I am revisiting Medievil II for the PS1 and going through it, but I really recall not having liked the sequel. I was okay with the story, which did make comprehensible sense given the time going forward, someone ending up with the pages of Zarok’s spellbook and all. It’s just a rehash of the first game, just time going forward.
Some of the bosses you got to fight were okay, but a lot of them weren’t memorable. It was cool to fight Jack the Ripper in that game and they made him creepy as hell. The levels were annoying and were poorly planned. Winston the Ghost was like Navi to me in that game, but only more bearable because you can skip his ass a lot of the time.
The weapons aren’t that fun to use, only glad they kept the crossbows and a sword, I guess. The cane you get is arguably the worst of them. The characters introduced were forgettable. I mean, I’m finding more setbacks with the sequel than there is to like and I’m struggling.
The original game was more fun with its dark gothic fantasy setting, you went off to some area to get your upgrades and you met characters whose weapons they specialized in which was cool. The talking gargoyle heads had wit to them and I always talked to them wherever they were, loved the voice acting.
The first game was remade twice probably for good reason. Although I probably would have wished that the sequel would’ve been given a remake of its own, just to see what would be taken out and what it’d be replaced with. It probably would’ve been better in that exchange.
The last of us 2.
I liked the first game, the twist at the end was a bit iffy, but it was understandable from a character perspective (Joel was never a good guy, and him deciding to kill a bunch of fireflies to save his psuedo-daughter from an iffy medical procedure makes sense to his character).
The second game was fantastic mechanically, and a train wreck everywhere else.
I understood the story they tried to tell, and they might have even told that story decently.
But it was absolutely not what I signed up for, I went from a coming of age (Ellie) / found family (Both) / redemption (Joel) story, and went right into a gritty “the price of revenge” story that was just so emotionally exhausting. Half the story was spent on a character I didnt care about, the timeline was confusing, and most of all, I didnt want to play a game about Ellie (and Joel’s brother) descending into emotionally driven monsters who sacrifice everything for revenge.
Its hard to say the game was “bad,” since mechanically it was good, and the story had depth. The confusing timeline wasnt great, but was survivable if the game was otherwise good. It was just such a tonal whiplash, and was such a slog to get through that it killed the whole series for me.
Out of all the hate I’ve read about TLOU2, I’ve never seen anyone say the timeline is confusing. I also can’t see the tonal whiplash, personally. Both games are incredibly dark.