CONCLUSE 2 - The Drifting Prefecture

Un juego estilo retro muy recomendable con influencias de Silent Hill, al menos en cuanto a ambientación. Podría decir que es muy fácil perderse, y eso puede llegar a ser algo tedioso, pero en general está muy bien.

I didn't like it. The atmosphere felt too oppressive all the time, with no ups and downs and that stressed me out.

Overall, this game was very intriguing, and I kept playing just to see what weird thing they could come up with next. Some aspects were a total wtf, but overall it was amusing to play. Can't wait for number 3!

This is a very interesting game worth checking out, but you will need to have a high tolerance for jank and bloat. This game is way longer than it needs to be and is exhausting to play. I think this will be more enjoyable with a walk through, cause a lot of time spent is circling an area 10 times pixel hunting for an item that blends in with the environment. This game is split into 3 parts. Part 1 is very Silent Hill 2, in that you play someone looking for their wife at a hotel. You do puzzles in a real world area, then go to the twisted world and do puzzles, then back the real world. Back and forth while being drip fed story. Sections blend together as you meander about with no clear causation to why other than I found a key, better go use it. Part 2 - The Drifting Prefecture, is the best part, its basically a 2nd game injected into the middle of another. If you only played part 2 you would get a full story. Most of my recommendation stems from this part of the game. There are lots of characters, the stakes are clear, the locations have variety. It's great. Part 3 is like Part 1, as its a direct continuation of the events of part 1. Making this game feel like 2 games stapled together. I really wish this game was shorter. I'm actually kind of mad it took me 27 hours to get an incomplete story. I'll be interested to see what happens in Concluse 3, but I really hope they focus on their strengths like the story telling and world building, and forgo the bloat of puzzles.

Didn't like the essay ramble I wrote before, here's the summary bullet points: -Game ends teasing a continuation -The game is disjointed and unpolished in every way -Surreal soppy stuff happens -Grimy horror vibes -Tedious but doable to make progress -Bugs weren't too horrible -Strategy guide covers up to the start of the drifting prefecture The whole long essay ramble: So.. Uh. First things first, the game ends teasing a continuation. This is not the conclusion. I'm okay with that. The structure in Concluse 2 is extremely loose. It's more like a slurry of mini anthologies held together very loosely with the connection to the all-significant substance that is 'concluse'. The drifting prefecture part is disctinctly different, strangely separate from the main plot. It factors in, but it's like a large scale splice-in, you couldn't even compare it to DLC. This game.. has a personality. It's unique. There were many times I felt unease and tension. The limited visibility, the jank and sense of uncertainty of progress, the constant lowering and shifting and being moved out of familiar space. Black void, rust, basements, sub-basements, sewers, factory esque spaces, little metal rooms and metal corridors tucked away where nobody alive knows. Every place Michael visits is old, taken over, or unavoidably waiting to be taken over by wretchedness. They are the homes of evil that can only be made real within a screen or a story. The horror coexists with a certain B-movie soppy action and sometimes anime-esque vibe that comes in now and then, especially in cutcenes. It's a lot of fun to behold. The game is extremely surreal, and what makes the effect lay on you thicker is that it's sincere, like, it wasn't designed to be this. It's like the game was put together like a sandcastle of dripping sand, and garbage lying around on the beach and streets. There's no cohesion but there are pieces where you can see torn stitches in the plot; connections that don't follow. Sometimes the game can be a bit crude. Its characters are 'edgy' in a way where I can't tell if the developers were serious or not. It's ridiculous. Endearing and engrossing. If the writing was traditionally 'good' I don't think the game would work as well. Personally I'm the kind of person where the meticulous formal style of writing of serious horror games like 'Signalis' etc. take me out of the horror because it's all too clearly a part of the design made to do the template to its highest quality. I don't always believe horror games are trying to be horror as much as they are trying to live up to expectations of the myth. The mess that is Concluse 2 made me appreciate the benefits of not holding accountable to the unwritten design rules of horror (or any media story). You could point out that it's bad, and what the game is I don't think was made with awareness or some sophistication from the developers, but the result for me excels in novel ways. There is horror and creepy kissing unease in a disjointed clunky mess like this. It's grossly indulgent. I hope there's a third entry (but I would like a conclusesion plz). Oh yeah, and, just thought anyone reading this who hasn't played might want to know that you can get through the game without looking up what to do next (I did fall at points out of mostly convenience but still), as the puzzles are all stuff you can work out through logic or simply interacting with everything and still trying. Usually the hardest source of difficulty is observation and thoroughness: it's easy to miss spotting something or trying some unremarkable door or barrel you didn't take the hassle to interact with. Biggest complaint is tediousness, where there is a lot of potential (samey) space to cover to search all over again for the thing you didn't interact with or notice. The first boss in my opinion is about the most obtuse it gets to figure out, but the good thing there is that there are very limited options for what you could possibly do, so you'd get it eventually (I managed fine blindly). Keep in mind there are bugs, but in my experience the worst it ever got was having to reload a nearby a save and finishing a boss using a different weapon after using a particular one seemed to cause the game to bug out into falling into endless nothingness after a cutscene transition. Also, if you are loading in to resume at the specific part where this [->] is briefly relevant, a boat near the lighthouse may go invisible as the game thinks it sank already, but you can still interact with it as though it were visible. Aside from these two things which I figured on my own in my playthrough, if I had anxiety that I wasn't able to progress because of a bug, and I strongly was convinced I had exhausted everything, I was always missing something. (45 hour playtime was in part due to walking away while leaving the game paused) (but okay I guess one might reasonably reach one of those points where you just don't see the thing, like for whatever reason you skim over it too many times, so sure look up a playthrough, sorry). Oh yeah (again), forgot, BTW the strategy guide as mentioned in store description is only up to when the drifting prefecture starts, up until then it is useful actually, so you could look at that if you get stuck.

Underrated and kinda hidden gem. I had an amazing time from start to finish. The atmosphere is incredible, deeply immersive with absolutely wild lore. Concluse 2 is truly a unique game. It’s honestly impossible to find anything quite like it. Sure, it’s a bit janky at times... there are glitches, broken animations and some other bugs but nothing that stops you from completing the game. It’s been a long time since a game pulled me in this hard, which is why I’m surprised that it remains under the radar. Some of the negative reviews feel pretty unfair, especially coming from people who didn’t even get past Chapter 1. Right after that, you get that brilliant Drifting Prefecture chapter and it will blow you away. The ideas and plot twists throughout the game can get absurd in a good, interesting way. I often found myself thinking “how did someone even come up with this?”. The sound design is superb with ambient audio doing a fantastic job. The music is just beautiful and fits perfectly. I genuinely hope we can get Concluse 3 someday. Please, let us finish what we started. I really want Michael to succeed. Thank you.

やってからしばらく経ちますが、今でも印象に残るゲームでした。 最初の１はあまり記憶に残ってないですが、この２はかなり力が入ってる様に感じます。 プレイ時間から換算すると１の6倍くらいのボリュームがあります。 ただ、画面の見づらさはあまり変わらない（目が疲れやすい）という感じです。 ３への続編今でも気になって待ってます！

De inicio eu gostei do jogo, mas depois de jogar por 7 horas e um pouco mais, e só ter terminado o primeiro capitulo eu terei que parar, não aguento mais jogar, alem de muito escuro o jogo, não conseguindo ver nenhum palmo na minha tela e muito menos os inimigos, ele esta se alongando muuuuuito, sabe, poderia ter só ficado no terror, no "silent hill", talvez algum dia eu termine, mas por enquanto não sera hoje.

i was so enthralled with Concluse as the original video series, before it became a playable game. the story was mysterious enough without telling you much that it kept you interested, and i was forgiving of the fact its "PS1" style wasn't really PS1 but just low quality assets thrown in Unity. but again, i still loved it. Concluse 2 takes what the first "video-story to game" did but *tries* to explain everything. and it makes you feel like you just smoked crack before playing the game. the story by now feels like it really is just being made up as the writer goes along, with whatever first idea comes to mind. the start was a bit odd but i went with it. then suddenly [spoiler]i'm pulled through a TV by some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ FNAF-type mascot which becomes recurring longer than it needs to be and just makes me think i'm playing some fangame[/spoiler]. on top of that, sprinkle unskippable cutscenes despite having seen them and save points in the worst spots possible, forcing you to replay the cutscenes and the entire section of the game you just barely got through (all in the same section). and on top of *that*, there's just many generally unexplained gameplay mechanics and puzzles that literally *require* you to look at a guide. like not knowing [spoiler]you can't kill an enemy yet some others you can[/spoiler] or [spoiler]having to know to use an item in some odd way to progress like having to use the fishing rod on the first boss when you have him down[/spoiler]. i really am sorry to the devs to have to leave this review, know i'm not writing it maliciously, i'm just really disappointed by this sequel. if anyone thinks this game looks interesting, go play the first game at least. or better yet, watch the original video series before it was made into a game.

replayed the game a bit and god, it's so obvious in hindsight that this game uses undisclosed AI a lot. Some images in things like the horizon cutscene are clearly generated, the plot and dialogue is extremely AI generated, some of the voices are not human. I'm kinda embarrassed I didn't notice it back then, but also it was much less rampant in 2023, it was only really starting to pick up steam. god, it explains why this game is so long winded and wastes so much time: I think they took their language model's ideas unedited. it's why so much random stuff happens or people talk weird so often. original review below: ok, I have now finally beaten the game after 28 hours and honestly, still hard to recommend, but honestly I'm just impressed by the thing. this has to be one of the jankiest games I've ever played, but I enjoyed it more than I didn't. there are puzzles that are poorly designed, there's lots of running back and forth to get keys (layer 1 of the drifting prefecture, dear lord), and there's bossfights that require you to do weird things that aren't always clear. the combat is not amazing, especially early game, a lot of puzzles are obtuse and will grind the game to a screeching halt often until near the very end (had to use the steam forums a lot to find answers until the majority of chapter 3). there's so much that's working against it, still though, so much weird stuff happens that it just draws you in and you don't know what's going to happen next. it really makes you want to get to the next cutscene and see what happens next. honestly it was worth pushing through and continuing past chapter 1, which became a slog at times. but yeah, it's still hard to play at times, it's very long, but I was entertained. so much effort was put into this, like there's so much game and videos and stuff with the extras, no clue why there's this much, it's too much.