*My title was originally going to be "how much of a complete asshole is this game?" but I know GB isn't keen on swearing in thread titles.

For better or worse, La-Mulana to me was defined by its utter, undisguised, intentional contempt for the player. It was designed from the start as a throwback to old Japanese PC games that would throw a bunch of shit at you and explain exactly none of it. It was a game with unwieldy controls and obtuse riddles with seemingly arbitrary solutions. And that was part of its charm.

So how does La-Mulana 2 compare in this sense?

I'm about 7 hours in, and now that it's really starting to open up it does seem basically on par with the first game. I was a little worried at the start because the game takes a while to properly open up and let you explore. In the first game you could get to basically all the frontside fields as soon as you enter the ruins without solving any puzzles. This game doesn't have that, but once I got a little way in I'm now dying all the time to stupid trapdoor floors over spikes and crush traps and random lasers and all sorts of bullshit. I haven't got to any proper riddles yet, but I've found enough cryptic tablets to believe they're there.

So yeah, it seems like it's La-Mulana 2 alright.

it seems a bit less obscure (in the opening hours) than the first game , i put a solid 9 hours in yesterday without taking a break , actually made progress beyond the first area.

It still has diabolical traps and the bossfights ive done resulted in a loud 'FUCK YES' after finally beating them.

There is apparently some issues with some late game puzzles making no sense or having a sequence break somwhere in there , but overall i think this is alot more accessible up front than the first game.

its also funny,charming,intriguing and the music kicks ass.

There are a few quality of life things that make a huge difference, at least for me. You have more air control when you jump (though not when you fall or get knocked). You have auto quick-saves whenever you hit a grail point. Most of the items and software you get provide pretty clear hints about what they are used for, compared to the nonsense items you got in the previous game. And you get some good tutorializing to start from the emails you get. It's friendlier in a lot of ways.

But otherwise I'd say the difficulty is about on par with the first game. There are tons of necessary things hidden behind false walls or obscure puzzles. The bosses are still fairly long encounters requiring precise jumping and execution on a pattern. There are tons of deathtraps or pitfalls, some clearly telegraphed, but others much less so. It's easy to instantly die or lose most your health, and you'll likely spend hours wandering in circles, even if you do take good notes or are good at noticing the details and hints.

With the caveat that I played through the first game, I was able to make pretty good progress for about 20 hours and take out 4-5 bosses and make my way through a dozen+ areas. But at that point I hit a pretty serious wall. There are late game puzzles that require certain combinations of items used in certain rooms to complete, with the cryptic solution for the puzzles are found on a tablet way in the other direction, combination of several NPC dialogues, and are simply way too obscure. I also had significant progress gated behind several false walls that I never found. Without the forums, I would have likely given up.

My ultimate verdict on La-Mulana was that it was one of the most genuinely fascinating bad games I had ever seen and was incredibly difficult to put down once I got fully going.

From what I've seen and heard of what's to come very little has changed there aside from cleaning some things up and that leaves me with equal parts excitement and dread.