Psychonauts 2 (2021)

Finally finished Psychonauts 2!

It's a game with so much creativity and inspiration on display that you can't help but keep playing it to know what crazy ideas this team has for the next stage. In terms of gameplay, it's not that amazing: things get a little bit too repetitive and the humor finally tired me out near the end.

Now that I've completed the main quest, I think I'll squeeze a few more hours out of the game with the photo mode. The landscapes and scenarios are frankly beautiful. I also fell in love with the photo filters available, I'll post a few captures below.

Recommended, probably one of the best games of 2021. If you liked the first game, you will love Psychonauts 2.

Excellent game. Just as good as the original if not better. Only gripe is that the load times are kinda sucky for a game of this graphical quality. It should be much better than this. Game also had noticeable stability issues once I completed the main story. Upon quitting and reloading the game, all of the audio was echoing and a tad slowed down for some reason. Persisted until I quit the game completely and restarted my console (just to be safe).

The game also crashed earlier today when I was in one of Cassiopia's levels. Had an occasional pause when I turned the camera as it tried to load something too. Very odd.

Disappointing

Collecthoton or not the level design in psychonauts 2 does not offer a single challenge and Does not offer a good sense of exploration It Also does not feature genius or thought provoking platforming sections
It’s all simple platforming just the color and tone of stages change and sometimes Raz uses his abilities to solve puzzles but those instances are so obvious and inorganic to level design. basically platforming is not challenging or rewarding Combat is not challenging or rewarding, Puzzles are not challenging or rewarding & Raz’s movement is way worse than most modern platformers The game does not introduce any new gameplay element to platforming genre. It’s one of the most simple and lazy & boring platformers i have ever played in my entire life. (second only to the first psychonauts games i guess) This game heavily relies on cutscenes, dialogues and characters to compensate it’s weakness in gameplay and level design Which was obvious from the first game. Psychonauts is one of those games which gameplay is designed around the story and suffers from it. by “inorganic” puzzles i mean when i puzzle does not require platforming skill in a platformer For example: setting pictures on fire to reveal a hidden door in psychonauts is not organic to a platfomer And it gets worse since the game actually tells you what to do in most puzzles . As if psychonauts thinks the player is stupid or something Another example would be that clone ability that lets a paper clone of raz open unreachable doors Does opening those doors hence solving the puzzle require anything from the player? Nope Does opening those doors have anything to a platformer? Nope There are no reasons for those kind of puzzles in a game. The game has some metroidvania aspects to it but since most levels are so linear and require 0 exploration and does not offer any challenge, then exploring them again with your new powers to unlock some psy_core is completely useless And again since the combat is so easy then what is the point of visiting an area for the second time and go through all those effortless platforming sections? You don’t need to rank up anyway everything is easy to beat. In a game like Mario odyssey, most levels change after 1st time visit so another visit to them for completion actually makes sense. Cuz when you enter an area for the second time, those areas offer new challenges and some completely change About Raz’s controls… play any 3d mario game since mario 64 and you’ll get why Raz’s movement is so limited compared to even mario games from 25 years ago. Psychonauts is carried by it’s story and presentation like the previous game Some may say “psychonauts is not a pure platformer since it has combat and blah blah” Just play ori and the blind forest & ori and will of the wisps To see how those games give player genius platforming sections + combat which is more challenging than psychonauts ( specially ori and will of the wisps) and how those games use metroidvania elements way better than psychonauts 2 In ori and will of the wisps, bosses actually test both your platforming skills and combat skills at the same time Unlike psychonauts 2 bosses that usually don’t require anything from the player Ori is a masterclass even in story telling without taking control away from the player. psychonauts 1 & 2 specially the second one, the game takes the control away from the player with a tonne of cutscenes and exposition Ori maybe have like 10times less cutscenes and exposition yet it tells a great tale

After more than a decade and a half since the release of Psychonauts we finally got the long awaited sequel aptly named Psychonauts 2. Improving on nearly everything the first game offered, Psychonauts 2 is a gorgeous, hilarious and wildly enjoyable adventure that never loses its charm throughout its entire 15-20 hour campaign.

Like in the first game, you play as Respitin Aquato, a young Psychonauts in training and former acrobat who ran away from his family and their circus to Pursue his dreams. When I first started the game it felt immediately familiar. The gameplay mechanics are very similar, albeit noticeably smoother. Initially I was hoping for a bigger leap to the gameplay, but the deeper into Psychonauts 2 I got, the more new abilities I unlocked, the more I realized that this game had made massive improvements to the gameplay without losing the core feel of the game. It feels like an old game without feeling old. And once I unlocked the Psyball to roll around on it sped up the pace massively and put all of my worries about the gameplay being slow to bed. It’s not the greatest on a mechanical front, the combat is good but not great, the traversal is solid, but not awesome, and the progression system is rewarding but a little sparse.

Where the game really shines is in its visuals and in its story. I won’t go too deep into the story, but I thought it was endlessly charming, funny, full of lovable characters and it kept me invested all the way through to the end. But visually Psychonauts 2 is on another level, every kind that you enter is a wholly unique and stunning experience. From psychedelic wonderlands, to disgusting teeth dungeons, I was thrilled to explore every world and always excited to see what was going to be next. And with thousands of collectibles scattered across every map that are tied to the progression system is was doubly rewarding to explore every inch of what these minds had to show.

The world outside of the different character’s minds was pretty interesting as well. There are several large areas to explore, each with their own different aesthetics, optional side quests and secrets to uncover. The visual variety this game offers is truly up there with the greatest of all time. The side quests are fairly simple, and there aren’t very many of them, but they do add a little extra freedom to the game, and push you to explore the maps even more.

I have absolutely no qualms with recommending Psychonauts 2 to anyone. It’s a gem and I feel lucky to get to play a sequel that surpasses the original in every way. It was worth waiting 16 years for. This may be, and I don’t say this lightly, the greatest game Doublefine has ever made. Tim Schaffer and the peeps at Doublefine have been making unique, creative, fun quality games for a long long time and Psychonauts 2 feels like the culmination of everything they’ve learned over the years.

Either I'm a dummy and didn't get the story, or there were a couple of plot points left unexplained.

First, by the end when you are putting Nona/Maligula on the machine thing and Truman Zanotto takes you out of her mind, Lilli comes right behind him and tells you that her dad has been acting weird. But IIRC when you left the Motherlode Truman was acting as if in a coma and Lilli was buying his act. Did we miss a scene in which he wakes up and explains something to her?

More importantly, in the first chunk of the game Sasha makes a big deal about how some powerful psychic must've modified the dentist mind so he simply cannot tell who is he working with. Is that ever explained? The mastermind behind all that was Gristol Malik, who is non-psychic. Are we to assume that there he worked with some unnamed accomplice?

I'm wondering whether playing the second game immediately after the first was a not good idea. After finishing the second game I'm left with a few mixed feelings about the entire experience. Right off the bat I want to say as a game this is one of the best platformers I've played with some of the best visuals, presentations, and level design I've experienced in the genre. Which is why I feel a little mixed and disappointed when I say that this, in my opinion, came at the cost of some of the character and story presentation that the first game really nailed in its first half.

Let me go into a little more detail of what I didn't agree with in the first game. The characters and presentation of the first half were straight out of a late 90s early 2000s cartoon and I had a blast with the dialogues and little details added throughout the camp. Raz being the new kid did wonders for the development of the more central characters such as Sasha and Milla, who by teaching and helping Raz learn what it means to be psychic, also became a means for us to be interested in them as characters and learn about their pasts. To add on to that, Raz and Lili made a really good comedic duo and the game made it seem as if this sort of silly but cute contrast between their characters would persist throughout the game. What threw me off was how not only they put every single character out of commission, they also put Lili out of commission right when it seemed she would join Raz' adventure. I can only chalk this up to the classic damsel in distress trope or they really couldn't figure out a way to make her work as a partner without making her playable. Ultimately, my complaints only amount to me expecting a Zig, but getting a Zag instead. None of this really detracts from the experience and it was just things I wish they would have done a little differently because the main thing about all this is that it still was Raz's adventure the entire way through and despite playing it very recently it has become one of my favorite games.

The second game unfortunately also has this exact same problem but.. more. If you haven't played the game you definitely don't want to read this. The beginning of the game up until the end of the Casino mission set up what I thought was going to be the central themes and aspects of the game. You had Raz suddenly become the new kid again and another cast of characters who were complete jerks and Raz kinda mess up real bad by using his powers to alter a person's way of thinking through mental connections. At the end, everyone works together to overcome the mission and Raz learns a lesson from it all, realizing how great his power is and the consequences of misusing it. All this results in the uncovering of a potential greater threat and that Lili might be linked to this. Unfortunately that's pretty much the end of the interns as characters alongside Sasha, Milla, Hollis, and Lili. Considering they also had Lili being distraught over her father and her own feelings about how she saw herself as a terrible daughter and internal conflict about following in his footsteps, I thought they'd do a bit more with at least that. Raz' family showing up was neat and I thought they'd have a more central part to the story... but they didn't. The wildest thing to me though was how mental connections ended up just not being a thing at all whatsoever. The game introduces all these set pieces and individually they're great, but nothing really ever gets done with them. At most the interns give you a sidequest or maybe you run into them for a small scene at some point but it just feels like there's alot missing as far as characters go. The thing that really disappointed me the most though was how this kinda stopped being about Raz and instead became about Ford, his friends, and the events from their past that haunt them. And again, individually, it was great. Learning about Ford, his friends, and Maligula was neat and all but none of it is really about Raz save for him just conveniently having a connection to Maligula. I felt there were also some parallels that were going to happen in regards to the mistakes Ford made and the mistakes Raz made regarding their psychic powers but again nothing really... connects. Having Lili, Raz' family, and the interns all show up at the end for the big climax felt really flat and a little wasted. At that point why wasn't it Ford and his friends that came to the aid of Raz in fighting Maligula? I felt like everyone was going to have a bit where they get over their past by once again confronting Maligula but succeeding this time. It feels like none of these set pieces ever connect with each and it ultimately all feels like one big sidequest.

Despite everything I said, I really liked this game and it's definitely one of the best platformers I've ever played and I really hope this isn't the end of the series but it wouldn't be surprising if it was.