Unlike many other reviewers on Steam say, Yomawari 2 doesn't fix all the problems introduced in the predecessor. The game still has enough cheap deaths (middle finger to the Manor chapter), and you still barely use its mechanics like an ability to bait enemies, preferring to run away from them in 99.9% of the times. Yet again the developers focus way too much on a chase aspect of the game, instead of coming up with clever puzzles. But even then... the game is definitely a major improvement over the first one. In the first Yomawari its story was nothing but a garnish for the exploration. In the sequel I found myself way more invested in the story events, even if they are laconic and basic as ever. The town is filled to the brim with urban legends and collectibles waiting to be uncovered, some of which are basically full-fledged side-quests. If Yomawari becomes a series it has a bright future ahead of it for sure.

A great sequel to Night Alone

Pros:
+Great Story like the first game
+Gameplay, more mechanics
+Improved Visuals (although there are some chipping textures)

Cons:
-No more home teleport, so getting missed items will be more tedious on some levels
-Price, still abit expensive for me for its short gameplay

I loved the first game and would reccomend it to just about nayone, but am NOT a fan of this sequel.

Compared to the first, the story in this one is very forced - which wouldn't be terrible if it didn't mean a LOT of mandatory cut scenes with no option to skip once you've seen them once, and the punative placement of save points. This means that during the MANY portions of the game where you have to confront some kind of mini-boss or something, every time you die you're forced to walk all the way back to the location of the encounter then sit through the cut scene again. This kills any tension or pacing you feel in build up to encounters.

Additionally, while the first game allows for a lot of free exploration and provides a lot of side fun (encouraging replay and playing the game even after you've completed the main story), this one mechanically locks off some portions of the map once you've been through them, meaning that if you didn't know there was something to pick up in an area, you can never get to it. Apparently either you need to get lucky, or use a guide as you go, which I find detrimental to playing a game fresh.

I don't know if this is limited to the 'Toy Ring' item or not (I missed it in the factory area and now can't get to it), but the prospect of having to sit through EVERY dragged-out '...' filled dialogue exchange and all the cut scenes consisting of a character quietly standing or sitting on the ground, combined with the frustrating set up that makes you waste time travelling and sitting through fluff to get to the action, has put me off ever playing this one again because I know I'm not going to have fun tracking down the rest of the collection if there's more like that.

I faced the horror and drama reminiscent of a midsummer night's dream. Believing in the promise of eternity, I crawled out of the abyss in the darkness before dawn. And finally, I bid farewell to the invisible and unbreakable knot of fate.


あなたをさらいに夜がくる。

The follow up of the previous game is as scary and cute in equal parts - but it also follows the same pitfalls.

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSmDzDTTQ1Q

Text:
Okay, the game is scary and that is pretty much what you'd expect. What I didn't expect was that even knowing that the game relied heavily on jump scares, I'd still be scared ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time and again. The pacing and world building between the cute visuals that switch into the gruesome in a blink, the sound design with heartbeats and screeches, and even the world building that guides you to the place you need to go. This is a scary game, and that's a hard thing to achieve with 2d isometric style graphics.

From start to finish I enjoyed myself immensely. BUT - that doesn't mean that the game is perfect.

I personally really dislike the save mechanic in the title, which encourages save scumming and lets you keep items even after dying. This removes a lot of the risk-reward in some things and diminishes the tension of the gameplay that the game relies on so heavily. Also, i am not a fan of the way they game pretends to be "open" for exploration, and then locks of everything but a few pathways for you to walk though, resulting in a lot of backtracking and wasted time for no real reason.

From a PC Perspective the lack of extended resolution support and limited options (though it has rebindable keys) is annoying to say the least. This also shows in the way the game is rendered, with the textures stretching and expanding on higher resolutions, meaning that the visual fidelity that looks full of details at 720p loses a lot of its nuance at 1080p and higher.

overal, a good solid sequel to the previous title that follows mostly the same design patterns and mechanics to do exactly one thing, and do it well: Scare you. And it succeeds.

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Yomawari Midnight Shadow story really darker and sadder than the Yomawari Night Alone
but basically,The gameplay is almost the same and improved from the first game.
Many new even and OLD map and places to explore, the map is pretty large.
And you can SAVE on JIZO not like Yomawari Night Alone where JIZO function is just like Checkpoint in Yomawari Midnight Shadow JIZO can become your SAVEPOINT

Pros:
- Story, there's alot more dialogue in game which can helped you tell / figure out the story
- Sound, badum-badum-badum(heart sound when there's ghost nearby) still make me creepy out
- Visual, overall still same like Yomawari Night Alone( Character, Place)
- Gameplay, new feature when you can hold item like plank wood, you can push some box that can help in your adventure
- Jumpscare, what i can say?? this is horror game overall jumpscare anywhere
- YIPEEEE~ the dog it's not die like the first game and YOU CAN BRING THE DOG WITH YOU.

Cons:
- THERE'S NO TELEPORT TO GO HOME.
- JUMPSCARE
- JUMPSCARE (another again)

I really recommended this game to anyone that like puzzle adventure horror game
but it's little pricey if you really big fan of Yomawari Series well i think that 's not a problem :)

10/10

I don't understand how can this have overwhelmingly positive reviews.
I enjoyed exploring a bit the town, and seeing the diverse amount of cool spirits.
However the story is really bad, the ending was awful, didn't feel rewarding at all to go through this chore of a game.

This game will tell you to turn off all your lights to play the game, and right after telling you that it flashes you with blinding white screens lol, your inventory is all white too, so every time you want to see it you're going to be blinded. Awful design.

Then, the game is incredibly frustrating because it's simply not well done, the boss fights are really clunky, I wouldn't mind this so much if when you die in a boss fight you could just retry again with one button, but NO, every single time, every single death, you have to walk again towards the boss and go through the same slow animations. Combine this with bosses that are not intuitive to beat, and you have a really frustrating experience.
This game isn't hard because of the difficulty, it's hard because of the poor game design.

Even if the art style and atmosphere have a special charm, I can't recommend this to anyone. It felt like a chore to complete.

Review copy provided by publisher

Following up a game like Yomawari: Night Alone is an interesting proposition. As a dark window into a moonlit realm of quintessentially Japanese horror, it succeeded with both foreboding atmosphere and intense moments of panic. Those came at a price, however, as the confusion and surprise often led to aimless wandering and frustrating deaths. Midnight Shadows seeks to provide a more even-handed balance between these elements and succeeds admirably, trading the worst of those moments for a more consistent experience. And just in case you end up missing the super weird bits too much, they also made the game twice as big, too.

Precious little best friends Yui and Haru were enjoying a night of fireworks in the evening skies over their sleepy mountainside town. On the way home, however, they become separated and run afoul of some things that no mortals should ever have to face. Yui seemingly vanishes, prompting her pal to spend night after night searching the streets, woods, and abandoned places for her. But those unspeakable creatures will be out in force, gangly arms ready to end Haru’s adventure in a cold, fatal embrace. If she can weather the supernatural storm, she might even learn something about her town she would have surely preferred to leave hidden.

Midnight Shadows follows the format of Night Alone for the most part, but bears a few very important differences. Every night, before striking out to locate Yui, you actually play as Yui in whatever terrible place she’s found herself in. Because of something in the opening that I won’t spoil (it’s one hell of a shock, and it’s not the dog this time), there’s no expectation of safety in these sequences and it makes them surprisingly harrowing. You’re basically dropped into a close encounter with a murderous haunting with no context and no chance of escape, and it’s a fantastic way to start each chapter of the game. This gives way to some more story-driven sequences later on that do a lot to flesh out the story in pretty horrific ways as well.

Once you’re back in Haru’s shoes, it’s time to find your friend. Armed with the foreknowledge of Yui’s travails you can sometimes make educated guesses on where she might be found on your adorable crayon map, but it’s not a big deal because this game is wa-a-a-ay better about indicating where you need to be heading. Despite being a much bigger game than Night Alone, the map in Midnight Shadows is more intelligently designed to keep you heading in the right direction and not waste time circling poorly-placed walls and bridges. There’s plenty of exploring to do, of course, but you should always have a clear idea of what to do next, something I couldn’t say about the original game.

There will be things in your way, of course, and they’re just as creepy and creative as you could want. The Yomawari games dig deep from the rich mines of Japanese folklore, providing colorful twists on traditional yokai and classic creatures like drowned dead and shadow people. Overall it’s a more varied cast than the first game had, perhaps a little lighter on the strange, non-threatening creatures but vastly improved in other ways. There were a few ghosts in the first game that were borderline infuriating to deal with, but all of the ones here are better designed to prevent the frustrations of unexpected or unavoidable deaths. You’re still going to have a few of those moments, especially when the game does callbacks to the first, though obviously it won’t be as grating this time around.

I keep touching on the scope of the game, and that’s definitely one of its strongest aspects and a mark of a great sequel. Night Alone had a nice, big map to run around in that also had sequestered areas for each of the specific night events to unfold. Midnight Shadows, in contrast, has two nice big maps to explore and then mostly keeps the nightly events to interior areas off the map. This means you’ll be exploring abandoned mansions, old libraries, and other ominous places at great and terrifying length. You’ll also have some new options for interacting with these places, including the ability to lift and carry large objects like crates and boards to solve environmental puzzles. This isn’t used a ton but when it is, it’s often to great effect like when you find a crying stone to carry around.

As before, it’s the mystery and dread that make Yomawari so compelling, as found in its events, creatures, and collectibles. While the main plot has plenty of creepy ghosts and surprises in store, there are all kinds of one-off events and items to discover if you feel up for a little late-night exploring. Your collectibles list is vast, containing everything from pine cones to bloody letters, as well as clues to encountering particularly elusive ghosts. And sometimes it’ll just happen, like when I hid in a bush at the end of a country road and a strange, small voice started talking to me out of nowhere. There are reasons to seek these oddities out too, as you can now equip certain charms that let you carry more utility items or enjoy other passive effects.

Midnight Shadows is both a joy and a relief to play, because it seemed to take all the right lessons from the first game. As much as I liked Night Alone, there were parts that had me scratching my head and seething at bosses. This one has been smooth sailing, without losing much of the horror found in those moments of consternation. The improvements to the design and pacing are paired with dramatic expansions of scope that don’t water the game down in the slightest, and even more creative monsters to face off against. It’s positively criminal this game has been as overlooked as it has, because anyone who appreciates the unique blending of Japanese style and horror will find a long and engrossing road to walk through the dark places of myth.



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A great follow up to the original Yomawari. This game improves on a lot of the issues I had with the original and adds more to the experience.

While I like the experience of exploring the nightmares the night brings, I do not recommend this game for those trying to get all achievements. It's horrendous.

The game is fun. The story is intriguing. The mechanics are nice.
It's just that post-game makes you backtrack so many hours and also deal with some RNG for specific achievements.
They removed the instant-travel-back-home option so you have to walk around to find a Jizo Status to teleport.

Recommended for the story experience.
Not recommended for achievement hunters.