On the one hand, Hylics 2 gives me so much of what I wanted coming off of the first game. The animations are amazing, there’s a whole new world of depth to the combat, and most of all, the world is fleshed out so much more. Historical events with big silly names are mentioned without ever really being explained, which is kinda one of the number one things you shouldn’t do in worldbuilding, but it just works so well in the wacky context of Hylics. I’m left wondering about what's up with all the Wayne larvas (what really is Wayne?), what's up with the guys mining in New Muldul who mention burrito synthesis, and what in the world’s up with the juice ranchers. There are definitely more questions than answers, but I just love getting to see a closer look at the world of Hylics.
On the other hand... the game can be very frustrating at times. I have never played an RPG that is so... defensive, I guess is the right word. Enemies do so much damage and you're almost always outnumbered, so you're constantly scrambling to heal. As such, you don't spend quite as much time actually dealing damage to your opponents, with most of your special moves (or “Gestures”, they've all got fun little hand movement animations to go with them) being support more than anything. Because of this, battles drag on. It’s so frustrating to be hanging on by a thread about to win a battle, only to poorly decide to attack instead of heal and be just barely unable to kill the final enemy, so you die and get sent to the Afterlife having done nothing but lose items with nothing in return. Six minutes wasted. Later enemies (and it's not a super long game) can multiply themselves with no consequence, immobilize you whenever they want, and some can just heal others whenever they want. There’s a lot more depth and strategy to combat with the very status condition-oriented system, but it also paves the way for a lot of frustration as a result. The one exception to this is the bosses, where the slower-paced combat really gets to shine, as you truly feel like you're up against an insurmountable foe who's much, much more powerful than you are, but are able to slowly whittle them down and end up winning holding on by just a thread. But for normal encounters? It's just annoying. There are little bugs around the overworld you can smack (a very Hylics concept) to heal yourself, which I think aims to allow each battle to be tough without making it impossible to get through multiple without dying, though I find they really don't help too much. Either you find some to heal you, and the base problems of normal combat encounters remain unchanged, or you don't find any before another encounter, and have to enter at a disadvantage, where you are certainly doomed to lose. You will become very familiar with the Afterlife in this game. At least you can choose the “Perish” option to end the battle in a loss right away instead of having to sit there and wait to die, but the fact that there's now no way to flee from battle (an option that was admittedly already pretty hard to even find in Hylics 1) makes it feel like less of a quality of life improvement than it could've been.
The overworld itself is a lot more fleshed out, being full 3D environments you can run and jump around in. The platforming is, uh... a little finicky, but you won't have to rely on it too much. Only being able to move in eight directions feels kinda awkward, especially when the game has controller support and everything, but eh, you get used to it after a while (though admittedly, the game’s almost over at that point). NPC dialogue has more meaning to it now, contributing to that “deeper look into Hylics's world” feeling I mentioned before, which I love. The story here is a lot more trackable because of it.
Overall, I’d say Hylics 2 has a pretty different atmosphere from Hylics 1. Everything has a bit more explanation to it, even if a lot of it is still absurd. You don’t feel like you're just aimlessly wandering around quite as much—you have clearer goals this time (though I think that ends up making it more linear (or at least feel more linear) as a result; there's a lot less random places to run off to and explore in the airship (which itself you can now only call from one specific point on the map, which is super annoying because you usually have to run back there every time you die, ugh)). The graphics and music both convey a slightly more professional look. I mean, I don't think “professional” is quite the right word, but that's all I got. Character sprites look a lot better, but there's also less “out there” designs, and there's no longer any locations that look straight out of a surrealist painting. And the music feels a lot more structured, where I'd say it sounds better, but also as a result carries a completely different tone from Hylics 1’s more aimless feeling songs. There's a bit more order in everything, which makes narrative sense given that Gibby's not in power anymore. Whether you like the tone of Hylics 1 or 2 more all comes down to personal preference. I kinda miss the “...um, what?” moments that Hylics 1 had, like talking to the “horse” (I thought it was llama or alpaca until actually looking it up for this) outside Wayne's house and having it say, “Uhweeeehh, snorf,” and having that just be it. Like, there's no purpose to it, it’s just kinda goofy and fun. Hylics 2 has a lot less moments like that. It still has some fun dialogue, don't get me wrong, but all of it fills a specific purpose.
Overall, I think Hylics 2 is a very solid game that builds off of the world of Hylics 1 to create an experience with a unique tone and atmosphere. The actual gameplay part of the game is largely improved, though I may still be feeling a little salty about it after getting lost wandering around Foglast for forever, not realizing a button I had pushed had opened some cage (I saw it was open, just didn't remember it was closed before!), which left me running around dying to enemies over and over again and building up a distaste for normal encounters... But all that aside, Hylics 2 is still an incredibly unique game that I think is worth experiencing. There’s definitely a lot more substance to it content-wise than Hylics 1, but which one has the better mood and aesthetic entirely comes down to personal preference.