Ed and Rachel are back, and Mila makes an appearance. There are also mentions of Bradley and Nile, and an easter egg or two. And Pinky Rabbit.

Dylan. Seriously, I love that creeper. I'm not sure why, because in real life he'd freak anyone the fuck out, but the whole game I laughed whenever he showed up because it was like he had some kind of man-crush on Kyle and was stalking him. Then I found out the real reason and he was even cooler. Or creepier, whichever. I'm sure most people are gonna hate him once they play the game but he put some badly needed spice into the early chapters.

Dylan. Seriously, I love that creeper. I'm not sure why, because in real life he'd freak anyone the fuck out, but the whole game I laughed whenever he showed up because it was like he had some kind of man-crush on Kyle and was stalking him. Then I found out the real reason and he was even cooler. Or creepier, whichever. I'm sure most people are gonna hate him once they play the game but he put some badly needed spice into the early chapters.

...you can give the money to anyone? I just forked it over to Steve, but now I'm wondering if I could have saved it for Marie or Charles or something.

I also gave the money to Steve, but I did hear you can hold on to the money and give it to other people at other moments in the game, though it won't really change the ending

Buy Mila a proper Christmas present. Honestly, all she got was a badly drawn picture of a penis. Kyle is a horrible person.

The ending didn't tell everything. I still want to know what happened to Dylan in the end. He is such a creepy character and I got totally scared by his facial expression once in his room when he finished a phone call. LOL

Steve and Louis are similar in a lot of ways but I personally like Louis more.

Also, I really like the story of Hyde's father. I could imagine how hopeless and sad he was when he sent the signals out and did not get any response in front that window 25 years ago...:(

Me too! Such a great character. I'm glad that LW had actually "villain" type characters running around (Will wasn't really a villain, but he's at least threatening!). At the end of Dusk everyone was friends, more or less, so I'm glad they changed that up.

My personal theory is that Bradley ended up chasing Dylan down, heh heh heh heh.

Attempt to pick the door lock with a wire.

My opinion of him kept bouncing left and right. "Hmm, he's suspicious. Actually, he's pretty cool! Okay, now he's creepy. Oh, wait, still cool. Ah, now he's a bad guy. Well, shit.

Hated Tony at first, after you confront him he gets really cool. And he made a good song. Also, crowbar. He was too much like Louis though.

Betty... She deserved more screen-time. After you find out Rex was using her, which is pretty early in the game, she's only mentioned a couple of times by Tony IIRC.

Mags was cool. I never got kicked out once, so that's probably why I like her, lol. She's much more polite than Dunning, and she had a really tragic backstory.

Dylan is a tricky character. I didn't really care for him at first, but I started to like him after the fire alarm thing broke out. Then he became more and more suspicious, until he turned out to be a mole from Nile. I'm not sure what to think of him.

Marie was tricky as well, she started out rude and stuck-up, then she softened, but then Rex made me doubt her in chapter 3 or something. Turns out she was just being used and abused though, so I felt really bad for her. Although, that puzzle where you had to prevent her from jumping off the roof was stupid.

Like Betty, Rex deserved much more screen-time. The trailers and official website made him out to be much more important than he actually was. I expected him to be some kind of Lang-esque rival who turns good near the end, but he just appeared in chapter 2 and 3 and was absent until chapter 8 or something. Didn't really care for his backstory either.

Frank is the coolest grumpy old ex-cop ever. 'Nuff said.

Charles was a good kid, much better than that Jeff Angel punk at least. He helped you out a lot and the French accent I imagined him with was adorable.

I loved Sidney and Claire. They were always there when Kyle was hungry or just needed company, and Sidney's backstory actually made me a bit foggy-eyed. You can tell the guy wants his customers to be happy.

Will... He was weird. It was cool to have another salesman in the game, especially since personality-wise, they're the complete opposite of each other. Kyle is rude, straight-to-the-point and short-tempered but has a heart of gold, while Will is a smooth-talking gentleman who is actually a slimeball, although he turned out to be pretty tragic in the end. He also asks a lot of questions, has at least one dead parent and pries into people's private business... Sound familiar?

I liked that there was an actual villain this time around in the form of Dylan (and Will, to a lesser degree), even if in the end it still went down the same "this really, really sucks for everyone here and there's not much we can do about it" route as the first game.

I think my stupidest game over was in Chapter 9 because I closed the DS when Marie was looking at me. "JK MR HYDE I'M NOT GONNA JUMP LOL BOY I TROLLED YOU OKAY BYE ENJOY YOUR POLICE"

Puzzle-wise, nothing stumped me until the elevator. I looked that one up without shame because I wanted to get to the end.

Speaking of the end, I felt it was maybe a little too similar to Hotel Dusk in that it was pretty much "the manager was wrapped up in some bad stuff, now s/he is sad yay kyle you solved it" but at least the epilogue was nice. Also it was a little odd that Frank's interrogation was markedly more difficult than Margaret's (gameplaywise, at least; storywise it makes perfect sense). Also I completely missed Betty and Charles in the epilogue, I guess I should have knocked on their doors or something. Also, what's the "extra" reward you get for not opening the files? Is it just the billiards game?

Character-wise I liked most everybody; Tony was so close to Louie it wasn't even funny though. Dylan went from kind of humorously annoying to suspicious after that one chapter 6 DRAMATIC CUTAWAY shot which kind of made it obvious he was up to something. It was surprising that he really was just a Nile operative, plain and simple! Even when I confronted him the second time I thought he probably was just being blackmailed like Marie or didn't realize what he was involved in, but nope, he was a crook, simple as that. Also, I kept expecting Margaret not to be the "final boss" because I figured Cing wouldn't pull the same trick twice. (incidentally this is also how I got an extra game over in chapter 10 because I accused Frank of knocking out Hyde/Tony.) It was also nice that you never really interrogate Charles, Sidney, or Claire; it got rid of the "rarrrrr I am kyle I must interrogate everyone" feeling from Hotel Dusk (though I laughed when Kyle caught Charles coming out of the room and was just like, "back inside, now, we're talking" like he was just used to this sort of thing by now.)

Rex was a little less important than I figured he'd be; I thought he'd actually have a pretty big role, but no, he was basically just there to make Marie seem suspicious. I liked Marie as a character if not as a person; she was well-written but got on my nerves a little bit (which was probably the intention). Will was nice just because he was pretty clearly a villain of some sort (which is a nice change for Cing) so it's a shame he's just around for like two chapters tops.

Mila didn't really need to be in the game, like, at all. It was nice to see her, but she just sort of was filler for Chapter 7. I expected "Rainy Night" and "On the Rocks" to be used when talking to her at some point, but instead she just left and didn't come back for the rest of the game - I was hoping she'd stick around a bit and try and get involved (even if Kyle tried to dissuade her, which he would).

I managed to avoid listening to several tracks on the OST (anything I hadn't heard when I played through chapter 3 of the Japanese version) so Believe, Promise, and Sunset Men were fantastic. Violet Sky was actually a little less impressive than I'd hoped, but I think part of that is that it was playing during the epilogue rather than after a confrontation.

All in all excellent, even if the very end was a little lackluster.

Kyle gives Frank the evidence he collected, Tony gets a gig, Sydney's wife shows up to talk, Kyle settles with Margaret, he sends the Red Star back... Am I missing something or is the "good ending" just getting the confidential epilogue?

Of course, the game is incredibly epic. I feel it only really got into gear from Will's confrontation in Chapter 7 to Chapter 9, though - the first 1-6 chapters featured mostly unrelated characters and their relatively pathetic secrets. I do kind of miss the formulaic confrontations of the first game - there, it really felt like every character mattered and made a difference. In this game, towards the end I started subconsciously grouping people into "Nile/Condor related" and just "Other". The last chapter of the game, though featuring some of the most awesome puzzles ever to grace the DS, really slowed down the pace (I was stuck for almost an hour in that stupid elevator).

I must admit, up until Will's confrontation I was getting quite disappointed in the game. Before then the "confrontations" you get are Marie lying barefacedly to you, Rex hinting vaguely at knowing your past, Tony having an anger management problem, Sidney's wife leaving, and Betty having bad taste in men. Oh, and Charles with his "NUUUUU GO AWAY GO AWAY I'M WRITING" (which, to be fair, I found adorable <3). All very nice, but nothing definitively plot-related. Maybe it was just the lack of a lovely "Violet Sky", but it never really felt like Kyle was seriously helping anybody like in the first game.

Then bam. Will, Marie, Rex, Dylan, Mags. Confrontations loaded with tension and people who didn't want to talk (oh my god, Frank.) Everyone trying to kill you and/or themselves. That part of the game was so awesome I actually could not put the DS down. It's a shame they all left: during the last chapter I found myself really missing Dylan stalking me as I wandered around the fourth floor going up and down the elevator. Something else I don't understand is why Kyle felt the need to ask Tony to go up with him. It just felt a bit like a forced parallel to the last game, even though Louie had an actual connection to everything that was going on whereas Tony was just after the money.

I really did like the elevator puzzle, although it did cause me to completely withdraw out of the immersion and think "It's the climax of the game and Kyle's been playing with the elevator for friggin' HOURS." (I didn't realize you had to unlock the fourth floor button, so I actually kept going up and down to all of the floors and the rooftop.)

Still, I think Hotel Dusk left me with more. Kyle Hyde had already solved the mystery of his father's death quite a bit before Margaret revealed all, so the personal connection was lost. Watching Dunning wait hopelessly for Jenny to come home just had more impact than watching Mags cry by the lighthouse. I also felt a degree of animosity towards her for making me search for that stupid room D=

Something else that also irked me was Mila. She just seemed too... Japanese, I guess. All shy and withdrawn. The ship tease was actually kind of disturbing, which is sad because the rooftop scene was quite lovely, really. Is there any way to get her a proper Christmas present? I was almost certain I could somehow give her the snowglobe in the Red Crown box, but it seems like that was just a red herring.

I tried showing the $1000 to Betty and Charles (I gave it away to Tony before I could meet Marie again). Betty is just "OMG WHERE DID YOU GET THAT", whereas Kyle just rubs it in Charles' face. Poor kid.

It is an awesome game, and I wish there was a New Game + with new things to unlock. I mean, at the end all you get is a book, a jukebox and Pinkie Rabbit Land (which I admit sure is entertaining enough XD Ninjas~)

Oh, and hearing Yellow Desert in the credit sequences was something else.

I was so intent on getting that money to Charles (Poor kid trying to invest in his future). Although, in the end I did not even get a chance to hand over the money. I had no intention of giving Tony the money. (Because you know he's going to spend it on gambling) Then CHRISTMAS happened. And Tony being a genuinely nice guy gives you a present. All the while I'm like "DARN YOU! DARN YOU! NOW I'LL FEEL LIKE A JERK IF I DON'T GIVE YOU THE MONEY YOU CLEARLY DO NOT DESERVE. DARN YOU AND DARN YOU AGAIN!"

In the end, Charles is cameraless, Tony gets gambling money Studio rental money, Hyde gets day old chicken and bourbon flavored mouth wash, and Wooster is steaming out of his ears.

Like I said anyway, if you show Charles the money he just goes "Oh, so you got it then? Damn, I really wanted that money..."

I guess there's only so far you can push Kyle past the boundaries of his jerkness