Broken Age: Act 2 Reviews
It feels rushed, uncreative and so lacking in the passion that made the first act great.
Maddening puzzles, recycled assets, and a lack of anything interesting to say makes Broken Age's second act a profound disappointment.
Beautiful in its aesthetics, smart in its user-interface, yet ultimately lacking in almost every other key area, Broken Age: Act 2 is mightily disappointing on its own. Since it comes as a free update to those that already laid money down for Act 1, thankfully no money will feel like it has been wasted. Anyone picking up the full package on a non-PC format, though, might feel a touch more down and bitter, since the second half is not a patch on the first part and the cost outlay will be fresher in their minds.
Let us try to imagine a world where crowdfunding somehow still exists 20 years from now. Perhaps then, we will all be invited to pay for a return to the halcyon days of Broken Age. We would probably do it. There would certainly be precedent.
In the end, it's the surface details - the dry and gentle wit, the winsome voice acting, and the gorgeous design - that lash it all together. The deeper elements, the bones that might give it structural strength, feel thin. Broken Age doesn't quite suffer the fate implied by its title, but there are clearly fractures that time has failed to heal.
I had hoped that Act 2 would be the addressing of Act 1's shortcomings, and deliver on its strengths, what had seemed so heartfelt and novel. Instead it's an incredibly pretty, superbly voice acted, crap adventure game.
Ultimately, there's more meat on the second act's puzzle bones, especially due to a memorable final-blast puzzle, and while the game's ending was more of a whimper than a bang—and it included some cockamamie ways to tie up the plot's loose ends—I appreciated the restraint on the writers' part to not force melodrama or melancholy on what eventually transpired. This game is the story of two young people who face the ups and downs of throwing off the shackles of youth—and it's also about their family and loved ones being there the whole way through.