If the title could get any clearer, it would be crystalized. I played the Outer Worlds 2 mainly because I had 120-odd gigabytes of space on my wife's Xbox, and also because I didn't have to pay full price for it given that I already pay $30 each month for GamePass. Decided to binge the game, pretend I got it for half price. And I liked it.
Didn't love it. I enjoyed the combat more, the stealth more, the dialogue systems more, and the general level of polish put on the prior game's rough edges. I also liked how the game world tried to take itself more seriously, in the level design if not the writing. The levels in this game feel grittier, more real. Less campy. But where the areas have a successfully darker tone, the writing seems to lose a bit of itself in the "will they, won't they" of being corporate satire or serious commentary. I listened to a video from Berendir on YouTube where he captured it pretty well: Obsidian listened to critiques about the first game not being serious enough, but seemingly failed to realize that the setting itself was a larger part of the problem, not strictly the story and mechanics. The world thrives on that camp and overdone comedy, and taking it away leaves you with a setting that takes itself too seriously despite being built on clown shoes and RC cars.
Are the companions better than the first game? For the most part, kinda. They're consistently good, but not memorable by comparison. Whereas the first game had one or two standouts with a sickly pack of tagalongs, this outing holds the record for most mild-mannered individuals in an Obsidian spaceship at one time. They tend to follow interesting twists on trope characters, with the ways they synergize together in combat and how they interact with the world's areas being an interesting game to play when leaving the Incognito. I actually did think about which characters had which abilities and modifications at the time, and how these would interact with each other and with my own. That synergy meta of sorts was rather fun, though I've only realized that while writing this segment. But is there a Parvati? No. Is there a Vicar Max? No. Do I get a "I don't know fucking French" sort of moment from any of these characters? Not that I can remember, and I think that's the point. I like the characters, but I won't remember them. I'll just remember having a decent time with them.
One standout of the game for me? Melee combat, for some reason. I used that N-Ray scythe like I was shuckin corn under a harvest moon, and these meat shields were dropping like flies. I used to hate melee, but against all odds, it was just fun to screw up a corporate soldier's day with a fastball special to the neck tendons. Now, I'm under no illusion that the melee combat is the best thing ever; it just happened to be more fun than the first game for me, and I made a point of using it despite putting zero points into the skill. It was just too easy to ruin lives with the melee weapon assortment.
I guess the last thing I want to bring up that really interested me about the Outer Worlds 2 is just...the main menu. It's a cool little thing they did, making the main menu a dialogue between you and the Moon Man. Thought that was neat. Oh, and the big mega-dungeons on Praetor and Cloister were cool. That will be all.
I liked the Outer Worlds 2. It was worth spending the forty or so hours to finish it, and it was worth the ~120 GB of storage required to download it. I just didn't really love it, and I'm fine with that. Thank you for reading.
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