The Rise of the Golden Idol - sequel set in the 1970s

[OSK]

I finished this. If you loved the first, you'll enjoy the sequel as well. It's largely more of the same, which is a good thing. Maybe it's rosy retrospection, but I don't think it quite hits the highs of the original. Still great though.

My least favorite change is the new floating windows. On some of the more complicated chapters I found myself fighting with positioning multiple open windows at once. For a positive change I did like the addition of puzzles involving video playback that you could pause and resume, though I felt like it was underutilized.

 

[gooseman]

Ok, I beat it. For me, it averages out to about the same as original (very good). The story wasn't as interesting (a consequence of being a sequel, with most of the mystery about the idol gone) and some scenes felt filler-ish with little to advance the plot. I think the music is better, with a different composer for some reason. The original had some good tracks, especially in the DLCs, but here almost all of them I like. They seemingly increased the amount of environmental clues that aren't explicitly highlighted or labeled by hotspots, which I liked. The spieldance, while a simple dictionary puzzle, was a really good piece of storytelling. Scenes are more varied, compared to the first game, where nearly every scene was a murder mystery. Overall, I think puzzles are easier
The new way of collecting words is whatever. It's a little better for me, I collect all the words first and only then actually examine the scene. The way it works now, might as well just completely remove the word collecting part, it doesn't really add anything to the game, in the first it was a little more involved.

nitpicks

The UI is still bad. I didn't like it in the first game, don't really like it in this one. I wish I could just type words and it would highlight them. Or maybe just let me type stuff into the boxes and autocomplete them. There was an issue where I couldn't drag words from solved forms into other ones (works within a scene, but doesn't work for chapter-completion forms). Still wish we had an in-game way to take notes. Windows are kind of weird. They are arguably better... until you have to look up clues in the world, which they overlap.
There are more of those chapter summary puzzles, I think the first game only had one at the end of game's story and dlcs. Some of those feel like filler, same stuff I already solved. Couldn't access the form from within a scene, but you have to cross reference multiple scenes to fill it out, so every time you need to go through loading screens (which were annoying at 1-3 seconds without SSD), memorize some words to put in, then go back to chapter screen to fill it.

 

[Jaedar]

The loading screens are pretty annoying, even with SSD.

some scenes felt filler-ish with little to advance the plot.

The spieldance, while a simple dictionary puzzle, was a really good piece of storytelling. Scenes are more varied, compared to the first game, where nearly every scene was a murder mystery.

I think these facts are related. There was no room for filler scenes in the first game, every scene had to tell part of the story. It also made the obscure storytelling feel more justified imo, you see it unfold from the perspective of some investigator ghost who only cares about unsolved murders. When the scenes have no common theme, they instead feel disjointed.

I think the plot also seems to be moving at a glacial pace. I've finished chapter 4, so I have one left, but

Spoiler

the stuff from chapter one seems entirely unrelated so far (I'm expecting it to come back final chapter), chapter 2 was mostly about how the idol got reconstructed, chapter 3 and 4 are both about early experiments with the idol.

 

[pakoito]

Chapters 5 and Ending tie it all together. It's not slow, it's just meh. As in "oh, so it's all correlated" but rarely causal or moving the plot forward like it was in the first game.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Mini review, after finishing the game:
It's a very good puzzler. Less clicking than the first game (oh noes, streamlining), same mechanics. Most of the stories/scrolls you need to complete feel shorter than in base game, so it felt a tiny bit easier than the first most of the time.
The plot and puzzles feel very logical, and make sense in the world. I never had a feeling of adventure game logic creeping up. There was one or two places where word order was troublesome (in the final chapter).
I really like how the usual game mechanic is subverted in couple of chapters, kept me on my toes.
The plot isn't as pointed as in the first game, it's more about various people seeing and grabbing an opportunity, without much thought for consequences (or any thought at all in case of one corpo rat). I felt that in the end it all tied nicely together, and arranging all the chapters on a timeline in my head felt really good (IMO there should be an option to do that in game). Witnessing the events in non-chronological order is kinda confusing though, and makes it harder to feel the connectedness of the plot.
Art style is a bit hit or miss, but it did feel vaguely 70s to me. Guess you can't have pixel art for 1970s if you had them for 1790s
Overall, would recommend to anyone who likes adventure games that require thinking.

 

[whydoibother]

Chapters 5 and Ending tie it all together.

I just got to Chapter 5, and I can already sort of imagine how its tied together, with a plot device similar to the first game.
However, the puzzles themselves manage to hit that sourpoint of both being easier than the first game's DLCs, and also being more annoying and convoluted. Naming the birds, or the people in the building, or finding days of the week/dates, always ends up clicking around to see where this thing was mentioned. I don't get many A-ha! Eureka! moments, only "hmmmm didn't i see this somewhere" followed by clicking on things.
I get they have to tune it for new players as well, and not only for people who've gone through Game 1 and the DLCs, but I have, and that's how I feel.

Overal good game so far (I've yet to see the ending), I like it, I like the genre, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a detective game, but its not as much of a celebration as the first game was, for me personally.

The way it works now, might as well just completely remove the word collecting part, it doesn't really add anything to the game

I actually end up looking for where I picked up a clue from, as this gives it more meaning. Just picking up a name makes no sense if you don't remember where you picked it from. So you'd end up clicking everywhere anyways, to see where this "Spender" word comes from. Better to get them one by one, and you can fill in some as they show up, which aids in making sense of the rest as they are picked up.

 

[KafkaBot]

Finished the game. It is overall a great experience and definitely a title that I'd recommend to anyone into intelligent games, but all my complaints from my previous post still stand.

Plot is generally interesting and kept vague, with full comprehension only being afforded to the player at the very end. It is a MUCH more grounded tale than the original, though, and I'd argue that it is to the game's detriment, since much of the mystery was already gone by the fact that the Idol was thoroughly explored in the first game - with less mystery AND less fantasy, the story also became much less memorable. They could perhaps have shown us how the idol was created to maintain that atmosphere of mystery, but they sadly chose another route altogether. Characters are also generally less developed and the ending was kind of stupid.

The puzzles themselves are still excellent, but I had the impression that the game was easier this time around. With the exception of a few cases (such as the apartment complex), this sequel never really truly reaches the heights of the original. I did like that they tried to make things more interesting by requiring the player to rely on clues from previous chapters, but the loading screens (even on SSD) made the experience of checking old information much more cumbersome than it had to be. The video feature was an excellent idea, but they sort of squandered it by only using it twice - and in only one of those occasions was the related puzzle actually interesting.

Oh, and the last case also felt way too easy for what is clearly supposed to be a grand finale to put an ornate bow on the whole thing. With the exception of two interconnected puzzles that require checking old information, I never really felt challenged by it.

In the end, though, I very much enjoyed my time with this sequel, even though I wouldn't call it a classic like its predecessor. Also, I'm one of those people who think the DLC cases were the best parts of the original, so who knows; maybe the DLC for this sequel will elevate it to greater heights.

 

[Jaedar]

Finished the game. It was good. The performance is somehow really bad though, even moving inside a puzzle would sometimes take a lot of loading the first time visiting a screen, and moving between puzzles is painful.

Oh, and the last case also felt way too easy for what is clearly supposed to be a grand finale to put an ornate bow on the whole thing. With the exception of two interconnected puzzles that require checking old information, I never really felt challenged by it.

I feel like I pegged HW=JN, and the related prompts only through story logic. So I had a bit of trouble with that. Otherwise it was pretty easy, but I think that's kinda fine for a grand finale. The penultimate mission was quite hard.

I do think there's a bit of wasted potential compared to the first game. There are more puzzles, but the puzzle don't really grow in complexity/difficulty like in the first game, nor do they necessarily contribute anything to the overall story, so a lot of them feel like filler. I feel like this game also jumps the shark in regards to the setting in the museum scenario, so my interest dropped quite a bit after that.

One thing I am not sure about the ending though, and which I guess will be the subject of dlc

Spoiler

Oriel toussaint = man in the red jacket = echo secunda. But what was he doing, how did he know to escape asylum, etc.

Plot is generally interesting and kept vague, with full comprehension only being afforded to the player at the very end. It is a MUCH more grounded tale than the original, though, and I'd argue that it is to the game's detriment, since much of the mystery was already gone by the fact that the Idol was thoroughly explored in the first game - with less mystery AND less fantasy, the story also became much less memorable.

Yeah.

Spoiler

The fact that the grand plan the game spends most of its time on is just "make a really good superbowl ad" feels very disappointing.

Also, I'm one of those people who think the DLC cases were the best parts of the original, so who knows; maybe the DLC for this sequel will elevate it to greater heights.

Lemurian vampire puzzles were very good.