This review comes with a heavy hand and a heavier heart. Black Souls 2 is one of those games you're tormented by. You can't ever play it for the first time again. It's the second time I've felt like this, ever since completing MGS3. But as good as MGS3 was, it wasn't this. I have never been so utterly absorbed, attached, adoring and intensely inspired. I love everything about this game, even the things I hate.
The crowning achievement is the story, which will never really feel complete until you comb over its content way too many times, or discuss it with a group of people. Even then, there are so many competing theories and justified interpretations that you can't ever truly know. Not until BS3. Any questions you have about BS1 will be answered. BS2's entire plot is a jigsaw puzzle spread across the entire game world, sometimes across several timelines, and sometimes in the Lovecraftian madness that is the Sen0 perspective.
The story's opening is the best in history, especially since you know that Black Souls doesn't give a fuck. It gives you an ultra-defined goal in saving your Alice, and every step will make you feel like it's impossible no matter how many times you push yourself just far enough to overcome what it throws at you.
The opening also inspires questions that you know you're going to have to dig deep for. Like, wait a minute, could I just choose three different versions of Alice? Which one is real? Are any of them? Wait, is that the Cheshire Cat? I'm in Wonderland!? What happened to Red Hood and the others!? WTF!?
From there you're interrogating random mad lads on the whereabouts of a certain Alice (get used to that), and of course, they send you all over the place. Like a Chapel that houses a deity which you should NEVER, EVER, EVER piss off. Or a castle with a lit theme tune, strewn with the heads of those that dared slightly annoy the world's most adorable tyrant. Or a university that, fittingly, have you leaving with a fucktonne of questions.
I will share one moment in the game that had me dumbfounded in its profundity. Black Souls 1 was the best Hrpg I'd played before it, but that wasn't saying much. So when I wandered around as a sen-0 lunatic for a bit and saw one of those flickering flames... Well, let's say it wasn't long after that I came to the mind-melting realization that this game would become my obsession. It had gone from above average to potential GOAT. The dev had upgraded far beyond what most people do in a couple of games.
Questions, riddles you become mad with. Intriguing, puzzling lines of dialogue you can't figure out. Little things you didn't notice the first time. Things you find that, in a post-game context, chill you to the bone. It's a ride you won't forget. As I sit here, I just learned of an optional event in Beach of Grief that radically changes the map, and progresses a storyline I didn't even know existed. My backlog is about to get cucked again.
The plot's obscurity becomes defined when it counts, during the endings. The game gives you answers to a lot of your questions, but far from all of them. But you know they are there. You keep finding little fragments that have you piecing events and timelines together, over and over again.
And then it's over. You look at your playtime and it's over fifty hours, but... where did the time go? ...It's really over?
My childhood love of fairy tales and adult love of blondes had perfectly intersected. The music has you jumping up and down like that kid watching shounen you used to be. The maps are well done (mostly), and the aesthetics of each area are vastly different to one another, just like a good adventure game is. The game's basic progression is fantastic. It has a Metroidvania design as far as key items unlocking previous areas, and a very classic open-world design of enemies not scaling to your level. Sometimes you'll have to shelve an area when you realize it's way too tough for you (slaughterhouse says wattup). And the tension is sky high when you come back and realize you can tackle it now.
Then you get to the endings. Fuck. If you played Black Souls 1, you have some idea of what you're in for. But don't expect the same.
Now, I'm a blind fanboy of this game. But not completely blind. There are definitely problems. The gameplay isn't the absolute best. It can be a pain in the ass to play. I was too in love for it to be anything close to a roadblock for me, but man, the UI can test you. Not having any indication at all of what type of attack the enemy is even doing for you to build a defence is trying. The bullshit meter goes all the way up when you finally get around to the DLCs. So I will admit that much, the gameplay could be fucked.
But I don't care. This game changed me. It taught me what I valued in games, in plots, and even in life. I'm less of a slob now. I'm learning Japanese in my spare time so I won't have to wait for a translation of the creator's new games. I'm poking at the gym during my lunch hour and enjoying it. And I'm writing again, but I'm not going to stop this time.
Of course, I'll also be starting a search for an Alice of my own.