Following in the footsteps of Dreamfall, you now control tow characters. Zoë starts in a coma, then wakes up and goes to the Mega City Europolis. Compared to the previous games, which both show us a lighter shade of Cyber Punk, this is now a full-on Dystopia, which is run by The Syndicate and where democracy is just a farce. Meanwhile, Kian joins the resistance and tries to reveal the evil ways of the local Emissary to the, apparently more reasonable, leaders of Azadir. In contrast to Dreamfall, the player characters do not meet each other. Even when Zoë visits Arcadia, Kian is conveniently away. Both follow their own path to reveal the conspiracies of their own worlds. Between the episodes, there are short "interludes", revisiting The House In-between Worlds from the first game, following the growing up of the mysterious girl named Saga. By the end, everything comes together and all the connections between the apparently unrelated plotlines are resolved.
The story is really well done, the characters are interesting, but for me, it falls just a little bit short of Dreamfall. Not much though. There is one thing though that I particularly did not like: it goes a bit too far with the Nazi theme. The prisoner camp on Ge-en looks just too much like the real life concentration camps, including a Mengele-ripoff Mad Doctor. Seriously, the creators should have been more original than that. (Interesting side note: the original concept art had a stone wall around the camp, which got replaced by a barbed wire fence in the game, even though the stone wall would be more appropriate for the setting).
The gameplay is a huge improvement from Dreamfall. Not surprisingly, as the 3D adventure genre has matured a lot since then. There are no annoying minigames, no odd Action-Adventure mechanics, and the puzzles still make sense.
This game is a direct sequel to Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, so it is recommended to play that one first (and by proxy, The Longest Journey, too).
Following in the footsteps of Dreamfall, you now control tow characters. Zoë starts in a coma, then wakes up and goes to the Mega City Europolis. Compared to the previous games, which both show us a lighter shade of Cyber Punk, this is now a full-on Dystopia, which is run by The Syndicate and where democracy is just a farce. Meanwhile, Kian joins the resistance and tries to reveal the evil ways of the local Emissary to the, apparently more reasonable, leaders of Azadir. In contrast to Dreamfall, the player characters do not meet each other. Even when Zoë visits Arcadia, Kian is conveniently away. Both follow their own path to reveal the conspiracies of their own worlds. Between the episodes, there are short "interludes", revisiting The House In-between Worlds from the first game, following the growing up of the mysterious girl named Saga. By the end, everything comes together and all the connections between the apparently unrelated plotlines are resolved.
The story is really well done, the characters are interesting, but for me, it falls just a little bit short of Dreamfall. Not much though. There is one thing though that I particularly did not like: it goes a bit too far with the Nazi theme. The prisoner camp on Ge-en looks just too much like the real life concentration camps, including a Mengele-ripoff Mad Doctor. Seriously, the creators should have been more original than that. (Interesting side note: the original concept art had a stone wall around the camp, which got replaced by a barbed wire fence in the game, even though the stone wall would be more appropriate for the setting).
The gameplay is a huge improvement from Dreamfall. Not surprisingly, as the 3D adventure genre has matured a lot since then. There are no annoying minigames, no odd Action-Adventure mechanics, and the puzzles still make sense.