Night School Studio's Oxenfree, released in January 2016, arrived on the market as a somewhat singular experience. Members of its development team carried over an emphasis on dialogue and choices from time spent at Telltale Games, but the game's presentation was fresh, revolving around discontented small-town youth faced with supernatural threats. Oxenfree II: Lost Signals sees Night School return to its breakout hit, walking a tightrope of recapturing a nostalgic mood while telling a new story.

The fresh angle in Oxenfree II arrives with a new set of protagonists, Riley Poverly and Jacob Summers, both of whom are close to double the teenage years of the first game's characters. Their anxieties are those of lost adults, wrestling to push past trauma and inertia and wondering if they'll ever make a mark. Probing into these perspectives is the heart of the game, even if the supernatural element is what drives the narrative forward. Oxenfree II finds new ground in both areas while refining the gameplay of its predecessor, although it struggles to hit some of the same high notes without invoking a sense of retreading.

Walking & Talking Feels Better Than Before

Players will spend most of their time in Oxenfree II walking around the town of Camena and chatting, activities that mimic the first game's experience but smooth out its rough edges. Traversal feels much more fluid this time around, thanks in no small part to detailed animations that breathe more life into the movement of characters. While following a path in the original Oxenfree could occasionally feel like a chore, re-tracing steps in the sequel is largely painless. The gorgeous environmental artwork and thoughtful lighting are consistently a pleasure to take in, and small details of clutter bring particular life to interiors.

Complaints about chatting have been addressed with equal care. Speech bubbles hang around for longer this time, minimizing awkward interruptions and letting players stew on their choices. Less frequent group conversations contribute to this same purpose, albeit with a bigger trade-off. Most conversations carry seamlessly between areas, minimizing the experience of awkwardly hanging around to make sure no dialogue gets cut. Fiddling with a radio isn't quite as omnipresent, with a walkie talkie offering a new way to uncover some of the story's edges.

A New Story Isn't Entirely New

Transitioning to adult characters is the big leap of Oxenfree II's narrative, and it portrays its new protagonists with empathy and complexity. The dynamic between Riley and Jacob is rendered similarly to the relationship between Alex and Jonas that underpins the preceding game, but the added years of life experience underline perspectives that have had time to grow deeper tendrils and subtler resentments. Teenage characters do appear on the sidelines of the game, seen now through an adult lens that frames the follies of youth in an entirely different light.

Riley and Jacob may ultimately transcend any similarities to their predecessors, but other elements of Oxenfree II can be inconsistent in their quests to find new life. The supernatural element recontextualizes its involvement with a key reveal, roars to life in a couple of inventive setpieces, and builds to a choice with heartbreaking implications, but none of these interesting twists can quite overcome an obligatory sense to its presence that verges on repetition. New players may not quite appreciate the implications of the ghostly presence's major alteration, while fans of the first game could find its other aspects too familiar.

Emotional Tensions Are The Narrative Key

With the core concept of Oxenfree's mystery already answered, Oxenfree II takes a different approach to pacing. Major supernatural happenings key in faster, while character explorations take a bit longer to get off the ground. The in medias res approach of Alex's story is minimized in Riley's, with relationships formed throughout the game rather than existing beforehand. A decrease in the central cast from five to two keeps the focus on the evolution of the central dynamic, with a wider host of side characters filling in the gaps along the way. The absence of a quasi-friend group does, unfortunately, lose some of the first game's most acute tensions.

Oxenfree II manages to find its own pressure points, forcing Riley to moments of self-reckoning more jagged than the moral choices offered to Alex. Some elements of her story aren't particularly new, but familiarity is where players will create connections with her and Jacob alike. The highlights are often in either the smallest or biggest moments, when a quiet revelation occurs between characters or when the world is tipping upside down. Replays can open up slight alterations and the potential for new results, a technique employed in the first game that might go down more smoothly with Oxenfree II's gameplay tweaks.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is an undeniably interesting experience limited in minor regards by the challenge of following up on its predecessor. Subtly evolved walk-and-talk gameplay and eminently human characters largely make up for the more familiar moments in the central mystery, drawing players through the story with minimal friction. Fans of the first title or of story-focused games in general can find plenty to chew on here, and the artwork alone could make the experience engaging even with a less interesting narrative. Oxenfree II may not always be operating at its highest potential, but when it is, there's still nothing quite like it.

Source: Netflix/YouTube

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals releases July 12, 2023 for PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices. Screen Rant was provided with a PC download code for the purpose of this review.