It all fits together perfectly and makes for a much more cohesive and understandable world. The character that is overcome with the need to taste everything has a bunch of tongue-related puzzles. A character that's having anger issues has a level with enemies that attack you with fire. You access each level by shrinking in the 3D world to microscopic size and entering a character's body. All the worlds with their themes are given a meaning.

You collect cards to unlock doors, but why are you collecting cards? You have a bunch of cool levels that all have a central idea, but why are you in these levels? The great thing about Anodyne 2 is that it not only improves on the gameplay ideas of the first, but also recontextualises the ideas in the first game to have it actually make sense and fit well with the story. The gameplay ideas in the first game were great, but weren't anything more than gameplay ideas. I mentioned that the sequel also incorporates the first game's 16-bit gameplay, and I feel like that's undersells it. All of this aside, the regular introduction of new ideas and mechanics kept the game fresh and had me engaged up to the end of my 6 hour playthrough. It definitely isn't perfect the story's pretty difficult to grasp leaving a lot to interpretation, the combat is fun but nothing you need to think about much. As someone who's never properly played a Zelda game, and who hasn't played a 16-bit game in a very long time, I had a surprisingly really good time with it. A self-proclaimed 'classic Zelda-lite game', you go around in this 16-bit world as you meet eccentric characters, collect cards, solve puzzles and fight enemies with your trusty broom in a dozen or so distinct levels. The first Anodyne is something I never thought I'd see myself playing. Now these games weren't released back to back, so the jump from the first game to its sequel was more gradual than an Uncharted 2 jump, so I'm also considering two games in a series, no matter how far apart the games are. So over the past week, I've been playing through two of Analgesic Productions' games, Anodyne and Anodyne 2.

Freedom planet 2 artwork