Developer: The Brotherhood | Released: 2023 | Genre: Adventure, Point & Click
I loved the original STASIS from 2015. The free expansion CAYNE from 2017 was okay, but not amazing. But it still entertained me and in the end it felt like a decent DLC. So when I learned that The Brotherhood had released a sequel to the first game, I was quite excited. It had received overwhelmingly positive reviews from most users on Steam. I was sure to be pleased with this one.
But not at first. There were problems. In fact, there were a lot of problems.
A lot of features from the previous games were there. It was an isometric point-and-click adventure game taking placed in dilapidated surroundings, sometimes with macabre human corpses to be found. Again, the abundance of PDA and their immense walls of text were there too, but that was also a problem with the other two games. Each PDA found had many tabs and the entries were not always that interesting.
Taking a cue from games such as e.g. Trine and Day of the Tentacle, there were two and very soon three characters to switch between at any point. It didn’t take long before they were separated for the majority of the game, but the quantum inventory still made it possible to share everything they found. At first I was happy to see a lot of banter and comments across the characters. It spiced up the game and the voice acting was terrific. For some reason, they could see what their companions could see.
The puzzles had been upgraded to often require items to be manipulated or combined. As the game went by, it eventually turned the game into tedious work. More often than not, items found by one character had to be exchanged with another to be used elsewhere. To make matters even worse, only Mac could break things, and only Charlie could combine things. Both had specialized inventory slots to do this.
Imagine being stuck on a puzzle and having to not only check various hotpots in each location for each character, but also transfer items, maybe trying to let Mac break an item or Charlie combine something. It made for a lot of combinations and it was not fun when being stuck with these mechanics. Add to that a delay of a second or two each time a character portrait was clicked for switching.
It didn’t take long until I was missing the solo protagonist of the previous games.
The hotspot system was quite unique. Clicking the right mouse button showed green rings for descriptions and blue rings for interactive hotspots. All of these had a line drawn all the way from the character. It was really weird at first, but later it turned out this was actually a necessary evil. The game was generally too dark, and the messy backgrounds often made it difficult to see where I could go. Only because of the lines to a blue ring did I know that, somehow, the character could walk to that dark splodge over there.
But in spite of all the problems related to the game mechanics, the story, the dialog and the set pieces were so enchanting that it more than made up for all that. The dialog was well written and the voice actors were both skilled and directed to really act out surprises, regret and pain. Later, additional characters popped up to participate in the banter. All of them were interesting additions. The 2D backgrounds were a fantastic mixture of dilapidated alien structures, macabre bodies and disgusting environments.
No matter how stuck I was with an annoying puzzle, I needed to see the end of this game.
However, even though I found most of the story and dialog very interesting, I must say that the talking got a bit too much in the two final chapters. I could barely walk a few steps or click on anything without a lot of jabbering from several characters. It was starting to be too much of a good thing.
I found the smart bear to be both cute and gross at the same time, but I still liked its behavior and dialog. It’s true that it repeated some of its lines too often, but it was also really funny at times.
I especially liked when it used a bomb to blow a door out, after which both Mac and Charlie were shocked and asked it what happened? I opened a door, the smart bear stoically answered. 😀
Speaking of lines repeated too often, the hyper-intelligent alien-on-an-arm with a rusty voice, Calaban, had his accuracy predictions – but I liked it as it was part of his lovingly superior attitude. Are you Numen?
That moment when Charlie got something in her lungs and started coughing was so well acted, I almost had to cough myself too. This was followed up by a lot of groans and whimpers of pain. I knew those had to be there, but I quickly got tired of listening to it.
That sure was a sad way Moses had to die. Good thing I stayed until the end of the credits.
So the game ends with Charlie given a diving suit that could expand itself with air, pulling her right up to the surface. Yes, from a depth of several kilometers. Maybe the sea aliens from James Cameron’s diving movie did “something” to her too?
Pros
- Really well crafted background graphics and a creepy atmosphere that gets under your skin.
- Top quality voice actors that fit their characters perfectly, and they frequently talk too.
- For some players, the third character can be really cute and funny.
- A captivating story with epic set pieces and well written character dialog.
- The static puzzles are often technical and sometimes challenging to figure out.
- You can transfer items from another character without having to switch over.
- There’s a PDF-file with a walkthrough in the installation folder, in case you get stuck.
Cons
- Small scrolling areas with lots of room loading hotspots connecting them all.
- The backgrounds for the set pieces are often too dark, and you can’t adjust the brightness.
- Sometimes difficult to see where to go, had it not been for the lines pointing towards hotspots.
- For some players, the third character can be really annoying and repetitive.
- When you get stuck, the combinations of three characters and their hotspots exacerbates it.
- PDA logs often contain a ton of text, and you have to read them in case there’s a hint.
- The in-game hint system is weak, it barely gives you a very vague tip and that’s it.