This might look like a thumbs down for reasons that will be clear but I still highly recommend this game. It's genuinely good despite my grievances and I'm willing to cut indies slack for the time and money they don't have.

But I'll get the good out of the way first:

I really enjoyed the previous installment. It has all the makings of an experimental Nintendo DS game that time forgot, and as the game progressed forward all of it's rough edges were made more and more apparent.

The sequel clearly paid attention to what worked and didn't and took what was a linear survival horror game and built it into essentially a semi "open world" adventure game. I'm a sicko and I personally miss the tedium of having to manually clear the used shells from my guns, but I can't deny the quality of life features and the reworked enemies vastly improved the pace and the action.

The voice acting is stellar. I never go into indies with high expectations for voice acting. Time and resources are privilege that typically only money can buy, so I'm willing to let it slide in most cases as far as the little guys go. But both of these games exceeded my expectations. The voice actor for protagonist in particular deserves all the flowers.

Sound design is also wonderful. Any good horror experience typically relies on good sound design. This game delivers. Enemies have unique and distinct sounds and can frequently be heard meandering in locations you're potentially dreading going into. The metal rafters have wonderful ambient sound. The lack of music until a tense moment like activating the berserker mode on every enemy on the floor does a wonderful job of surprising you. Nothing seems to overstay it's welcome. One criticism I have is very funny and, I suppose unfortunate consequence of the top down perspective. I couldn't parse with my headset if enemies were above or below me, only left or right. It's not a game that hinges too much on that information, but maybe it's worth addressing considering how much attention was put into improving the sequel.

The controls and the UX are much better in comparison to the first game I played (and beat) the previous game at the smallest resolution to be merciful on my wrist. The fact that this game can be played at higher resolutions is thumbs up enough already but the controls are just better all around. I love having to ♥♥♥♥ the shotgun after firing it. Pulling the watch up to your face to check your map is a fantastic piece of diagetic UI design. The reworked inventory system is, I feel, a step in the right direction. But here's where my major criticism comes in.

The loot and itemization is not fully there yet. GRAIN OF SALT. There are patches increasing the amount of loot you can find and craft with, so I'm not sure if it didn't fix my play through retroactively. But I approached looting and shooting much like I did in the previous game: I shot everything that moved before proceeding, and by the time I got to floor 23, I had essentially soft locked myself because ammo had become sparser and the new enemies that are introduced near that point (which I feel are VERY well designed) are more durable than previous enemies. I consider myself pretty good at video games and understanding their underlying mechanics. I'm also a lot of fun at parties. But looking back at my previous 22 floors, I can't seem to figure out what I misunderstood mechanically to have an elevator with dozens of fountain pens(crafting material) and no way to convert them into pistol or shotgun ammo. And unfortunately I can't sugar coat what my options are: run by every enemy until I have more crafting material, wait for a patch to retroactively fix this problem I've inadvertently found myself in, start over, or play something else.

The fact of the matter is, despite the fact that other people have beaten this, for whatever reason I'm stuck and I just don't have the time to brute force my way through a brick wall. So, sadly, I'm choosing the last option and for the time being the game will be unbeaten and western civilization has fallen as we know it. Again, I'm very fun at parties.

If the devs are read this I hope it doesn't ruffle your feathers too badly. It's still a wonderful game that I recommend in spite of my late game frustrations and I'm more happy with the 9 hours I've put in(so far). It still gets a glowing thumbs up and I'm really excited to see what you do next, because it's very clear you're willing and able to learn.

As someone who misses when games were really weird and experimental, I still highly recommend this. If you go in with tempered expectations I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time.

I had played Endoparasitc 2 from beginning to end around the first week of released, attempted a second run on the second to third week but only reach halfway through the game due to my mouse breaking, and have just completed a third run on hard mode yesterday as of writing this. This review is gonna be listing down pros an ♥♥♥♥ about the game at random.

pro 1, the manual reloading in this game makes gun play feel like real gun play, i enjoyed needing to precisely drag & drop my bullets into my chamber rather than the usual "press r to reload weapon, it that's 1 second". I even learned to reload my pistol in a cycling rythem.

♥♥♥ 1, this game takes less advantage of the fact that Cynte is disable compared to the first; the first has the fake corpse & orangutans where i'll have to crawl slowly above/ around them to avoid detection, the second has the detacted limbs which jump scares me if i decided to rush through but that's about it. Maybe having some environmental hazards that requires me to percisely manuever through is what was missing in this "you only have one limb to move around" game.

pro 2, the Hydra's my favorite enemy in this game; the first floor where i encountered it encourage me to lure the hydra away from the computers, stun it with the taser, then quickly rush to complete the computer puzzle. though a path finding bug where entering the first room makes them face the wall & ignore me afterwards did ruin the tension. Needing to quickly kill the zombies blocking my path while being chased added some extra tension to it's second encounter and needing to turn off the lights to expose it's weak spots, rather than being another bullet sponge, did make fighting it difficult.

♥♥♥ 2, the stun gun makes the game less scary to play, mainly due to it having infinite ammo. i thought the ghost would make traversing through the floors skin crawling but the stun gun removes that from ever happening. You can now just know where an enemy is anywhere at anytime once I've got it and it made any encounters with ghost feel like a time waster than a proper challenge. A nerf i would suggest is to one, give it a ammo system like the other guns, two, add an enemy that takes advantage of the stun gun's mechanics or three, have the stun gun be an optional/missable item like the watches & heliums.

pro 3, the final boss gave me Undertale vibes, both with the banger soundtrack and the bullet hell like attacks, i also enjoyed that both pistol & shotgun plays a purpose in the fight, pistol to deter the hands if their reaching one at a time, shotgun for the head if the hands reach all at once.

♥♥♥ 3, the final boss only has to attacks to cycle through, those being the ones i mentioned in pro 3, i was expecting a vomit attack so the head had more purpose that just another weak spot. Also, where are the ghosts & hydras, specifically in hard mode, i want my hard mode boss fight to be as HARD as possible, throw all the previous mechanics at my face to the innocent boy in me will be forever traumatized by the dozens of retries.

♥♥♥ 4, it feels cheating that flicking some levers spawn zombies & other enemies in places where they weren't, i'd prefer the game stick to the enemies being in hidden rooms that you need to realized through the map.

pro 4, Cynte gets some humanity added to his character thanks to Karis, i was fine with him being a douche in the first game as it made his self glazing comments humerous, which is still present a bit in the second game such as his comment to the food recipe, but this added character development does add the possibility of a redemption arc if he ever returns in another game.

That's all I've got for this game for now, might update my review when i got more things to talk about or when Endemic mode gets added.

love my morally ambiguous protagonist <3