Psychonauts 2 is What Sequels Should Be

Last week I reviewed the original Psychonauts, a game with a good base but that had so much wrong with it. Today I review the sequel, Psychonauts 2. It came out in 2021 after 5-6 years in development and after it's developer Double Fine was bought by Microsoft. It originally had a crowdfunding Fig campaign at the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016, which is the first ever introduction I had to the world and look of Psychonauts. I tried to play it back then but fell off of it for some reason I don't remember and never finished it, that is until now.

The game has a lot to live up to, as all sequels that come out over a decade after the prior game do. Well does it stick the landing? Does it fix all of the myriad of problems the first game had? Or does it collapse under the weight of 16 years worth of expectations? Well... The first one. It sticks the landing in every single damn way and I am so damn glad I played it.

The Premise

After the conclusion of Psychonauts 1 where you are off to save the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, the team saves him from Doctor Loboto and 2 starts with you inside of his brain trying to figure out who hired him to kidnap the Grand Head. This proves only sort of helpful because of Raz seeing someone hire him and then getting this grand view of the games big bad, Maligula. Sasha then talks about a cult that follows her despite her having been killed by For Crueller himself. After this short exposition the jet finally lands at the main area of the game, Psychonauts Headquarters. Raz now has to both become respected as a new intern, reconcile with the family he ran away from, learn some new powers, and track down exactly who this Maligula is and what she did that was so bad.

The Good

As I played Psychonauts 2 I kept thinking back to my problems with the original and realizing that all of them were fixed here. Too floaty jumping? Fixed. Horrible camera? Fixed. Annoyed upgrade system? Fixed. Locking you out of progression if you don't have enough rank or arrowheads to buy an object? Never. The problems are just genuinely all fixed, it's amazing how much progress they made and how waiting 16 years for a sequel (and getting that Microsoft money) can really benefit a game feeling good to....well...play.

There's of course so many more positives to the game besides just fixing the problems with the first game. For instance, the world is so much larger here than in the first. I don't even mean map wise, although that is true. I mean that we see so much more of it, we see a casino, the Psychonauts headquarters, different moments in Psychonauts history, and a decent amount more. The world feels like a fleshed out planet filled with countries and people as opposed to what the first one was, a camp existing in a hollow world with a good base.

The game also progresses gameplay wise in a way that I wasn't expecting, specifically the powers really helped enhance the game as opposed to just being a part of the game like in the first. For instance, there's a power called Mental Connection where you can see a thought in the air when you're inside someone's brain and then, after pressing the appropriate button, get sucked up into the thought. Then you can shoot from there to points you get to see in the air and go from one to the other until you get to another thought. This all leaves a trail behind you allowing you to literally connect thoughts together and make the persons brain you're in form a specific thought and then speak that thought inside their head for you to hear.

As an example, in the first brain you go into where you're able to do that, Hollis Forsythe's, you have a bunch of possible thoughts to connect together in your brain. One connection gets Hollis, the literal Second Head of the Psychonauts, to get angry about how disgusting socks with sandals is. But best of all, you can basically reverse that and get her to talk about how sensible it is. It's things like this that really show how powers of the game aren't just useful for gameplay but also for comedy and story. Specifically, the reason you're in Hollis' head is to connect thoughts together to be willing to bring the interns to a mission at the Lady Luctopus Casino. She's reluctant to do it because she thinks it's dangerous but you're there to connect some thoughts to get her willing to bring the interns along.

Unfortunately, as you discover when you get to the casino, this messing around kinda breaks her brain causing her to go into a gambling mindset believing she can win a bunch of money and fix the Psychonauts money troubles. You then have to go back into her mind and fix the mess you made. There are several moments like this where powers actually serve the story as opposed to just being there and it's genuinely one of the most intriguing and satisfying part of the game.

Expanding on that, the powers are further developed by a new mod system that allows you to add different effects onto them and introduce other effects in general. Things like making your levitation ball do a shockwave when you press a button to crash down while in the air, or using mental connection to anchor enemies in place, become a Glass Cannon where you deal more damage but also take more, increasing the area of effect of your Time Bubble, or even using Telekinesis to pet animals. These are all applied through a pin system where you buy the pins at a store (video below) and equip them, although you can only equip 3 at once. It's this really interesting way of developing not just the newer powers but the older ones that were around in the first game too. It provides the depth you'd want in powers and all without removing any in order to feel like you're "starting fresh" like so many sequels do.

There's also truly wonderful accessibility settings. Specifically three that matter the most to me, getting rid of fall damage, making Raz invincible (could make the fall damage irrelevant but if you still want to be able to take damage but don't want to die because of missing a jump, you can) and increasing the damage he does against enemies. These three are game defining. I covered in my Why I Cheat in Singleplayer Videogames article but I'll quickly say here that I fucking hate when I have to use a cheat client to be able to have fun with my game. I want to play it how I want to play it and I will do what I can to play it like that even if that means whipping out WeMod and doing some good ol' fashioned cheating. But Psychonauts 2 doesn't need that, because it lets me cheat as an accessibility setting. It lets me just experience a game I want to experience as opposed to shoving me into a game that just shows that I am not that good at games and get overly tired with games that enforce more strict rules and annoying grinding.

The characters and story have even more depth this time with us finding out even more about the history behind the Psychonauts and the people that lead it. We see so many new areas that provide depth to the world and characters that help show the history of it. We learn more about Raz's family, about the country they came from, Grulovia, about their psychic past, about the curse. We learn more about everything and the wonderful experience of learning about the world, of seeing the quirky strangeness further develop from the first one, is unmatched.

The level design is also fucking top level. Specifically, there's a level where you go inside of the mind of a brain you stuck in good old Nick Johnsmith, the guy from the mail room who for some reason is introduced without a brain. When you go in there you learn about this random brain and end up in a very trippy, very psychedelic world. It reminded me very mildly of the, currently only, time I took mushrooms that was a very low dose and colors were very vibrant and came out unexpectedly from the darkness. That colors coming out unexpectedly is literally the start of this level. It has that same feeling of not knowing what's happening and being intrigued and confused. But that's just the artistic design, something we know is already amazing based on the first one. I'm supposed to be talking about the level design. This level is truly something to behold. You go between sections in a hippy van from a top down zoomed out map perspective to discover this random brains lost band-mates. While there you happen to go into their brains in order to help them find their instruments so they can come help put on a show with the rest of the band. You get a time slowing power here that allows you to jump on things as they move quickly past, or jump on something that was spinning, or stop a fast fan blade from killing you so you can get by. It's another power that's serving the narrative but it's also just as trippy as the level (effects are basically like the first image in this review with the variety of colors and then looking like they're painted). This is but one example of the amazing levels that exist inside Psychonauts 2, each with a different theme and design from the last and each with just as much fun packed in. It's truly the most varied and unique and just all around fucking weird level design that I have ever played and I adored it.

The humor is also exactly what you want from this kind of game. It knows when it needs to be serious, it knows when it can crack a joke, and it knows when it can make you just want to laugh a bunch. It is filled with small jokes that are purposefully and successfully delivered with a very flat affect. One of my favorite moments of humor is with one of the interns simply trying to make pancakes and not really knowing what ingredients to use so she relied on her animal companions, that she can talk to, to help her. She then asks them, after assembling all the ingredients, if they all washed their hands. To which all these different animals just stare at her, from our perspective, as if she's absolutely insane since some of them have hoofs. There's so much more humor in the game, Raz has a particularly funny and genuine family that I would not have expected after playing the first one. Just, so much fantastic writing that it just makes me want to know more and more about the characters.

One of the core messages of the game that we see time and time again is that we all make mistakes. That we all have a dark side, a side that we just have to learn to control. This is one of the best communicated messages I've seen in videogames. Even what I mentioned above, how Raz kinda broke Hollis' brain, he eventually fixes it and in doing so realizes that the only reason Hollis is a Psychonaut at all is because she messed with someones mind, as payback for them betraying her, to the point of driving them insane. She made a mistake and the only reason she wasn't locked up was because the Psychonauts found her and trained her and helped her learn from her mistakes. This too happens with Raz where he learns that messing with people's minds is not okay, that it's okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them and train ourselves to hold back on our worst impulses. This gets echoed even further with the main villain but that's for a different section. Raz is every person as they grow up and represents anyone who hasn't processed that they can make mistakes, that it's okay to fuck up sometimes, that sometimes all you need to do is be genuinely sorry and work to do better.

The Bad

With all of the problems from the first game fixed it would make sense that the game would then introduce so many more problems alongside it right? There must have been some moments where I got frustrated or where I thought to myself "okay this is kinda bad", right? Well.... no. The only real problem with the game is that there isn't more of it. I genuinely wanted to keep playing it but when it finished I just got sad that there wasn't anything more to discover. I want more of it, that's the problem. Double Fine essentially perfected the formula enough that I am simply itching to play more. Give me Psychonauts 3 because this world is ripe for more story!

The Ending - Detailed

**Start Spoilers**

The last real section starts with learning that Raz's dear old Nona is actually the big bad you've heard about the entire game, Maligula, and that she was a part of the founding Psychonauts, the psychic 6 but actually psychic 7. That she murdered Raz's actually grandma, and Ford locked away her Maligula side. He then hid her with her family, which also happens to be Raz’s. Turns out she's his great Aunt, not grandma.

You have to go into her mind to fight Maligula and suppress her permanently by digging a hole in Nona's psyche so deep that she won't be able to ever escape. After going into the minds of the rest of the psychic 6 to fix them up and get them in performing shape, you also discover that the guy you saved in that VR game that few played, the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, isn't actually him. Or at least that his brain isn't. His brain is the brain from the one person that didn't at all seem to have the most generic name ever, Nick Johnsmith from the mail room. Turns out he is the Gzesarevich Gristol Malik, heir to the Grulovia Gzar throne. He blames Ford for the downfall of his country and is trying to bring back Maligula to seize his throne and bring the best days of his country under his gold boot.

He gets taken care of and you jump into Maligula’s brain for the last fight, one that has each of the interns play an important and decisive role. Once complete, Maligula gets buried in the depths of Nona's mind and the world is saved. Nona is back to her old self, Lucrecia Mux, the Grand Head of the Psychonauts gets his brain back and the interns all get promoted to official Junior Psychonaut Agents! Credits.

**End Spoilers**

The Ending - Thoughts

The game ends wonderfully, it ties up basically all lose ends (one small thread is left open post-credits just in case), it has big reveals, wonderful set pieces, character development and involvement that you don't expect, and it's got a heartwarming conclusion. It's truly exactly what I wanted out of the game and sticking the landing so well is not what I expected. Truly it seems that waiting 16 years for the game ended up allowing the devs time to really figure out what direction the story was going and also for the tech in the industry to advance enough that the game doesn't feel held back but the standards of the time. It's an amazing end to an amazing game.

The Conclusion

Psychonauts 2 is exactly what sequels are supposed to be. They're supposed to take what worked in the original, develop that, and drop what wasn't even close to working in the original. But more than that, it has to further develop the world and expand what it means to be a game of that series. Psychonauts 2 does this in so many damn ways it truly was stunning to experience in all its glory. I don't understand why I didn't originally finish it back when it came out because it genuinely is one of my favorite games I've played in the last couple of years, it's just that good.

If you are one of the many people who adore the charm and whimsy of the first game, who like a game that doesn't adhere to the idea of violence for the sake of violence, who enjoys when a game delves into more complex and interesting topics, who loves to experience a world with wonderful depth and interesting characters then Psychonauts 2 is for you. You should play it, it's frequently on sale (currently as of the day this was published it's 11.99 USD on Steam but that's ending when the summer sale comes to a close tomorrow), and it's easily one of the best and unique games of the past few years. It's not super long, although you can get a lot more of time out of it than I did (about 12 hours without doing even close to everything), and is all around a great time investment for how much damn fun you'll get out of it. Play it and enjoy the weird whimsical strange mental health based world that is Psychonauts 2.

Meow,

Cat

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