Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise PC review

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise released two years ago to mainly negative reviews due to its horrendous performance on Nintendo Switch. I never got a chance to play it myself, but when I heard about how janky and technically broken it sounded, I’m glad I didn’t. With it now releasing on PC, it was the perfect chance to play the sequel to a cult classic, gleefully hoping all those issues had evaporated into the humid Le Carré air. You’re either going to love it or hate it. There is no in-between, but the fascination surrounding this series has been splitting audiences for quite some time.

As ports go, Deadly Premonition 2 on PC is as basic as it gets. There aren’t any visual options, making much of the game look as archaic as it did on Switch. It’s not a terrible-looking title, but it doesn’t look any more impressive than it did two years ago. The rough edges are still firmly sat around every corner, and textures never improve, with multiple environmental pop-ins, as well as NPCs throughout the town. Despite the lack of graphical fidelity, many of the framerate problems have been ironed out. Regardless, there’s been plenty of time to make this more than a simple port to PC. At this point, I’m not sure whether Swery actually cares about the fans or is simply trolling them.

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise on PC: The bare minimum

Travelling around is smooth as it can be, however, the transitions between load screens and gameplay are rather abrupt. Speaking of load screens, there’re still a lot of them, with each one breaking up every moment of your play time when exiting or entering a building, and switches between cutscenes and gameplay. There was also some problems when connecting the controller, as sometimes it wouldn’t recognise the inputs and I had to load out and restart. What makes matters worse is there’s no support for mouse and keyboard, so choosing another option isn’t available.

Despite the lack of finesse put into the port, it’s still captivating. Depending on who you ask, Swery’s either a genius or a fool, but there’s no denying he can write a fascinatingly bizarre story. It reminded me of Yakuza at times, what with its ability to switch between ridiculous lines of dialogue to moments of intelligent wit and wisdom. Francis York Morgan has one of the greatest minds in gaming history, with much of what he believes, says, or does mirroring that of his creator. You’re not sure if he knows what he’s talking about, or just making it up as he goes along.

If you’ve been waiting to play Deadly Premonition 2 minus the technical shortcomings, this is as good as it’s going to get. If you class the roughness as its charm, you’ll more than likely accept it and get stuck in, however, if you were expecting a massive overall, you’ll be let down. To play it is to believe it, though. There’re some great moments, and for the most part, it has some remarkable moments of dialogue, with some smart ideas at its core. Technically, it does the bare minimum to improve on the Switch version, something I don’t believe is enough.