Recent reviews by Nillansan

This is a super ambitious game and they seem to have managed to bend the engine in a lot of interesting ways, there's no denying that it has taken a tremendous amount effort to realise this project and I like how exploration in most cases feel rewarding. However, I just can't recommend it, it crashes an awful lot and the whole game just overstays it's welcome. I can't fault folks for dropping the game just after a few hours into it, the intro is a massive slog, it almost killed it for me, actually a whole bunch of the main quests almost killed it for me. There are a few glimmers of well thought out quest design, but the majority feel needlessly padded out. Main quests like In the Underworld, Soul of the Sword and the one where they take away your ability to teleport to key locations (that one was especially grueling) just drag out, there are long segments where you simply travel on foot. It actually just feels like 90% of the game is spent on traveling from one place to another. To make things worse they had some not so ideal designs around fast traveling, making it feel incredibly restrictive.

Charming take on the puzzle box genre of adventure games.
+ I personally love the art-style.
+ Feels very tactile.
+ Great soundtrack.
+ Perfectly bite-sized.

- Certain actions can feel a bit awkward to complete, mainly played the game with a controller, using a mouse didn't alleviate the problem.

I have completed Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, here are some of my thoughts on the game. Let me preface my impressions by stating that my registered play time is in no way indicative of the actual time I’ve spent on the game, there has been a fair amount of idling. I completed the Normal Mode with mostly S rankings and Hard Mode with B and C rankings.

Hotline Miami 2 introduces a larger cast of characters, it is considerably more cut-scene and story heavy than its predecessor. I do, to some extent appreciate that Dennaton have put in some effort to elaborate on the events that occurred in Hotline Miami 1. The extensive story telling somewhat diminishes the mystery that surrounds the first installment, for example, 50 Blessings is revealed as a patriotic movement that was founded as a response to the russian occupation. Beard has his own story arc, that reduces him to just another face in the overall arc rather than the mysterious yet friendly stranger that you kept encountering in the first installment.

Hotline Miami 2 is set out to be a bigger and bolder installment. The game basically retains the mechanics of the first game; building up combos and completing levels as quickly as possible (time is a factor in your final score), while introducing new design choices. Large and open levels make an appearance regularly and the majority of scenes are divided into multiple sub-levels. I feel that the larger levels are at odds with the score attacking nature of the gameplay. I had difficulties determining enemy placement due to the limited view (the Look function rarely helped me) and as a result I died a lot due to being shot by enemies that were off-screen. It is as if the game advocates a careful and methodic play style, while it taunts you for not completing levels in a timely manner with a sufficiently high combo. What makes matters worse are the bugs and inconsistencies in the game. The overall enemy behaviour seems erratic, sometimes they will behave as if they have eyes in their back, other times they completely ignore your presence. Enemies will get stuck in some of the objects in the level and once they are in this state, they can’t be lured out using gunshots. The door slamming mechanic seems utterly unreliable, enemies will clip through doors, causing them to remain standing when they should have been knocked down. Sometimes they will knock themselves out upon entering a room without any player interference. Additionally the behaviour of enemies with pouncing attacks seem to be bugged. Whenever I stood near a door while an enemy was entering the room, they would leap through the door and kill you without having fully entered the room. The gameplay is in a few instances hampered by unresponsiveness, this issue is mostly prominent when playing as Beard. I am specifically referring to when swapping between melee and long-ranged weapons, it either takes ages to change weapons or several button presses. This was not alleviated by rebinding the swap action to another key. Picking up weapons is still as cumbersome as in Hotline Miami 1, combine this with the fact that certain enemies require specific weapons in order to tackle them and you’ve got a recipe for cheap deaths. Again, I would not expect such issues in a game with a score attack aspect to it.

Playing on Hard Mode cheapened my experience even further. Hard Mode alters the game in the following ways, levels are flipped around with some minor changes to the layout, doors are in some instances removed, while windows are added. There's less ammunition in guns, swapping weapons will also remove ammunition and additional enemies are sprinkled on top. Enemies equipped with guns lock on to you instantly making it even more difficult to lure them out of rooms. Combine that with the bugs and other shortcomings mentioned earlier and it is bound to end in what ultimately feels like a frustrating experience.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number feels great when it actually adopts the design of the original, some of the last scenes hit the right notes. Speaking of notes, the soundtrack is superb, I did not expect it to exceed its predecessor. The presentation is absolutely stellar, the pixel art effortlessly convey emotion. The visual feedback that is given to you upon successfully stringing together kills after kills got my adrenaline pumping.

Thanks for those of you who took the time to read my impressions, I hope that I didn’t waste your time, I am well aware of the fact that I am echoing a lot of Errant Signal’s criticism.