Beholder 2

Having never heard of, let alone played, any of the other Beholder games, I came into Beholder 2 completely blind. I saw it on sale for cheap, read the description, and decided to give it a try without looking up what it is or how it plays. I can say that games like this make wish Steam had a “meh” button. First, the pros: the game’s story is okay, the artstyle is unique, and that’s about it off the top of my head. Second, the cons: everything else. The store page advertises this game as a tale of espionage and subterfuge, where you can make choices about who to betray and when, with the world being your oyster and you deciding how to advance your career in The Ministry. The truth is, this game is just a story on rails, with none of your decisions leading up to the ending having any impact. The only true impact you have is picking the ending. Not picking the ending as in “the culmination of your choices have led you to this result”, but quite literally “here’s a list of endings, choose one based on how many codes you collected”. The game starts out promising, telling you to trust no one and look out only for yourself, but you are then forced into trusting certain character to progress the story. I’m not going to spoil the story for anyone, but it starts off engaging but doesn’t follow through with it. The time mechanic is just stupid and makes zero sense as a resource. Having to constantly walk from the entrance to your apartment is annoying too, especially since you can only get more time by going to sleep, and keeping up your job to avoid being evicted (results in game over) eats away at your time resource. My last gripe is that the game just generally feels unpolished. There are soft-locks that can happen late in the game that can necessitate restarting from scratch, and they’ve been around for years with no update. There are spelling errors out the ass in dialogue that is not meant to be spelled incorrectly. There’s more but I just don’t feel like covering it right now. Overall, the game was tolerable enough for me to blitz through it, but I regret wasting my time and would caution you to give this one a pass.

I do think the main story is interesting with alot of different options but the gameplay just ruined it for me. The beginning was confusing and felt like I was just thrown in and after I got the hang of it I got quite bored of the mechanics early on. I understand its a different story from the first Beholder but I was really hoping for something similar considering how well received the first game was

Tasks get repetitive, redundant and would be replaced by AI right now, slow walking and poor explanation of the game mechanics. I don't want to play a game that is basically like getting a job and dealing with internal politics.

It took me a while to get the hang of things, but once I did, I started having a lot of fun with this. I adore the first game and the second certainly lives up to reputation. 10/10.

You have to be interested in the mystery and the setting. Looking at some of the reviews it got hit for not being like the first one, which is fair, and also for some other things like: the mini games being obscure in their mechanics (which is definitely true after the first floor), and there being a lot of running back and forth, which is also true. I think it's a fun little story game with some resource management, and there's a number of decisions you can make that feel rewarding. In regards to the mini games: [spoiler]The first game is about issuing forms. This is straight forward enough but sometimes a person will come with information and it will tell you it was actually a request form they needed. This can be frustrating. Stupidly, or perhaps not stupidly, I did not realize you could stamp the form multiple times in the second game. Which is what you're doing. It looked like it was glitched. For example: asking for all complaint forms to labor to be archived and approved. But you can apply both stamps. The third game is possibly the worst, with the worst rewards, but you don't need a lot of money by this point. To try to make it simple/clarify it, you're taking blank slate clones, picking a job out of 4 for them, applying stats to them to try and get them close to the base needed, and the number of bulbs that pop up indicates how good the clone is. You only need 3 bulbs for a successful clone, which is easy to get. My trick at this point was to just apply the first or first two stat selections and then cycle through the jobs to see what the maximum amount of bulbs I could get was. As long as it was 3 I would approve it. Money wasn't much of an issue and I mostly just needed the authority. Hope that helps. [/spoiler]

Beholder 2 isn't a bad game, but I recommend it with reservations. If you're a fan of the first game then you're probably going to feel disappointed. Beholder 2 is much more grindy than Beholder and some of the work tasks were off putting for me. Gone is the sense of urgency that the first game had. There are no time based tasks and you can advance as many days as you would like. A task doesn't go away until it's either completed or failed. Beholder 2 feels more like a really long fetch quest to me. The story isn't bad and there are several moments that throw back to the first game. While Beholder 2 has some charm to it, I can't imagine that I'd ever revisit it. Beholder 2 introduces some new dynamics to the series but overall, it is a let down when compared to the first game. Beholder 2 is a 3/5 for me.

It's a great game. The plot is awesome and the ethical dilemmas you will go through are just peak. I will definitely play it again asap!!

Not as good as the first one but I like to plant evidence in my co-worker's desks and see them executed

One of the best games i ever played. 100% recommended

This gives a whole new meaning to screwing over your colleagues

Well do the best thing for Emma Hazer (she deserve it)

I'm Holding the Be for the second time

𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: ★★★★★ (𝟏𝟎/𝟏𝟎)

I will not forget the party scene

1984