequently has trouble getting to where it wants to. Several times I also found them stuck in really odd spots, because for some reason they can even vault or climb over some objects, which... is almost never used.
This mostly happens the levels with the shacks, which make a main appearance right at the start. Also, while even the new alarms won't alert an entire level, and it actually seems like an alarm generally doesn't even do much more than what a single alerted guard does to instantly alert every guard in the vicinity, in the shack levels you often have to deal with a massive amount of guards trying charging towards you. (was rare to have that many in the first game) However, they're still absolute forgetful morons, possibly even more so than the first game. The usual spots you'd expect are still 100% safe if you get to one nearby. Also crawl tunnels are generally larger and even more stupidly safe than they were before. But the length of time before a guard goes from yellow to patrolling can be rather ridiculous sometimes...
Ok, I'm done for now.
Wait, nevermind. Spoiler that's less important than it should be... The actual bad guy (or other bad guy, whatever) from the first game just ends showing up in a level in this game (almost just because...) and it's a side objective... to just take him out. Very unceremoniously or really rewardingly... ugh... Really? ...
amazon cyber Monday deal $45 out the door. Not much else big stuff that has any release date set this year...
Here's the problem with these 2 bosses. I call them boss "fights" because with neither of them do you, yourself, actually attack them. With the first game, I'd say that's fine and should have been the way that it actually was, though maybe could've had more to it, despite the bs AI pathing problems. With these 2... you feel so disconnected from the actual boss event/battle/whatever. Why? Because you're literally behind massive rock walls and barriers outside the edge of the cave that the boss is in.... You're not even looking at the boss through half of the entire thing. That and, yeah I kinda get it, stealth characters aren't supposed to be directly combative, but when you're outside of a wall, blocking nearly all visibility to the boss, basically cutting tethers or activating a device (only 1 in the last boss event)... You feel pretty dang disconnected or non-threatened from whatever enemy this was....
And no "To Be Continued" that I saw either....