The first game was a great tactical, side-scrolling RPG. Everything about it made me want to keep playing and not put it down. This game, however, despite sharing the same underlying mechanics, made me want to uninstall it within a couple of hours. The graphics look a lot nicer, I'll give it that. But the gameplay and world map traversal just felt like a boring chore to keep rehashing. I'll recommend the first installment any day of the week, though.
Great art direction and the intro is good. Quickly lost interest after the second crime scene appeared to be fully on rails. I feel like the game fails due to very low player agency coupled with flavor dialogue that gets stale too soon.
A very good Hotline Miami clone IMO. I totally missed the chip upgrades (similar to the masks in HM, where they grant you per-mission perks) on my first playthrough, so I'm actually now going through again to see if certain missions could be completed differently. The soundtrack is also pretty good, although I did have to turn the background music off for a few levels. Hard level + ear-grating background music = misery during repetition. The only other beefs, that are minor, are sometimes when using the lock-on, enemies can instantly shoot you when they turn a corner, but you will target the wall instead of the enemy. I'm guessing this phenomena happens because the center of the sprite is targeted, but the bullet generation is on the periphery of the sprite. It can be overcome by not using the lock-on when enemies are charging you down a hallway and aiming slightly away from the corner. Still, for a fast paced game, that doesn't always work out. The other one is that a few levels suffer from the Hotline Miami 2 problem of requiring the 'extended distance' option at all times. It's certainly not as annoying here because enemies can't shoot you through windows until *you* break them first, which is actually a welcome change. I feel this title is definitely worth the asking price of <$4 if you're a HM or top-down action fan.
The game seems to play well enough. However, I couldn't handle the self-aware voice acting and cringey script that accompanied it. Every time there was a story event, I felt taken out of the world instead of becoming more immersed in it. YMMV
