While I considered the original Thea to be more of a middling hybrid deckbuilder and strategy game (though with a fair amount of story to go with it as a plus), hearing that it had a sequel coming I had hoped things would turn around. Unfortunately, for me it feels like if anything the developers doubled down on the pretty oppressive complexity, trying to stuff even more ideas into the game, rather than taking a step back to create something a bit more smooth. If you’re a fan of having many areas to try to focus on in parallel, perhaps reducing the level of rote repetition, this may be just fine for you. However, the crippling blow really comes with the game’s awkward and cumbersome console controls mixed with an abundance of screens for you to trudge through and wrap your head around. The result ends up being a bit of a plodding bore with a combat interface in particular that never really clicks and certainly lacks even an ounce of excitement. If you have any interest I’d be inclined to start with the original and see how that goes before taking this one on.