That and plodding up and down empty hallways. Act II has nothing but a trope-filled science fiction story youвЂ™ve heard a thousand times over, filled with empty characters.Д¬hief offender is Vella, who has zero character development in Act II beyond people saying вЂњShe was right the whole time and we shouldвЂ™ve listened.вЂќ Most of her story in Act II is actually spent uncovering more information about Shay. Act I seemed like it at least had some well-trod-but-earnest ideas about adolescence. Just soulless automatons that exist to get or give items. ItвЂ™s an entire cast of robots! No feelings. That lack of meaningful character exploration was honestly the biggest problem with Act I, and if anything it gets worse in Act II. In five minutes, Shay meets more people living on a cloud city than heвЂ™s met his entire life. Shay, for that matter, lived inside the confines of that tiny ship his entire life-and yet he doesnвЂ™t bat an eye upon seeing the ocean, for instance, or an entire floating city made out of clouds. Vella lived her entire life in a semi-primitive baking society, but seems totally at ease in ShayвЂ™s electronics-ridden ship. WhatвЂ™s worse is that neither character seems perplexed by their changed circumstances. ItвЂ™s not exactly worse, per se, but itвЂ™s also not better-and this time thereвЂ™s no chance an вЂњ Act IIIвЂќ is going to fall from the sky and rectify the gameвЂ™s many, many issues. I wasnвЂ™t amazed by Act I, but I felt like it was a solid foundation for Act II to build on.ДЄct II squanders that foundation. If youвЂ™re going to arbitrarily split your game into two episodes midway through development, you could do worse than that cliffhanger. And then it dropped a hell of an ending on us, revealing that the вЂњmonsterвЂќ Vella had been battling through her whole story was actually the exterior of ShayвЂ™s ship.Д«oom. It didnвЂ™t necessarily accomplish them with aplomb-see my complaints about the characters and environments lacking depth-but it did them. Set up the locations (ShayвЂ™s babyвЂ™s-first-spaceship and VellaвЂ™s monster-threatened world), andДЄnd Act I accomplished all those things.Set up the characters (dual protagonists Shay and Vella),.But somehow Act II feels like more of a letdown. Objectively, both halves have the same issues: The puzzles are bad (even for a point-and-click adventure game), the story is contrived, and thereвЂ™s little-to-no depth to both the characters and the environments. I donвЂ™t actually think Broken Age Act II is much worse than Act I.

The problem with Broken Age Act II is that it ends. Retreading Act I right before playing Act II just throws the conclusionвЂ™s issues into starker relief. It wonвЂ™t make you appreciate Act II more. If you want a quick and dirty, spoiler-free review, IвЂ™ll tell you I donвЂ™t think Broken Age is especially worth your time.ДЄlso, for the purposes of this review I went back and replayed Act I of Broken Age, having forgotten almost everything about it in the fifteen months since I played it. Two small bookkeeping notes: This review contains spoilers for Act I.

Broken age act 2 stampy