Here's my review of the game

[Nicholas Steel]

Finally reached the end of Axiom Verge 2. I can see why people didn't like it as much as the first game:

There's no wide array of weaponry to find and upgrade (there's something like 6 weapons and 4 of them can be upgraded outside of the Skill Tree system). Nearly all of them are melee weapons.

Environments are more organic and less gamified, making things feel a bit blander. For example, takes place in a world that is very similar to ours rather than an entirely alien world which resulted in blander environments to explore.

Exploration felt a lot less rewarding as a lot of your upgrades (not abilities, those you have to find) are unlocked via a Skill Menu. There's considerably fewer Health and Weapon Damage upgrades to find throughout the environments because there are Skill trees that buff this too. You do have to find Skill Points but finding those isn't quite the same feeling as finding a carefully placed health, damage, hacking etc. upgrade in the environment.

I don't think there's any movement enhancing abilities to unlock, which makes the gameplay feel a lot slower than the first game since you move the same speed throughout the entire game.

Enemies didn't have anywhere near as interesting Hacking effects as the first game and I think enemy variety was lessened. The first enemy you encounter is frequently re-used for example.

I found the abilities to both move breach portals and exit the Breach at any location made exploration a bit of a headache. My issue with exploration however may be because I kept overlooking what should've been an obvious route through an area of the game. The sky graphics along the path to the Weapons Factory looked like a wall so I never realized I could toss my boomerang a certain way to hit a switch until I started looking at a text walkthrough (I did throw my boomerang upwards and saw the note resting up there but didn't know I could make it exit to the right).

It's a competent experience... but not quite what you'd expect from a sequel. It's much more focused on telling a story than is focused on the gameplay and the world design kinda necessitated map markers telling you where the next big thing to find/do is located due to there being many big open areas to tread and re-tread as you get new abilities instead of tight corridors.

Overall, I'd say it's worthy of your time but don't go in to it expecting a deeper gameplay experience than the first game.

[Nicholas Steel]

I tried posting that as an official review but the Steam Client kept erroring when I clicked the Submit button >.>"

[Black Hole]

It's an inferior one in every way which is a shame, years of waiting for a disappointing sequel I was expecting a larger scale of the first to have more weapons, more enemies, more bosses more worlds.

Just feels lackluster.

It basically killed off my hopes for this franchise, seems like his first game was a lucky hit but the second one just doens't seem to have the same passion into it.

[Nicholas Steel]

Originally posted by Nicholas Steel:

I tried posting that as an official review but the Steam Client kept erroring when I clicked the Submit button >.>"

Turns out it got added as an official review, I've updated it just now (as well as my post here) to clarify and reword some stuff.

[Black Hole]

Going epic I think ultimately killed the interest in his games for many users, I myself just didn't find this as interesting.