Submerged: Hidden Depths

This sequel is enough of an improvement over the first Submerged that I can recommend it.

The first game suffered from boring and tedious gameplay: locations were simplistic and all pretty much the same. The amount of backtracking required for collectibles made that blandness especially glaring and annoying. But here there is much more variety and complexity, and indeed several simple environmental puzzles. Exploration is much more interesting and satisfying.

Unfortunately, there is still so much opportunity left on the table. The game is begging for deep environmental puzzles but instead they're entirely trivial. It's arguably a deliberate design choice to make a game that requires as little thought as possible, but if so this choice clashes with the thoughtful and deep world and character building. The game definitely wants you to share in the hopes and frustrations of the protagonists, but the stakes are so low that it feels more like a safe excursion than a challenge.

Third time's the charm, they say, so I'm hoping for a third game in the series to finally deliver on the promise, because there indeed is so much promise here.