(I Want to) Burn You (Down), Let's Play Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer! (Blind)

[Cullen]

Hey, Soothsayer, listen up: don't know who I am. Oh my friend, what if you were right? Don't want to be that man.

The Game (of Luv)

Kathy Rain 2 is, naturally, the sequel to Kathy Rain: A Detective is Born (or Kathy Rain: Director's Cut as I played it). I had just recently concluded an LP of the first game, and while I wasn't overly impressed with the ending, I was pleasantly engaged with the mystery and the general atmosphere of the game, so I figured I'd roll into the sequel soon after I had finished the original. Shout outs to Steam sales for easing the pain on my wallet. Like the previous game, Kathy Rain is a point 'n click adventure game highly influenced by the VGA era of the genre and particularly by games like Gabriel Knight and Full Throttle. If a murder mystery with those influences sounds like a good time to you, I hope you'll ride with me.

The Let's Play (of Luv)

Like the previous game, this will be a blind first playthrough of the game with my organic first impression of everything and a concentrated effort to get immersed in the story and mystery. Should I find myself getting hung up on any puzzles, I'll be sure to cut out the parts where my brain is buffering and smoke is pouring out of my ears. I'll do my best to thoroughly investigate everything and scoop up as many achievements as I can, but we can always double back after the first successful playthrough for anything I missed.

Disclaimer of Luv

Kathy Rain 2 is a high stakes murder mystery where the twists and turns are the big draw for a new player, So absolutely no spoilers!!! If I catch you spoiling anything, bad luck and extreme misfortune will haunt your pathetic soul for all eternity, while I'll be over here crying. Shame on you, hypothetical spoiler!

The Videos (of Luv)

Part 1, (Tequila) Sunrise
Part 2, Dreaming (of Things to Come)
Part 3, (Zen) Meditation
Part 4, (Scent of) Lavender (in the Air)
Part 5, (Smoking) Cigarettes
Part 6, Blues (and Haiku)

Full LP Playlist

If this game sounds like a good time to you, but you're lacking the context to fully understand who Kathy is, then perhaps you'll like my LP of Kathy Rain: Director's Cut. If you think I have a good energy for blind playthroughs and you prefer your game's with more fairy tale trappings and lesbianism, Little Goody Two Shoes may be your jam. And if you like time loop horror stories where bad things happen to adorable children, then you'll definitely like House 1 & 2.

[Cullen]

Our new adventure begins! A few years have passed since the conclusion of the first game, and it seems quite a lot has happened in Kathy's life since then. Abandoning the path of journalism, she now (barely) ekes out a living as a Private Investigator. Things haven't been so good for her after striking out as a PI independent of her mentor, and it seems Eileen used to be at her side but no more. I'm sure there's some drama there. Regardless, a Serial Killer has been terrifying the city of Kassidy, and there's a huge reward on his head now. Kathy isn't too keen on having her practice be hunting for violent loons, but if the money is right...

This game has quite the visual upgrade from the first one, which was already a pretty decent showcase of VGA inspired pixel art, so I'm definitely excited to see what's on offer for this game! This first part mostly features ground floor investigation work, which means we spend a good chunk of time poring over newspaper articles. Not sure how much all of that information aside from the reporting on the victims will be relevant, but it was cool to see the call backs to the first game.

[Cullen]

Part 2 is out! After following up on some phone leads we got, it's time to meet an old friend at the Gazette! Slightly chilly reception though. After getting acquainted with the Gazette and what it has to offer, I fumble a bit on the dialogue puzzle the game wants me to do until I figure maybe I should try hitting that big honkin' blue button on the question list. Now that I've realized I can quiz people on their surroundings, I'll make sure to do it more! More than likely there was a tutorial somewhere, but once again the text slid away from my eyes as my brain was focused on other things.

On a more interesting note, we learn Kathy has kicked the smoking habit, but also fucks with a white girl that isn't Eileen. Not sure if kicking one addiction and then taking up a class A narcotic when you're already an alcoholic is a good idea, but what do I know.

We get an abrupt end at the overlook, but thinking on it this may very well be the spot Meadow wants us to take a photo, or at the very least it has an association with fire. Something to try next time for sure. On a more silly thought, but perhaps worth trying, maybe we can use the makeup brush on the fire pit to dust away some of the tags? I feel like there must be something there, but then again it may have just been a feint for the junkie jumpscare.

[Cullen]

Part 3 is out! After a failed attempt to break into the burgeoning industry of pet blogging, it's time to hit up the other sites of Soothsayer murders. Pretty good amount of progress this part, and a couple of achievements grabbed incidentally! Aside from Debra Sinclair's cabin, Rachel Wang also seems like she has potential to give us a lead since she's definitely hiding something. I have a feeling some shit is going to go down once we complete our fandom quiz, so hopefully I don't get stuck on that for too long next time.

[Cullen]

Part 4 is out! Our fandom quiz ends up taking a bit of time to parse through, but I do eventually figure it out. Surprised we don't get more reactions from showing the quiz itself to other people but oh well. After that slightly lengthy sequence, thankfully I'm much more on the ball with the DIY forensics tasks we're faced with in the cabin.

After that bit of fun, we get an extremely lengthy procession of conversations, with some fun banter to be had along the way. Since the night hasn't auto-ended, likely we have chat up Lionel for something, but we'll just have to leave it for next time.

[Cullen]

Part 5 is out! We actually ended up having nothing left to do in Day 2 as the night ended as soon as you try to leave Lucas' office. Following another nightmare, we get an unexpected lead with some interesting implications followed by a painful reunion for Kathy. Said reunion is interrupted by easily the dumbest puzzle we've seen in both games so far. This is the first part of this game I outright disliked.

I wasted like 20 minutes trying to find more reasonable solutions that were deadends, so indulge me some griping. So first off, we're saddled with a dumb fetch quest in the middle of a fairly dramatic encounter. Like we couldn't just have a dialogue puzzle or even just have Kathy plead towards her mother's better nature? Story driven games would do well a lot more than other types games to not break your immersion and remind you this is in fact a video game, and this is just video gamey as fuck. It's like if Hannibal Lecter wanted Clarice to collect Gourmet Magazines for him instead of trading personal stories for insight. Does the hospital not find it the least bit questionable Kathy got buzzed in 3 times within a short timeframe? Moving on from that, I was lucky to have a decent enough memory that I was able to quickly scoop up the ingredients to make are DIY ciggies but hit a complete brick wall trying to doctor the package. What I was thinking is we'd have to find a location with purple paint, or maybe in just a moment of serendipity we'd find a discarded empty pack of Royals we could swap our homebrews into. Funnily enough, early on I did consider the stuck drawer, but unless I'm mistaken Kathy has not once mentioned what the drawer even has in it and she continues to not do so during the quest where it finally becomes relevant, making me dismiss it again until I had no other recourse. Ironically, because I HAD been checking Kathy's reminders periodically, I had already written them off as just that: dry reminders of what you were doing in the story if you come back after a break. This is the first time a critical hint has been sequestered into these and I'm willing to bet it's the last. Calling Eileen and directing questioning towards the drawer is decently logical, but we've had no reason to call Eileen up until now, so I wasn't even aware until trying that we could still highlight the scenery while doing phone questions. It would have worked way better if we needed the scissors earlier and Kathy remarked she had markers in the drawer at that moment so there'd have been a hint ahead of time. Admittedly, had I opened the drawer earlier in the game, that would have been the case but again, we haven't actually needed to open the drawer until now. And then once we do get the markers, this solution is just... dumb. Do colored markers even mix like that? Would this really work on cigarette packaging? Why couldn't it just be one purple marker if it could, having two just adds extra clicks and makes the thing even sillier. And then to cap it all off, mom doesn't even smoke one which could have at least been funny. Very dumb puzzle, hope it's the last time we have something this unintentionally asinine come up.

Thankfully right after we get a puzzle that's stupid on purpose, easier to solve and is decently funny.

[Cullen]

Part 6 is out! The Club of Hearts and Hannah Verdoux have been on our radar for more than a minute, and now it's time to follow up on that lead. Naturally, we scoop up yet more leads off the back of this and get to have an encounter with a familiar face Kathy would rather have not seen again. Also Josh's life may be ruined, we'll have to wait and see on that one.

The Haiku puzzle was novel at least, I'm curious just how many poems you can freestyle that will still impress Hannah. There's almost certainly another achievement to be had with it, so I guess I'm on the hook for another achievement playthroug