Its definitely a good 3d Platformer. Its charming and cute. But your little bug dudes? Dust mites? Without the Pikmin formula they just feel like a puzzle gate. Every level you start with either none of them or just a handful. You have to collect around 60-80% of them to hit certain threshholds. Thats all they are they're for. They are also invulnerable because of it so throw them everywhere to collect faster. For the 3d Platforming, the jump feels a little off since you start falling instantly. The levels don't hold up as well as other Collect-A-Thons in this genre. There is the cool perspective shift of how the bugs made a society using leftover household junk. Levels are large and you can traverse them very quickly! I'd rate it as 4 stars in this aspect. And 3.5 stars overall between both aspects if it would let me.
As someone that just got the first game because of the sale, this is an easy recommendation. There are some things better and a few worse but if you enjoyed the prequel you probably already know whether you'll be getting this. A major improvement is length, cases are longer. Total playtime is around twice as long, around 7 hours and thats /before/ the 7th case has been added. That means each case is roughly twice as long, with more puzzles, screens and items to interact with. But it should be said that means this is a more complex game and players that enjoyed the simplicity of the first game may prefer the prequel. Perhaps its a bit nitpicky but the biggest problem I have is the writing. This is subjective but I've never been one to enjoy meta-callouts and unless I'm mistaken, there was none of that in the first game. So its mostly more of the same and besides it being a tad meta in places I don't have many gripes with it. There were a few times where a puzzle or a clickable were less intuitive than I would have liked but thats par for the course with P&C games. Spooky P&C are my weakness but they are few and far between making this an easy 5/5 in my opinion.
I went in expecting nothing and I was hooked. Theres never a drag, theres 1 puzzle interaction I didn't like but thats it. Everything is done consistently well, if you like the setting of investigating paranormal events above your pay grade then its pretty interesting. But don't expect an in-depth detective RPG either. Each chapter is between 15 and 40 or so minutes. For the full game, 4-5 hours (including bonus chapters). All that would still add up to 4/5 rating to me. What makes it a 5 is your partner. Every single room (besides a few he doesn't step into) has a piece of dialogue and hes quite the character. A few have bonus dialogue from him after an event. I love games with the extra attention to detail afterall. If theres one thing I didn't like, its that alot of mysteries feel 'setup' to be solved. Like you get handed the tools from, well, a paranormal source despite the unlikely odds. They even joke about this towards the end. Its because they tried to avoid the P&C thing where you have a dozen items and have try every single item when stuck. Here, you rarely have more than 5-6 items at a time and usually 3-4 meaningful rooms. It is a tad simple, but worth the sale price. The sequel does change this issue with more indepth chapters, if this is something that bothers you. Overall, one of the better spooky P&C games imho.
