This game fixed absolutely everything I disliked about the first one. It was honestly wonderful.
I learned something about Blackwell Legacy in the time between playing these games that probably explains the weird 'this is the bad one' thing: the original version of Legacy was a 2003 freeware game called Bestowers of Eternity released in 2003. That the 2006 version was a reworking of a first project makes so much more sense than this guy writing Shivah, doing something awful, and then writing Unbound -- Legacy absolutely tracks as a first big, independent project. That said, I'm very glad I played Shivah first, because if I had started with Legacy I probably wouldn't have continued with Wadjet Eye's catalogue, which would have been a shame.
The first big change this game makes is sending us back to an in media res night with Lauren, Rosa's aunt, and Joey. It's clear that Lauren is bitter and miserable and she and Joey are struggling to get along. That Lauren gives as good as she gets and is just as hostile is a huge change in the game's tone, and it has the immediate effect of making both characters sympathetic. The sarcasm and sniping is no longer one-sided, which means it's not just this annoying dude berating a frightened girl, but two people forced to work together who are unravelling under the stress. It also has the effect of making it clear the game knows their behavior is unkind and antagonistic, an element which immediately stops it from feeling directed at the reader. And even though Joey is snippy at Lauren, he's also just way less of an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this time -- no more terrorizing dogs or telling the protagonist her problems are stupid, or being a ♥♥♥♥ to the other ghosts; he's genuinely just a very stressed guy in an awful situation.
The other big change the game makes is twofold -- one, it actually cares about Lauren as a character and two, it does that in ways that give the game thematic resonance. This game is fundamentally about Lauren breaking under the pressure of the situation she's in. It opens with a scene of her at the afterlife crossroads thinking about how seeing so much death has made her stop caring about anything, or even feeling anything, and the game is about her quiet desperation. At the end --
[spoiler]
-- when she volunteers to sacrifice herself to have the culprit come after her, it really reads as a suicide attempt, and the game knows this, and it really works. The game mirrors Lauren's struggle by focusing on two hauntings about people whose own struggles isolated and eventually killed them, leaving the people they abandoned hurt and angry. The question becomes if Lauren can avoid the same fate. Without the stupid psychiatric hospital setting the game can tell a story about depression and desperation with far more pathos and I found it to be really affecting.
One thing I liked a lot about the suicide sequence is Joey's shock at what she's doing -- to me, it really does read as if he's realizing for the first time just how bad a state she's in, and realizing she wasn't just being difficult. [/spoiler]
My big complaint is it is kind of unclear at the end why he's still against her contacting her brother -- as with a lot of these things, I'm not sure why the masquerade is necessary, what the stakes of it are. Surely the better sequence here is Joey finally okaying her reaching out to her family, even though it worries him, because he realizes the isolation is breaking her? Either that or I need it to be clearer where his worry is coming from, because right now it's out of nowhere in a way that makes his last couple lines feel OOC considering everything that just happened.
I also think the implied sequel hook here is far better than the plethora of major unanswered questions from the first game. We see what happened to the Countess and knowing Lauren's fate can intuit what must have happened to her at some point, but still don't know how or why, giving us something to look forward to in the next game without leaving huge holes in the logic of the story.
Oh, and the gameplay here was really good! No walkthrough necessary, compelling investigation and solid puzzle design. My nitpick is that I wish there's been a refresher on the controls, since I forgot that it was left-click-for-interact, right-click-for-inspect and got stuck at once point because I hadn't been right-clicking things.
I am a bit worried that when the story switches back to Rosa for the next game the old problems will crop up again, but just the quality of the storytelling here was so many eons better than the first one that there's really only so far I think it can backtrack. Though, I mean, famous last words.
