The Crumbling Prince - Episode 2

This is a hard one for me. I really like what Ukiyo is doing from the strong storytelling narrative, to the space you’re transported into, the personalisation of the masks, I want so desperately to love it. Unfortunately, I’m just hung up on the separation of this experience as two different “parts”. After completing Part 1 I did feel a bit like we were removed from the room on a cliffhanger ending right when I was getting involved in the story. This is obviously to try and get you back to return for Part 2 but this cliffhanger isn’t really picked back up on and is instead kinda swept under the rug by utilising the Prince’s memory loss to explain why he doesn’t recognise you. It works, but not my favourite thing. The opening puzzle feels a little out of place, like taking a few steps back in the narrative and also the gameplay. I don’t love the game taking place in the same room as Part 1. It is obviously an incredibly well designed space but loses a bit of its charm on the second run. It gets a bit more exciting once you move into a new space but even this gets a bit tedious after a while I think even the story in Part 2 fell a bit flat for me as you’re tasked with finding out what happened to a specific character and instead spend almost all of the game finding out something you already know about a different character from Part 1 and then the fate of the initial character is kind of tacked on to the end. I honestly think if this game was played as a 75 minute experience all in one go I would say it’s one of the best rooms I’ve ever played. However, it currently feels like there isn’t enough real content to keep you busy for the “2 hours” total that is allocated over both parts and instead everything feels a bit unnecessarily stretched out. If it was more affordable maybe I could justify the separation but at the price point it sits at it’s not only bordering on financially inaccessible but in my opinion is not worth your while. And certainly not twice over.

Enjoyable but still preferred Episode 1. This one felt more like Episode 1a rather than Episode 2 to be honest. Apparently they have plans to create a number of Episode (5+?), but this was mentioned almost 10 years ago so I think that plan is out the window.

Rushed back after part 1, very cool follow on of the story.

After rushing back after part 1 we were not disappointed with part 2. The story was fantastic and we were fully immersed in the crumbling prince's world. Again, the puzzles were fun and interactive and we were really able to enjoy the experience as we weren't worried about a clock.