Year: 2017
Platform: PlayStation 5
Genre: Puzzle
Review Date: 7/11/26
Rating: ***

Another adventure in perspective and impossible shapes as a mother teaches her daughter about sacred geometry. The game focuses on the heartbreak of motherhood, as her daughter leaves halfway through the game and she is forced to cope with the emptiness in her life and find a reason to carry on. This of course is a reflection of when she left her own mother, illustrating the endless cycle of life and death. Once Ro's story is complete, the game switches back to the nameless child and becomes a coming of age story. Eventually, mother and daughter are reunited as independent entities who must work together to solve the final series of puzzles.

It's amazing to me how much emotion can be expressed by such simple shapes, using only timing, color, and the smallest of movements. Seeing mother and daughter separated creates a real sense of peril, and watching the child sail away to find her own way is truly heartbreaking. The game is beautiful and the level design is delightful. It contains fourteen chapters and is considerably easier to play than the original "Monument Valley" (2014). It can also be completed in about two hours and there's very little replay value. One thing that doesn't make sense and isn't explained is that you have to create your own artifacts at the end of each puzzle, which is a pointless exercise in just wiggling the control stick.

Since I played this on the PS5, it has the same control issues as the original game. The cursor snaps to areas that it thinks are reasonable, and you end up spending a lot of time fighting the controls to get the cursor to move where you actually want it to go. Again, the game was designed for phones and tablets, not gaming consoles, but having a free-floating cursor would definitely improve the playability. Fortunately, there aren't as many time-based activities as the first game, so navigation is less frustrating. A short standalone adventure called "The Lost Forest" was added as a charity DLC release to promote forest conservation. Overall, MV2 is an enjoyable bite-sized distraction that doesn't require a lot of time or brain power.