VideoGame It's... Well...
I wouldn't really call this game bad in the traditional sense, but just that there's a lack of good. Funny enough, if you've seen the movie, then you already know what the twist for this game is.
Overall though, the main feeling I've had throughout this entire game was boredom. The narrative is monotonous, there's no impact during climactic moments, characters are unemotive and often Too Dumb to Live in certain aspects, and any amount of critical thinking one would expect from a mystery game is so painfully obvious that even a child would be able to breeze through it.
I've played bad story-driven games before, but this was the only game where I found myself verbatim uttering the Eight Deadly Words. I could not recommend this game even on a good day, I'm afraid.
VideoGame A Very Underwhelming Sequel
I would say Detective Pikachu was one of my favorite games of the 3DS era, and might even be my favorite game of that console tied with a couple others. I also enjoyed the film, and the concept of a Pokémon game mixed with a detective game where your partner is a talking, snarky Pikachu is a very interesting concept if you ask me. A sequel to the original game was announced around the time the film was, and we only got the former just recently. To be completely honest, I was very disappointed with this game, not only as a sequel to one of my favorite games of the 2010s, but Detective Pikachu Returns is underwhelming as a standalone game.
Since I don't want to spend the whole review bashing a sequel to a beloved game of mine, I will list the things I like about the game first.
The music is fairly enjoyable, save for a few moments. I especially like the music that accompanies Pikachu's Power Up Mount sections. Those sections themselves also contained some of the most enjoyable moments in the game for me. Though some people may disagree with me, I also found most of the small side quests you can encounter to be fun additions to the game's story.
Unfortunately, it is a lot easier to list the bad parts of the game. The animation quality took a big nosedive from the first game to the second. Each animated scene in the first game was made up entirely of animations that were created specifically for the cutscenes they were in. This game resorts to using the same animation loops for many of its cutscenes, which is very immersion-breaking in my opinion. The animation models themselves are also lackluster. They aren't terrible, but they look like they were made with a similar quality as the 3DS models, and them being in such high resolution really does not do them any favors.
The voice acting is easily the game's worst feature. This is likely due to poor directing rather than the voice actors themselves, as this game brings back many of the same actors from the original. The lip-syncing is really, really bad, and you don't need to look very hard at all to see it. The lip-syncing in the first game was admittedly not great either, but there, they at least tried to hide it.
I think this game's cracks show most obviously in the tense ending cutscenes for the cases when you expose the culprit. Here's an example of one from the original
and one from the sequel
(beware of spoilers). Everything from the animation, voice acting, camera movement, and even music are arguably a lot better in the first game, and the second one is a lot more awkward.
Personally, though, I do appreciate the game's attempt at keeping the gameplay of the original the same, and it has clearly gone through Development Hell to get here, what with a large amount of Pokémon from Gen 8 being present and none from 9. I feel like the first game is easily the better one in the series, hands down. Maybe if Returns had more polish, I would have liked the game better. Unfortunately, this game did not live up to the hype that built up between the game's announcement in 2019 to now.