Having just finished my play-through of this over on Youtube (link below for anyone who wants to see a sample of gameplay before buying), I'd say I did enjoy Sylvio 2 overall - yet in certain respects I also have ambivalent feelings towards certain design choices. Brace yourselves - big review incoming, as I felt like I need to do this justice (partly because, for all its flaws, I really did enjoy the Sylvio games on the whole).
In terms of its storyline, Sylvio 2 picks up where the original Sylvio left off. Our protagonist, Juliette Waters, wakes up in a strange, buried building. After finding some new ghost-recording equipment and locating an exit to the surface, she finds herself in a Saginaw Park that is now strangely little more than a foggy lake interspersed with the occasional featureless island of peculiar, sludge-like terrain. There she finds a boat, where she is contacted by one Captain Walter, who warns her that a storm is approaching and she needs to find her way to a lighthouse isle. Cue the rest of the game, where Juliette travels island to island, finding buried homes and buildings haunted by lingering spirits and uncovering their stories as she searches for her destination. This does mean that the majority of the game is spent exploring buried interiors, unlike the first game which had a more open environment. I didn't mind this personally, though some may find it a bit underwhelming (especially thanks to changes to certain gameplay mechanics, which I'll come to in due course).
I'd say it probably helps if you've played the original Sylvio before taking a look at the sequel, especially since Sylvio 2's ending is rather... unexpected, I guess? It certainly felt like it came a little out of left field, even as someone who played the original and had managed to put together a basic understanding of it's somewhat unconventionally-delivered story and lore. So I imagine for someone who hasn't played the first game then Sylvio 2's ending would be all kinds of bizarre!
Turning to the game itself, on the one hand, Sylvio 2 does have some neat aspects to it. The graphics are definitely a step up from the original, and as always the music and sound design is handled well. On top of that, the game does have a good, eerie atmosphere and some unsettling moments, partly thanks to the implementation of some additions to the EVP mechanics of the original Sylvio. In the original game, all you had was a microphone and tape reel player to record the sound of ghosts and unscramble their dialogue - but in Sylvio 2, apart from a microphone for recording odd snippets of ghostly voices, you also now have a camera capable of taking video recordings.
The basic audio recording mechanic has definitely been improved in that upon recording some ghostly noise, you are then presented with a readout of the sound oscillations, which makes identifying and deciphering spectral voices smoother. But above all, the video recording mechanic is probably Sylvio 2's standout addition, as it really lends itself to the creepiness when you take a recording, play it back and see some ghoulish silhouette looming in the background of the footage. Good stuff!
However, if you've played the original Sylvio then you will definitely notice that Sylvio 2 strips away quite a few of its predecessor's features. Remember the car you could drive around? Instead, you now have the boat, which you can only control by inputting coordinates to get it to take you to specific locations. Remember the seance mechanic? That's gone. Remember how you could sometimes find tape reels lying about in the environment that reveal background lore? That's not the case anymore. Remember how sometimes you could find documents on bookshelves that would provide extra little clues about the setting? That's no longer a thing. Remember the (admittedly slightly janky) improvised gun that you could use to defend yourself from hostile entities? Yep, you guessed it - both of those are now gone as well, so there's no threat you have to worry about in Sylvio 2.
On the one hand, I can understand why the dev might have chosen to dispense with certain mechanics from the original for Sylvio 2 - like I said, the gun and the hostile entities could be a bit janky, for example. Yet to be honest, at the same time I do kind of miss some of these things a bit. Remember when I said some players might be a bit underwhelmed by the fact that most of the game takes place in buried interiors rather than an open, outdoor environment like in the original Sylvio? Well, that's because something else that Sylvio 2 does is use icons to mark out every ghostly voice you can record and every object you can interact with. This is in contrast to the first Sylvio, where only essential stuff was way-pointed on your UI - for non-essential stuff, you had to explore and find it yourself by using Juliette's microphone and looking out for certain visual indicators. For some players, this change might feel it makes things a bit too easy.
So, in short: Sylvio 2 adds some new and/or improved features, whilst also stripping out some of its predecessor's features in a way that might not be to every player's taste. However, given that I do still find the underlying concept of the Sylvio games quite fascinating, and I did still enjoy Sylvio 2's atmosphere and creepy moments overall, I would nonetheless still recommend this game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWk3HqMOezM&list=PL05Yc3_TEBpPRnZoc_aASMaMOXFS7Pcxe
