80%PlayStation 5

Pretty enjoyable sequel. In spite of the fact that this game gives you the ability to save anywhere, it's much more challenging that the first game. It also comes in handy too since the game can be unstable even on console too. The sound can randomly cut out and you have to boot the game again for it to return. My autosave got corrupted and if it weren't my other saves that I made prior, I might've had to restart a lengthy and challenging level again. I was never expecting this to be a sequel difficulty spike but it is.

Forgive Me Father 2 does walk a very fine tight rope of being challenging but fair especially in the early levels. When the game starts, there isn't an overwhelming amount of ammo and levels can be very stingy with healing items, they don't restore an overhwhelming amount of health. It can sort of enter into the realm of something like Resident Evil 4 where you aren't given an overwhelming amount of health packs and ammo and you have to make due with what you can find. There is also a Doom 3 style flashlight system too where there's dark areas and enemies can attack you while looking there. You have to to press the fashlight button to keep it charged.

There can be a fair number of cheap deaths and without saving anywhere I would've had to lower the difficulty to one of the lower settings or just drop. It's very easy to be low on hp and just get killed by a random enemy. It can be infuriating. The temptation to lower to easy was too great but every time I was going to give in there was a health pack lying around and I was able to turn the odds back to my favor. It's quite the example of early game hell.

When you unlock more powerful weapons with the tokens and get buy more cards for the dark tome, things do start to get easier especially when you find a play style that suits you. I went with a style where I was able to get back health when using dark tome and getting hit powered up my meter. There will be some random deaths from time to time due to how much one enemy projectile can take a quarter of your health. With the ability to save anywhere, I had to be careful whenever I did it to avoid an endless death loop. The different weapons you can get with the tokens does seem to give the player different play styles. I've seen some use the base revolver but I prefer the fish smg for how it tears into enemies up close.

The level design is mostly good with it being the expansive key card hunts you expect from the genre. One addition I love is that the game adds a small split screen effect found in games like Timesplitters 2 where when the player pushes a switch or kills enough enemies there will be a screen indicating what you did. It does a solid job at eliminating the guess work on what the switch activated a part of the level or what opened up.

Some of the bosses are okay a stand out being a boss that is basically a first person Sonic boss fight with guns.

The art style and animation are still fantastic especially with exaggerated blood and gore for the enemy death animations. Makes the guns just feel that much punchier. The voice acting for the main character is okay even if it feels like he's constantly speaking Frank Miller monologues.

There are some issues there is a level late game where you are in an egyptian pyramid and not only do you have to find colored keys but also activated around 25 switches. I strongly dislike level objectives like this since if you are doing it for the first time, you are bound to accidentally miss one switch. Afterwards finding the one you missed becomes searching a needle in a haystack. I got lucky when finding the ones I missed and had to look up a walkthrough on.

One major change I dislike is reloading. I'm starting to dislike the idea of reloading especially in this style of game since enemies will be relentless attacking you and I want to retaliate but then my character is stuck in a reload animation and I'm stuck until it's finally over. It can be very inconvienent when getting swarmed and attack from all sides.

The enemies that can fire laser beams from afar can be very annoying due to how far their beams can reach and can kill you in seconds. It can lead to some cheap deaths. There is an exploding barrel enemy but he's too infrequent to get annoyed by him.

Overall, FMF2 is a solid sequel to the first game. It did a good job at innovating what that game did without feeling like it was overly rethreading what that game did.

90%PC

A quality boomer shooter. A good variety of levels and environments, with a good sized collection of weapons and choice of abilities to get through them with. The music was pretty enjoyable. And the boss fights all played pretty uniquely. I think it did better than the first game in every way.

90%PC

From the Steam page, “Journey once again into a malevolent world inspired by H.P Lovecraft’s myths where madness awaits on every corner. Embark on a path to salvation as you continue the story of the Priest character from the first installment. How long can you balance on the edge of sanity? Will your sins be forgiven, or your soul consumed by madness?”

In the second game for Forgive Me Father (FMF) you follow in the footsteps of the Priest from the 1st game. The only time you see or hear a reference to the reporter is in a single photograph collectible. So we know which character is canon now, I suppose. This time you are now locked in an asylum after the events of the first game, and you experience the levels through letters that induce hallucinations, or transportation to these events and to other worldly horrors.

Nearly everything that was most enjoyable about the first game returns here: the beautiful art style, wonderful enemy design, great graphics, fun gun play, interesting lore, great soundtrack, etc.

The biggest departures are the upgrade system and the method of storytelling. The upgrade system was a high point for me in the first game, and while I don’t dislike the upgrade and perk system here in the second game, I do feel like it was a step backwards. Which feels like in an attempt to make it different and fresh for the sequel, they lost a bit of what made the first one better. Instead of choosing branching paths, where you had to choose one benefit over another, you now have a straight forward token system for the weapons, and a chaos point system to unlock perks. The perks allow you to have 3 active at any time, either passive bonuses or active bonuses/abilities when you activate your powers. While this did allow you to customize, and even experiment more than the 1st game, I do miss having several abilities at hand, which I could use for different enemies and different situations. The weapon unlock is also open and straightforward. There is a lot more variety here than the previous game, with each weapon type getting 4 different variants, but being able to unlock any variant at any time felt less earned than the previous system. Overall it’s not a bad system, by any means, I just preferred the methods of the old one. Also, I did enjoy more variations of the weapons in the first game, where a lot of the variations here felt odd. Not bad, but not for me.

For the other big change between the two, the story telling here is not told in comic book cutscenes with narration anymore. Instead the story is told through letters you receive in your cell, and through conversations between your character and this “other” self that is trying to help you. I was personally fine with both, as the story here is decent, and keeps things moving forward, but it’s not really the focus or the shining star of the game.

Level design was really well done here as well. The game definitely vibed much harder into chaos and reality bending psychosis more in this entry. The level design was intense, and quite cool to look at towards the end of the game. The levels were also much more varied than the first game, as you could basically go anywhere the letters talked about, you visited way more interesting locales than previous. I didn’t mind the more focused approach of the first game though as you dived deeper and deeper into the hell that was happening in one city.

I was a little disappointed in the ending. There is a boss you get to fight in the 1st one that felt satisfying to fight in the end, but here the final boss was a bit underwhelming, and just not as cool, or difficult. Which is odd, because I felt like fighting the horde of enemies was more difficult in this game, and the bosses easier, which is the opposite in the first game. While the constant need to find health or heal was ever present here, and kept fights engaging and difficult, I wish they’d kept the difficulty and variety in the bosses as well. A small nitpick, which doesn’t ding the overall game too much, but one I felt worth pointing out.

If you liked the first one, or the first one piqued your interest this one will satisfy as well. I was being quite nit picky in my review here, but overall this is a very good boomer shooter, and a solid follow up to the first FMF. Some of the changes weren’t to my liking, but they may be something others vibe with more. As with any review, I try to be objective, but opinion is really all this boils down to. Still, I liked it, and I think if you want a solid single player FPS you could do much worse than what’s on offer here.

9/10

90%PC

Dude, I love a boomer shooter. This one added that great Lovecraftian story element to it and set things off right with the perfect styling. If you love old school Doom and need a spooky fix, this game will give you both. Stick with it. The levels are short enough to be quick, but hard enough to be a challenge.

90%PC

jogo espetacular, a gameplay e o estilo do jogo lembra muito os Doom antigo, A trilha sonora é muito boa e exatamente igual os doom antigo esse jogo é bem viciante

80%PC

I don't understand why I was given 40 perks and 24 weapons to choose from without ever needing to do that. That's one lazy game design. Beautiful art tho. Shooting is fun.

80%PC

I thought FMF2 was really fun, great art style and music, cool weapons, encourages fast paced gameplay. It really reminds me of Quake.

90%PC

Early access, it's good.

55%PC

(Played Content Update #1, April 2024)

It's interesting how much this contrasts with many of the other Boomer Shooters that are coming out, this one is in general much slower and more methodical, it also has no dashes or similar abilities. Although they sometimes throw you in a chaotic arena with dozens of enemies as well, which feels a bit out of place given the movement options.

The game loves the gimmick of having you enter an obvious fight arena with no enemies in sight and then dropping them all around you. Or just simply having them hide behind walls to surprise you. To me it just feels a bit cheap, like the FPS equivalent of a jumpscare.

The shooting is okay, it's extremely generous with headshots, overly so in my opinion. But the hit reactions and especially some of the kill animations are great, so at least the shooting "feels" good.

The (only?) boss is awful, one of the most boring and bullet spongey bosses I've ever seen.

It's very short and unfinished at the moment though and to me it still feels like style over substance, just like the first game, but perhaps my opinion will change as they add more content.