The Escapists 2

“Furthermore, the graphics and overall presentation of the game are lackluster at best. The pixelated art style feels outdated and uninspired, and the soundtrack is forgettable at best.”

“The graphics are worse, the controls are really confusing and complicated (I regularly found myself beating up people instead of talking to them because I couldn't remember which button did what), and it's overall less fun and more complex.”

“Ugly graphics as well, terrible soundtrack (far too loud as well) and I will never buy a product from this team of devs. What an awful experience, truly.”

“The bed at the end of the day is great, you sleep and time speeds up until morning... unless you have a bed dummy in your bed which the game tells you to do on the first mission, you can't remove it at night, and you can't sleep because it's in the way (found this out online), so now you have to wait like 6-10 real-life minutes doing nothing locked in your cell. It's so bad, it's amazing how this passed any kind of tester or quality control check when making the game, especially now years later after its release and all this DLC. Bro, fix the first mission. This game was made in 2017 and yet I can’t complete many quests because they are bugged.”

“It's purely just a case of repeating the same fetch quests over and over again - just a slog of collect this, do your job, collect that, maybe purchase something once in a while with the money you've earned from your collection based job or one of the 3 repeating quests inmates give you. The game is so barebones, so fetch quest focused, so immensely void of any character, that you'd be surprised it wasn't made by Ubisoft. As for the story, aside from the tutorial level, there’s not much here. There’s just random incidents and quests that don’t tie together. You’re telling your own story about how you break out of prison, but realize it’s heavily put on your head to do any storytelling and there is none provided by The Escapists 2.”

“Just tried to start, and wasn't able to force myself to go past the first missions. Maybe the storyline? The quest with Robinson keeps restarting every time I get beaten up (which is random and often) or I simply put my shovel in a container (so the guards can't take the items once they've knocked you unconscious). I have to restart the quest from the very beginning. The favors you get from prisoners are a mess; for example, you'll get a mission called 'beat a bully' and you have to retrieve 3 different items. I would love this game if it wasn't for the fact that the only way you can get an item required for an escape (i.e. a piece of string in HMS Offshore) is by a rare quest that usually takes hours of grinding just to get.”

“Unfortunately, as the prisons start to get more difficult, the game quickly goes from being a fun hunt for ways to escape to a grindy slog, as you're suddenly faced with tighter security and more restrictions to move illegal items around.”

“Unlocking new items and abilities requires grinding through repetitive tasks and objectives, with little sense of accomplishment or satisfaction upon completion.”

“The lack of variation leads to a repetitive and tedious experience, where players are constantly looking for the same items to craft keys, shovels, pickaxes, and other tools necessary to escape.”

“The game suffers from frequent bugs, glitches, and performance issues, ranging from minor annoyances to game-breaking problems.”

“The game feels embarrassingly incomplete, with constant glitches that only waste more of your time.”

“It is unacceptably buggy, crashes constantly, and is near impossible to play in multiplayer because character stats do not get saved.”

“The music is one track per prison, so it can get on your nerves, but in the end, so many things just added up to me not enjoying this like I'd hoped.”

“Ugly graphics as well, terrible soundtrack (far too loud as well) and I will never buy a product from this team of devs. What an awful experience, truly.”

“The multiplayer mod in The Escapists 2 is very buggy, the prisons are really easy and the music is really bad.”

“The remaining escapes rely on scripted events that reduce the entire experience to standing in the right spot with the right items and instantly winning, killing replay value.”

“Fun but all prisons are basically the same, so not much replayability.”

“Low replay value if you don't download more prisons from Steam Workshop.”

“The game suffers from frequent bugs, glitches, and performance issues, ranging from minor annoyances to game-breaking problems.”

“Still has widespread stuttering problems on my PC with a 2080 and good CPU as well as on my friends' computers.”

“It's a game behind the times, from the way it plays to its awkward design choices, and its weak performance and optimization on consoles is further cause for frustration.”

“But the atmosphere and world building of the first game and its prisons feel better; this game is more friendly to new players.”

“I also feel like the lack of detail on inmates' criminal history and time spent/time remaining kind of takes away from the prison atmosphere.”

“Part 2 has a slightly different atmosphere; it was necessary to keep the original graphics and pixels and only update the animations, as the changes did not improve the game's atmosphere.”

“Complete cash grab.”

“It also seemed like a cash grab on the franchise, and if only the developers cared about the actual game at least a little bit more, and not just the money.”

“After first Escapists and all those advertisements, I thought that the sequel would be a game far greater than its predecessor.”