I had the pleasure of playing Distraint 2 on the Switch, and having stayed up last night to finish it, I felt it was appropriate to write a review. I’d never heard of it before, so I’m glad I picked it up.
The story begins with ‘The Death Of A Salesman’. You play Price, a man who has seemingly sold out for material gains, in the process selling others out too – mostly their homes.
He makes countless people homeless through doing his job, but in that crowd of faceless numbers, an elderly lady is a catalyst for his downfall. Price has a tremendous amount of guilt and can’t handle it anymore, so attempts to take his own life by sticking a shotgun in his mouth.
Distraint 2 Switch Review
Cue a limbo-like realm that could have been taken from a Neil Gaiman novel, with characters such as Reason, Greed, and Comfort who all play important roles in Price’s self-discovery.
I wasn’t entirely convinced of the character design at first, as they did look like potatoes in wigs. Still, the expressions on their faces capture moments of anguish and joy, and I soon forgot about the comparison.
While I’m getting this all out of my system, the dialogue irritated me for the first two minutes. Not because of how it was written (in fear of sounding like Wayne Campbell from Wayne’s World, it was also excellent), but the voiceover is gibberish – much like Lydia.
I always struggle to describe music without overly enthusiastically describing it, but it’s a very eerie ambience that I get a troublesome kick out of. It’s similar to the soundtrack in Creepy Tale. There’s this ever-looming feeling of fear and uncertainty, and I love it. If my imagination got too overwhelming, I could switch the game off, unlike in real life.
Life Off The Rails
The level of difficulty in Distraint 2 is relatively minimal as puzzles are intuitive, and backtracking comes naturally. Anything that can be fiddled with or looked at will show up on the screen, so it’s practically impossible to miss anything in the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t die or struggle with the odd puzzle.
Some puzzles, such as the classic tile sliders and rotating and resizing images to make a bigger picture, were enjoyable. Sometimes you need to input a code here and there, but it’s not the type of game you need to be taking notes.
Fortunately, the focus is on the story, and I finished it in one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed it. Without any spoilers, there were a few borderline corny moments, but when I thought about it afterwards, there were no ways of avoiding it, and in retrospect, they were handled really well.
Distraint 2 Review Summary
Guilt and self-doubt are two of the most horrible things you can endure, inflicted by you and you only. Without going down that rabbit hole, as this site isn’t trying to be clever, Distraint 2 explores these states beautifully, and it’s an apt time for me to admire the talents of Jesse Makkonen.
