Little Nightmares II

Honestly, I'd love to give this a higher rating (3.5/5, follow my Backloggd: https://backloggd.com/u/SmallElf/). Thematically, it's a step above the original. The partnership between Mono and Six is incredible; I absolutely adored them, and the range of entities you discover during your time in the Pale City is broad enough to stay interesting. But despite a jump in quality in all those areas, there was one crucial change I felt impeded the game's ability to thrive. Combat. For whatever reason, the devs decided to put a bigger focus on combat this time around. It does not work. Like, at all. Every time I'd stumble across a combat-oriented section, I would audibly sigh. It's just not the sort of game that benefits from that type of gameplay. So, unfortunately, Little Nightmares II has to get the same rating as the original. No matter how much I wish to give it 4 stars or more.

Edit: Alright. Changing the review to positive. It really is a great game, but some game-breaking bugs killed it for me. Now it seems that all the bugs I've encountered are related to the enhanced edition only. So my very strong advice: [b]Do NOT play the enhanced edition![/b] Continuing in the same style as the original [i]Little Nightmares[/i], the visuals, creativity, story, and atmosphere are all top-notch. The enhanced edition adds ray tracing (if your system supports it), but I wish I'd played without it. The game-breaking bugs in the enhanced edition aren't worth the visual upgrade. I found the game harder than the original, especially during chase scenes. The margin for error was extremely limited, and the almost pixel-perfect requirements for getting through certain obstacles resulted in me failing certain scenes over and over. That said, I'm not very good at platforming games. There's also a bit more focus on combat events. And the same is true here. Without foreknowledge and near-perfect timing, they can become a struggle to get through. But the environments are so good. And I did want to continue on for the story and the whole vibe, as vague as it was. A note about the bugs: while playing the enhanced edition, I had to restart a chapter twice because critical items stopped spawning. Again, this doesn't seem to happen in the normal version. So ignoring those, the game is still very good.