Broken Reality 2000

I am very disappointed since im a huge fan of the first game, however I feel like there is no reason for this sequel to exist. There is basically nothing new here story-wise, gameplay-wise or visual-wise that the original didnt already do, but better.

Very disappointed with this one. I waited a long time for this to come out, but it really didn't hit the mark for me. It feels like it's trying too hard to capture what made the original special, but misses the mark in the process. There are also quite a few bugs that can hinder progression, although I'm not too concerned about those since the game has only just launched and I'm sure they'll be fixed. The original game nailed the nostalgia. It genuinely felt like you were meant to be in that strange, surreal world. This sequel is bigger in some ways, but the quests feel shallow and lack any real substance. For example, in the original, obtaining the katana was a memorable little adventure with some depth to it. Here, you simply find it in a room with a couple of cats. Moments like that just don't have the same impact. It feels as though the developers wanted to make something much bigger than the original, but somewhere along the way the charm was lost. Given how long the game was delayed, I can't help but wonder if the project lost direction or momentum during development. If I hadn't gone over Steam's two-hour refund window, I would have refunded it. I kept playing because I was hoping it would eventually click, but it never did. I made it as far as the mall level before discovering I needed to backtrack all the way to get the hoverboard, only to find the NPC for the quest was missing. At that point, I just gave up. I'll probably give it another try once it's been patched, but for now I'm genuinely disappointed. This experience has also made me much more cautious about getting excited for future games from these developers. I'll be waiting to see what other players think before buying their next release.

Just devastated at how much worse this game is compared to the original. I was optimistic the first three hours but then the game became a boring borderline unplayable mess. I hope they fix most of the bugs I struggled with but that won't make the game itself any better. The aesthetic, characters, quests, locations, EVERYTHING is better in the first game. I'm just sad at how everything came out :( I'll probably try revisiting it when they fix all of the bugs at least.

Finished the game not too long ago and honestly, I don't recommend this for either new or old fans. The game feels like a drag to go through cause they genuinely don't give you good directions on where to go or what to do next, and even when they do it feels quite vague to understand it at times. That and add the slow walking speed (even though they updated it to make it faster), traversal feels like it takes longer than it should. There's also too many moments, especially near the end, where i kept dealing with collider issues that it kept making me fall and have to re-do certain parts from said collider issues. And then there's the story, or what feels like barely any story compared to the first Broken Reality. It didn't feel as coherent nor connected as it was in the first game and it sucks since it's hard to grab straws on those interested in the small lore of this series. But at the end of it all, I sadly don't recommend this game as it currently is. Maybe they'll update it to fix a lot of issues i listed, but even then the story will feel bleh if not much is changed and the pacing will still feel off in general. I wish they took time to reflect on what they truly wanted this game to be before releasing on the state it is.

If you haven't played the first, go play that instead. If you have and enjoyed it, feel free to try this and judge it for yourself. But for me, this was a disappointing sequel. Broken Reality was a pretty great walking simulator with some light metroidvania elements. It had an aesthetic mashup of 90s era internet "vibes" and was a tight ~8 hour experience. It succeeded in creating a unique and interesting fictional micro social media reality in which you delved deep into its various layers of reality. You learn about the corporate-looted digital world of Natem while chasing the story of the world's original creators. Broken Reality 2000 tries to be this but with 2000s era internet aesthetics. But the only thing it sort of improves on is a slightly more expanded item toolkit. In regards to literally everything else, it feels like a shallow and failed attempt at doing what the original did. Aesthetically it doesn't do anything that interesting with its y2k and frutiger aero styles, with some areas feeling tonally boring and out of sync. The story is a mess and doesn't make any sense in continuation with the original. Themes, narrative, none of it is engaging or interesting. You basically do nothing but unrelated fetch quests for various characters and backtrack till you find all the shards for each area's medallion. The exploration is so much more linear and way less interesting. The world feels so much more empty, the pixel art is worse across the board and the variety of assets is weaker. The ending "descent" into the layers of its digital world pales in comparison to what the original presented. And that final cutscene, an absolute joke compared to the psychedelic treat of an end that, again, the OG gave us. And maybe worst of all, it completely overstays its welcome. I don't like leaving negative reviews for indie games. But this was a whiplash of an experience. I fondly remember the first game. I thought the initial hours of this game were good and was hopeful it was building up to something. But it just... never did. The original felt like it had something to say. A tight story about a grass roots internet community that was bought out by a company and ransacked and monetized. Its exploration felt like you were digging into secrets and burrowing further into a digital world with tangibility and history to it. But Broken Reality 2000 has no grounding or focused idea. Modern internet things limply satirized in a haphazard backtracking mess. A shadow of the original

I'm not really sure if this is better or worse than the original since I haven't played that in years. Do I have higher standards now? But man, the fetch quests are really getting to me. The humor is so bland. The puzzles (if you want to call them that) are just meaningless busywork. I'm more offended by the crypto nonsense than the booby body pillow. Somehow this game is buggier than the player character's apartment as well.

I adored the first Broken Reality game but Broken Reality 2000 feels like a shallower recreation of the original game that took an absurd amount of time to come out for the experience we got. The endings were dull, banking off having played the original while doing little to specifically address what actually happened, and the gameplay was skin-deep despite having more conceptually interesting tools to use. I wanted to love this game but the more I've mulled over how I feel the less I enjoy. Unlike the original I have no plans on replaying this game even to gather all the collectibles. I wanted something I could sink my teeth into but I got less than the original despite having more things to do and I wholeheartedly believe the volume of quests don't make up for their quality. I didn't hate it but I'm just disappointed.

Hope you like backtracking and replaying incredibly slow parts of the game when it deletes your progress even after a save