An unfortunate sequel that stumbles far too much over its attempts to do more.
There’s always a dangerous line to travel when a sequel is made, especially when the previous installments are successful or have a healthy modicum of acceptance from consumers. Straying too far from the original formula can make the sequel feel removed and disjointed from what made the previous game good, and sticking too close to the original can come off as lazy or apathetic. Dennaton certainly did not have an easy job on their hands making a sequel to Hotline Miami, and while the gameplay from the previous game is as strong and snappy as ever, what additions were made end up bloating the new installment while punishing the player for playing wildly.
Oddly the biggest disappointment I have right out of the gate is the story-telling. The first game was quite memorable due to the story, which kind of didn’t really care if you were following along clearly or not. Sure, with enough observation and putting puzzle pieces together you could get some idea, but it never really stopped to explain things, just chugging along to the next scene to give you more violence and combos to build in order to get that high score. In Hotline Miami 2, I can’t help but feel like there was damage control because of that, and now there’s too much story being fed to the player. Many characters are brought in to flesh out the narrative, like the Fans who are following in Jacket’s footsteps, or Evan, the journalist writing about all the mayhem and getting involved in ways he wasn’t hoping for. Yes, this does mean you get a nice break between segments to be in someone else’s shoes and potentially have different playstyles (Evan’s lack of killing, the Fans acting as Jackets’ different masks from the first game), but I can’t shake the weird feeling that between Hotline Miami 1 and 2, it felt like there was an obligation to play catch up and bog down the game with narrative just for the sake of putting some clarity to the mayhem.
The second major disappointment comes from the larger, more densely populated maps the game throws you in. While bigger maps should mean more attack strategies, higher scores and longer combos to chain, we mustn't forget that a single, errant mistake means death and restarting the screen. In the first game, playing like a madman often had the end result of clearing screens by the skin of your teeth, adapting in the middle of a skirmish and having very hectic, though incredibly satisfying victories. A death would cost you very little, and only during the later acts when the maps got larger, and more risky did you have to slow down and plan a bit more thoroughly. The player was nearing the end of the game, so the increase in difficulty was to be expected. In Hotline Miami 2, the difficulty of larger, more involved maps starts far sooner than in the original, and is expected, reckless, wild rampages will be shot down far more swiftly and feel much more painful in the process. It’s not the difficulty of the game or the easy death of your character that’s the issue, it’s that the bigger maps that almost seem to demand that you lure waves of enemies into a bottleneck before you horribly end their lives time and time again, and any improvisation during a frantic deviation from this strategy has a high cost regarding your time and patience. Having to clear a level using turtle tactics and purposeful pacing rather than going bonkers through the place and getting a poor score/rating at the end of it all was a frequent reminder of why the first game was far easier to digest and have bloodier enjoyment of. And doors somehow have gotten worse. WORSE.
The soundtrack for me is the biggest shining point of this sequel, as while the first game had a far more memorable OST that stuck with me afterwards, Hotline Miami 2′s music feels much more solid across the board in out of game listening, but it lacks that memorable punch that the first soundtrack had. To say that the music is the most noteworthy part of the game doesn’t entirely speak poorly of Hotline Miami 2′s gameplay which, excluding the need to take encounters on a lot more slowly than intended, it remains as it was in the first game.
Even if we exclude the reported problems that rose during the Steam launch of Hotline Miami 2 of controller play not functioning, Windows XP support being sketchy and the fact that the godforsaken executable did not work on day one for many consumers, I walk away from the game feeling incredibly disappointed on a personal level, while feeling frustrated on the technical side of things. Yes, it is more Hotline, but the attempts of sticking to the original formula while shoving borderline fanfiction-esque narrative upon me made things more and more difficult to swallow, and the ending itself feels like a gigantic middle finger to the player for going through everything they had to see things through to the end. I can only recommend Hotline Miami 2 to those who greatly enjoyed the first game or those who found the first game much too easy. Too much disappointment has remained on a personal and technical level, and it’s because of this that I must unfortunately say that for anyone else curious about Hotline Miami 2, it’s a pass - The first game is your much better bet.
