Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise Reviews

The original Deadly Premonition is a cult classic and one of the weirdest games of all time. People have been asking for a sequel for years. Deadly Premoniton 2: A Blessing in Disguise is finally out after being announced a while ago, to the joy of all us fans of one of the best “so bad it’s good” experiences of all time. It’s time to find out if this is truly a blessing in disguise, as the title implies.

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise is somehow much, much worse than the original. The game looks and feels awful, with an unacceptable framerate and PlayStation 1 level textures. While the story is great, it’s brought down by even more tedious gameplay and some harmful stereotypes.

Second times a charm, right Zach?

Fans of the original will still enjoy this outing, albeit probably not quite as much. Everyone else is best advised to stay away.

Ultimately, I had a lot of fun during my time with Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise after I was able to shut my brain off and simply go along for the janky skateboard ride through Le Carré. I found it to be charming and maybe I’m just a mark for garbage games, but I can see this having the same life as it’s predecessor if people decide to give it a shot and embrace this insane mystery.

It’s a weird game to review because so many people are going to expect drastically different things. How many games force you to shave and send your clothes up for dry cleaning? How many times can you say that you hexed an old widow so that you could go bowling in the past…oh say decade or so? Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise is another trip. You’ve been warned.

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing In Disguise is a welcoming return to its strange and absurd world, but feels diluted and missing many of the flavor notes that defined its predecessor.

Deadly Premonition 2 is a great follow up to a beloved cult classic. It has an intriguing story and eccentric quirks, but feels safer on the gameplay side of things.

Ultimately, Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise just isn’t acceptable in this day and age. There’s simply no reason why a game should perform this badly. Try as you might, it’s hard to thoroughly enjoy something that’s such a technical mess. If you’re a glutton for punishment and want to spend more time with the most bizarre protagonist in video games, go right ahead. But don’t say that you haven’t been warned. It isn’t a blessing, it’s a disappointment.

Provided you’re in the right mood, there are few things more entertaining as a truly terrible movie, TV show, or book, but the same can’t really be said about video games. You can probably count the number of worthwhile “so bad, they’re good” games on a single hand. Most of the time when a game is bad, it’s just…bad. You can’t sit back and passively immerse yourself in a game’s lousiness, you actually have to play the damn thing, which tends to ruin the fun. An exception to this rule was 2010’s Deadly Premonition, which combined off-the-wall characters and writing, some genuinely creepy atmosphere, and passably entertaining gameplay in just the right balance to become a legit cult classic.

Anyways, Deadly Premonition 2 is exactly the same. It’s a game that feels like it has never played any games released after the original. It doesn’t care about frame rate or good controls. It’s made a few changes to the overall formula but mostly casts aside the advances game design has made in the last ten years. Deadly Premonition 2 just wants to tell its story, tell it well, and be its own weird, little self. Your ability to either live with that or not will determine how deeply you fall in love with the citizens of Le Carre.

Some people think the appeal of 2010’s Deadly Premonition boiled down to “so bad it’s good,” but I don’t think that’s accurate. Back then, a lot of us unironically loved the game. It had an earnest charm, conveyed through a unique small-town setting and memorable characters like FBI special agent Francis York Morgan. Yes, it had technical issues, but fans saw past them and developed a genuine appreciation for the gameplay and story. Unfortunately, that degree of goodwill is practically impossible to extend to this sequel; much like the victim at the center of its story, Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise feels like a lifeless relic frozen in ice.   The tale is split between two main sections. The first takes place in present day Boston, where a pair of FBI agents are investigating the recent reappearance of a murder victim’s missing body. As it turns out, this young lady was the central figure of one of York’s earlier cases, which took place in Le Carré, Louisiana. The agents are appropriately skeptical of York’s involvement, and his aversion to the color red and insistence on talking to an invisible fairy don’t do much to establish his credibility. These present-day portions play like a visual novel, with a bare minimum of interaction and loads of dialogue. It’s not a great way to kick off the adventure, and the pacing and line delivery is agonizingly slow.

Deadly Premonition 2 is truly its father's son, bringing all the janky charm of its predecessor. While performance may blunder, its story and characters are thunder. Fans of the original will have a blast, but there's very little here to win over newcomers.

Serving as both a prequel and sequel to its predecessor, you take the role of the original protagonist, Agent York, and new addition, Agent Davis. Told in a non-linear manner, Deadly Premonition switches from past and present throughout the well-executed narrative. As York, you investigate the 2005 murder of Lise Clarkson, a young girl whose family have monopolised the trade industry in the small town of Le Carre. In the classic ‘whodunnit’ manner, you gradually piece together snippets of information in order to get a full picture of what happened at the crime scene.

Deadly Premonition 2 isn’t good, nor is it so bad that it’s good (like it’s predecessor). It’s something much, much worse: it’s mediocre. And that’s too bad. I’m certainly grateful for the chance to spend some more time with the eccentric and ever enthusiastic Francis York Morgan, because he remains one of the funniest and most unique lead characters in all of gaming. But I found myself less tolerant of Deadly Premonition 2’s technical issues and half-baked combat this time around, and its central mystery is ridiculous without ever going far enough off the rails to be truly surprising or memorable.