Entry tags:
COMPLETE: I Became a Dog 2
This review assumes you've read the first one.
I Became a Dog 2 is, in many ways, about what you would expect from "Like I Became a Dog, but 2." Same formula, same eating and learning to speak dog, collecting bugs as currency, same trading puzzles. Same bleak tone where the more lost memories you uncover, the more it turns out that almost every major player in this sordid tale is an asshole, even (especially) you.
It does offer some enhanced quality of life adjustments. There's a tech tree now, where you pay to boost your skills in a way that carries over between play-throughs, with a cap that rises with every New Game Plus. It's a new scenario with new characters, though certain old faces do return. It's longer, meatier, the puzzles more involved.
I feel like there's a lot to like here, and I did enjoy this enough overall to go through it a zillion times and get 100% ending completion. However, two things kind of drag it down for me. One, the sheer rampant villainy going on around this household. Two, even when I ended up being able to all but speedrun this game toward the end, puzzle and plot progression still remained mysterious in a lot of ways. You end up spending a lot of your time talking to everyone, running out of leads or things to do, talking to everyone again, and then mmmaybe one of them finally remembers it's their turn to give you the next quest or item or whatever your progression was hinging on? It's very confusing.
Still neat enough that I don't regret playing it, though? I guess? It was decent, unlike its cast.
I Became a Dog 2 is, in many ways, about what you would expect from "Like I Became a Dog, but 2." Same formula, same eating and learning to speak dog, collecting bugs as currency, same trading puzzles. Same bleak tone where the more lost memories you uncover, the more it turns out that almost every major player in this sordid tale is an asshole, even (especially) you.
It does offer some enhanced quality of life adjustments. There's a tech tree now, where you pay to boost your skills in a way that carries over between play-throughs, with a cap that rises with every New Game Plus. It's a new scenario with new characters, though certain old faces do return. It's longer, meatier, the puzzles more involved.
I feel like there's a lot to like here, and I did enjoy this enough overall to go through it a zillion times and get 100% ending completion. However, two things kind of drag it down for me. One, the sheer rampant villainy going on around this household. Two, even when I ended up being able to all but speedrun this game toward the end, puzzle and plot progression still remained mysterious in a lot of ways. You end up spending a lot of your time talking to everyone, running out of leads or things to do, talking to everyone again, and then mmmaybe one of them finally remembers it's their turn to give you the next quest or item or whatever your progression was hinging on? It's very confusing.
Still neat enough that I don't regret playing it, though? I guess? It was decent, unlike its cast.