I finished it today. I'm sorry to say I agree with Snarky.
I was so very disappointed in the backgrounds, I was sad to see a ton of the very polished good looking backgrounds were just cut, Port Artue looked much cooler in the old version with the angled roofs and rustic architecture. Now it just looks like a brown and yellow version of St. Armando. I was expecting it to be totally different and alien. There were some very bad brush strokes sticking out of almost every other background, one of the worst cases was in the lighthouse, the net in the top left is quite big and it's just straight brown lines, no rim light from the fire or rope detail. And there are even gaps!
I'm so disappointed in how plain Port Artue is now. It has very little character anymore. Why wasn't the pathway to the lighthouse this detailed? Why isn't the background and lighting of Arnie's this moody? There's light in the train station here that guides the player's eye to the back, but in the retail version I wandered around for twenty minutes and had to find a walkthrough to know I could exit through the back of the train station background when I really wanted to go up the steps.
Why did the town change from this and this and this? It's gothic and cool looking, very different from the first game, very mysterious.
Whatever was over the edge in the first game was built up so much, it seemed like no one in St. Armando knew what was over the edge or if there's anything there at all. And then Chapter 2 just starts as your plane is in a net. We don't even see what the net is attached to besides the ship to know how the plane is staying in place. When Bwana gets to the deck no one is surprised, it's just, "Oh hey, airplane fell into our net, cool. We're stuck." And the whole game is like that, it should have felt really mysterious and fun to explore a strange land, but instead it's like Bwana knew about Port Artue forever, and apparently people used to travel from St. Armando to Port Artue all the time.
You had the perfect chance for exposition to make sense, for it not to be out of place because all three of the main characters were supposed to have no idea what this world is. My biggest gripe with the game is the writing, Bwana is fine, if a little flat. I never felt like he had much of an impact, because after puzzle sections the story would just sort of happen to him and the puzzles were just to get to the location where story was happening. I don't understand how any of the ships float on the mist, the Sisulu airship has propellers so I get that but then how does the ship you start out on float? There's got to be some rules!
Kito and Lina were extremely annoying throughout. Lina just told you what to do and spouted so much exposition about the mining company in the file room, so many words about mining and other things that didn't seem to matter. I get it, the power company is ruining the environment and they're bad because they're rich and if anyone has money they come corrupt. It's so heavy handed, I just wanted a fun adventure of an underdog. Kito did pretty much nothing, he only got stuck and I had to help him out every time. The plane and the prison. Just sort of a waste.
The scene after Bwana goes up the food lift is one of the worst though, you show the player a cut scene of Lina not siding with Barlow, Lina is against him, but then Bwana comes up for a second and he gets thee wrong idea, he's kicked out, and then he doesn't care about Lina. Which one, makes me dislike Lina, and two, doesn't work because you showed the audience that Lina is in fact, still on Bwana's side. So later on when you meet her in the file room there is no tension, why does she have a gun. Why doesn't she use the gun while escaping? WHERE DID SHE GET A GUN!?!
I know I'm being quite harsh, but I really just want the best game I know you guys are capable of. On the plus side though, the puzzles were very fun and well balanced and made sense. They were far better designed than the first game. Sadly one or two were stunted by a button being drawn on the background that didn't look clear, specifically the prison exterior, I had no idea the side button was usable and quit the game pretty early because of it until I came back and used a walk through.
The world still looks nice, it's just not as big as I was expecting, there's few side characters compared to the first game. I actually really liked the 3D integration, it was less jarring than the first chapter, Bwana looks great now, some of the upscaling like on the thugs in the back alley was very poor, would it have really killed the file size to render them just a little bigger? Loved the use of FMV, I thought I wouldn't but it turned out great, gave me some mad Grim Fandango vibes. The author R. U. Fukt was a nice joke, wasn't expecting that in an otherwise tame game. I thought some of the dialogue would have been better if there was stronger language, sometimes it was very silly and seemed like characters talked around it.
Overall I'm still looking forward to the next chapter, I just hope the characters are better written and go back to being friends of Bwana instead of bossing him around and using him. I'd totally recommend it to everyone that enjoyed the first one.
I was so very disappointed in the backgrounds, I was sad to see a ton of the very polished good looking backgrounds were just cut, Port Artue looked much cooler in the old version with the angled roofs and rustic architecture. Now it just looks like a brown and yellow version of St. Armando. I was expecting it to be totally different and alien. There were some very bad brush strokes sticking out of almost every other background, one of the worst cases was in the lighthouse, the net in the top left is quite big and it's just straight brown lines, no rim light from the fire or rope detail. And there are even gaps!
I'm so disappointed in how plain Port Artue is now. It has very little character anymore. Why wasn't the pathway to the lighthouse this detailed? Why isn't the background and lighting of Arnie's this moody? There's light in the train station here that guides the player's eye to the back, but in the retail version I wandered around for twenty minutes and had to find a walkthrough to know I could exit through the back of the train station background when I really wanted to go up the steps.
Why did the town change from this and this and this? It's gothic and cool looking, very different from the first game, very mysterious.
Whatever was over the edge in the first game was built up so much, it seemed like no one in St. Armando knew what was over the edge or if there's anything there at all. And then Chapter 2 just starts as your plane is in a net. We don't even see what the net is attached to besides the ship to know how the plane is staying in place. When Bwana gets to the deck no one is surprised, it's just, "Oh hey, airplane fell into our net, cool. We're stuck." And the whole game is like that, it should have felt really mysterious and fun to explore a strange land, but instead it's like Bwana knew about Port Artue forever, and apparently people used to travel from St. Armando to Port Artue all the time.
You had the perfect chance for exposition to make sense, for it not to be out of place because all three of the main characters were supposed to have no idea what this world is. My biggest gripe with the game is the writing, Bwana is fine, if a little flat. I never felt like he had much of an impact, because after puzzle sections the story would just sort of happen to him and the puzzles were just to get to the location where story was happening. I don't understand how any of the ships float on the mist, the Sisulu airship has propellers so I get that but then how does the ship you start out on float? There's got to be some rules!
Kito and Lina were extremely annoying throughout. Lina just told you what to do and spouted so much exposition about the mining company in the file room, so many words about mining and other things that didn't seem to matter. I get it, the power company is ruining the environment and they're bad because they're rich and if anyone has money they come corrupt. It's so heavy handed, I just wanted a fun adventure of an underdog. Kito did pretty much nothing, he only got stuck and I had to help him out every time. The plane and the prison. Just sort of a waste.
The scene after Bwana goes up the food lift is one of the worst though, you show the player a cut scene of Lina not siding with Barlow, Lina is against him, but then Bwana comes up for a second and he gets thee wrong idea, he's kicked out, and then he doesn't care about Lina. Which one, makes me dislike Lina, and two, doesn't work because you showed the audience that Lina is in fact, still on Bwana's side. So later on when you meet her in the file room there is no tension, why does she have a gun. Why doesn't she use the gun while escaping? WHERE DID SHE GET A GUN!?!
I know I'm being quite harsh, but I really just want the best game I know you guys are capable of. On the plus side though, the puzzles were very fun and well balanced and made sense. They were far better designed than the first game. Sadly one or two were stunted by a button being drawn on the background that didn't look clear, specifically the prison exterior, I had no idea the side button was usable and quit the game pretty early because of it until I came back and used a walk through.
The world still looks nice, it's just not as big as I was expecting, there's few side characters compared to the first game. I actually really liked the 3D integration, it was less jarring than the first chapter, Bwana looks great now, some of the upscaling like on the thugs in the back alley was very poor, would it have really killed the file size to render them just a little bigger? Loved the use of FMV, I thought I wouldn't but it turned out great, gave me some mad Grim Fandango vibes. The author R. U. Fukt was a nice joke, wasn't expecting that in an otherwise tame game. I thought some of the dialogue would have been better if there was stronger language, sometimes it was very silly and seemed like characters talked around it.
Overall I'm still looking forward to the next chapter, I just hope the characters are better written and go back to being friends of Bwana instead of bossing him around and using him. I'd totally recommend it to everyone that enjoyed the first one.
And from your first response it sounds like I can have it start with the character not knowing he has a superpower?
