I should write my closing thoughts on Panzer Paladin by can't seem to come uop with anything decent, so let's dive into Deadly Premonition 2.
I've only played a couple of hours and I won't spoil them: let's just say it's delightfully Deadly-Premonitionly, with weird characters, even weirder dialogues, janky controls, and terrible framerate.
You can't really escape from it, DP2 runs horribly. Inside buildings the framerate varies wildly between 20-or-so FPS and slightly below 10, depending on the complexity of the scene. Outside, while going around the city of Le Carré, framerate dips to new lows, with aggressive pop-ins and 2D elements replaced with 3D models when really close to York; shadows are there, but not all of the time, and the clouds on the skybox are a mass of badly-defined pixels. But then again, while gazing at the skybox, I discovered two UFOs hauling wooden boxes around. DP2 reminds me of D4 in lighting, user interface, and overall style, and it's like that game's engine forced to run on a Switch and manage an open world with very little or no optimization. There's a lot of stutter, too: after getting a gun, I was asked to shoot five wooden boxes: after shooting the gun, the game froze for a second, possibly to load the box's destruction animation. Loading times are longish, and before the load is complete, any animation on screen freezes, and every time I fear the game has locked up.
Another, minor, thing, some subtitles are out of synch with the dialogue. Voices are exactly what you'd expect from a Swery game: York is still York, and the voice actor almost revels in his performance. The rest of the cast sounds...well, Deadly-Premonitioly as well, and fit perfectly in the game.
The first two hours are somewhat linear, and are used to introduce characters and plotline. It's nice to bask again is DP's weirdness, and I could go on describing some of the best things happening, but it would be a disservice to anyone wanting to play it. Yes, it's the first two hours, but these two hours are a great introduction to the game.
As for mechanics themselves, I think movement and aiming are better than DP1, and the overall pacing is much quicker, with a lot of unnecessary fluff cut for good measure. Unfortunately a lot of flavour text and secondary interactions have been cut as well.
I'd say that right now DP2 feels exactly like how a DP game should feel like, which is a good thing.
I've only played a couple of hours and I won't spoil them: let's just say it's delightfully Deadly-Premonitionly, with weird characters, even weirder dialogues, janky controls, and terrible framerate.
You can't really escape from it, DP2 runs horribly. Inside buildings the framerate varies wildly between 20-or-so FPS and slightly below 10, depending on the complexity of the scene. Outside, while going around the city of Le Carré, framerate dips to new lows, with aggressive pop-ins and 2D elements replaced with 3D models when really close to York; shadows are there, but not all of the time, and the clouds on the skybox are a mass of badly-defined pixels. But then again, while gazing at the skybox, I discovered two UFOs hauling wooden boxes around. DP2 reminds me of D4 in lighting, user interface, and overall style, and it's like that game's engine forced to run on a Switch and manage an open world with very little or no optimization. There's a lot of stutter, too: after getting a gun, I was asked to shoot five wooden boxes: after shooting the gun, the game froze for a second, possibly to load the box's destruction animation. Loading times are longish, and before the load is complete, any animation on screen freezes, and every time I fear the game has locked up.
Another, minor, thing, some subtitles are out of synch with the dialogue. Voices are exactly what you'd expect from a Swery game: York is still York, and the voice actor almost revels in his performance. The rest of the cast sounds...well, Deadly-Premonitioly as well, and fit perfectly in the game.
The first two hours are somewhat linear, and are used to introduce characters and plotline. It's nice to bask again is DP's weirdness, and I could go on describing some of the best things happening, but it would be a disservice to anyone wanting to play it. Yes, it's the first two hours, but these two hours are a great introduction to the game.
As for mechanics themselves, I think movement and aiming are better than DP1, and the overall pacing is much quicker, with a lot of unnecessary fluff cut for good measure. Unfortunately a lot of flavour text and secondary interactions have been cut as well.
I'd say that right now DP2 feels exactly like how a DP game should feel like, which is a good thing.
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