It’s been a hot minute since I’ve had a review experience as frustratingly up and down as I had with Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School. On the one hand, this is a solid sequel that takes a lot of what I loved about the original Escape Academy and expands on it wonderfully. On the other, my entire playthrough was marred by constant technical issues and exhausting navigation, compounded by woeful performance.
One of this game’s defining upgrades is the move to a freely-explorable Escape Academy campus – the original used a simple map menu for getting around. This brings with it a ton of fun new opportunities between the campaign’s core escape missions, like hidden collectibles and side quests, as well as a better overall sense of place where the school feels larger and more tangible. It’s unfortunate that getting around campus is a nightmare thanks to frequent, lengthy and unavoidable hitches where the game slows to a crawl or stops entirely as you explore. Coupled with the baffling decision to bind sprinting to a left stick press and hold with no “toggle” option, and my desire to wander campus any longer than was required faded pretty quickly.
The main event puzzles, the incidental ones that drive Escape Academy 2’s story of missing students and mysterious legends as well as the proper timed escape room-style sections, are at least all varied and fun – if a little lacking in challenge. There are some infrequent but satisfying “Aha!” moments to be had, and some interesting twists on structure and theming that work really well. A few are almost undone by their own technical issues, though, like a colour-based puzzle that I had to brute force because the level lighting completely obscured the colours being displayed. Other times I encountered getting stuck in the environment or finicky positioning making things harder than they needed to be.
It’s heartbreaking, because there’s a great story-based escape room sequel here that I had a lot of fun with when it was working as intended. But in the state that I experienced it, this one just isn’t ready for new challengers just yet. I sincerely hope that launch and later updates can turn it around.
Reviewed on PS5 | Review copy supplied by publisher
Great
- A fully explorable campus stuffed with secrets and conundrums
- New escape rooms and incidental puzzles are generally great
- Significantly more and better writing with fun humour
Not great
- Intrusive performance issues ruin the whole experience
- Some solutions obscured by bad visual design
- Sprinting is essential but can't be toggled on and off
Born into the world of video games through SEGA, and in particular Sonic the Hedgehog, Kieron’s gaming tastes now consist of the latest, shiny AAA thing, an indie darling or two, and an embarrassing number of hours of Balatro.