Media in Review: Oxenfree 2 - Lost Signals
I struggled to figure out exactly what to say about Oxenfree 2, because a lot of its...everything is tied up really heavily in Oxenfree 1, a game I haven't played since it came out in 2017(?) and was sorely regretting by the time the endgame rolled around. Still, it's a solid adventure title - you spend most of your time wandering around fiddling with the radio to solve puzzles and talking to unseen characters on your walkie talkie, but the real emphasis on the main characters Riley and Jacob. For a pair that met literally that night, they have decent chemistry, although even at her nicest, Riley is...distant, to put it politely.
The overall plot is a continuation of the first game, where there's big spooky triangles in the sky and you have to shut them off before time shenanigans happen and ruin the world. I like the inclusion of the cult and the big setpiece about halfway through the game is by far the coolest part of it, but overall it didn't really land all that well for me largely because I was pretty unfamiliar with the first game at this point. Riley and Jacob both get some moments to explore loss, regret, and doing right by the future, and honestly I would have preferred more focus on that than where the plot ultimately goes. In the grand scheme of things though, it's...fine. Just play the first game before you go into this one, it's about the same length at 5-6 hours and makes the conclusion to this game make so much more sense.