White Day 2: The Flower That Tells Lies- Complete Edition
Developer: Rootnstudio Ltd.
Publisher: PQube
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S (Reviewed), PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $29.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
There are horror games that have evolved with the times, others that have become cult classics that have stayed true to their roots, and even more that many may never have heard of. White Day: A Labyrinth Named School happens to be the latter of these three since, despite being something of a cult-classic for Korean horror fans, many in the West have likely never heard of it until a remake was made in 2017. After some shifts in development, the unique brand of Korean horror returns with White Day 2: The Flower That Tells Lies. With PQube bringing the three episodes together in this Complete Edition with some extra content, is this a spooky good time or one ghost story too many?
Story
White Day 2 tells its story through three pseudo-connected chapters that players can choose to play through at any time, but should go through in order. The first chapter follows the story of a pair of students that return to the school of Yeondu High to uncover the truth behind a fire that took the life of a girl, the second involves a former teacher in training going to investigate the strange circumstances around her father’s death at the school and the strange occult elements that it involves, and finally the third chapter tries to bring everything together by following another young student searching for a way to bring peace to the spirit of a dead friend.
Unfortunately, perhaps thanks to the way that the game’s are broken up episodically or how there are so many different endings and variations to certain chapters, the actual way the story develops is incredibly vague and often barely touched upon. In fact, even obtaining the best ending for the first chapter will leave players scratching their heads with even more questions raised than not. In fact, there are fourteen different endings spread across the three chapters and some of them are incredibly vague to the point of laughable. In fact, while they are bad endings, two of the endings in the first chapter literally just involve a character being called stupid and the screen fading to black with the only elaboration coming through browsing the “unlocked endings” option in the menu.
The true ending for the first chapter is at least somewhat satisfying and the second and third chapters do help stay on task at least a bit better than before, but unfortunately the plot just never sticks the landing here and barely hangs together even when things try to tie together. Sure, White Day 2 manages to build up some wonderful world-building and scares through the various notes players can find detailing the hauntings of the school and the other ghost stories that players can encounter throughout their time in the game, though it is worth noting that players will need to play on at least Normal to experience some of these extra ghosts and hauntings and seemingly on Hard for others. Even with these bonuses outside of the core story it just never clicks. Instead, White Day 2: The Flower That Tells Lies often feels like a jumbled mess of spooky stories rather than a coherent one and even then it often doesn’t make the most of the scares it can deliver.
Gameplay
White Day 2: The Flower That Tells Lies is a first person horror game where, generally, most of the time players will simply be traveling through the sprawling school. There’s a reason that the first game had labyrinth in the name and it feels all the truer exploring here as players will find themselves needing to solve various puzzles that range from easy to understand via context clues, those that take some extra thinking with the help of notes, and some downright stumpers at times to complete. That being said, while some of these puzzles did require some extra thought, especially in regards to completing and obtaining certain endings, none of them felt impossible to solve. In fact, most of them can be downright simple once players get the hang of things, unfortunately though the in-game map could be a bit better as it doesn’t display locked doors and players will need to be doing quite a bit of backtracking at times to solve puzzles or obtain certain items. This can give players a real sense of completion at times, especially when solving particularly difficult puzzles that have multiple steps to complete and, at least in a few cases, actually change from playthrough to playthrough so the answer for some puzzles won’t always be the same.
Of course, nothing is ever truly simple in a horror game, especially one like this. Depending on what chapter players are playing on, they will eventually trigger a security guard that will then begin to roam the halls. The security guard serves as perhaps the most primary enemy that players will need to deal with throughout White Day 2 as they will be largely patrolling the school with seemingly random pathing and spawning. While other threats such as ghosts and other things that we won’t spoil here can chase players, threaten them with riddles, or even trigger one-hit kill moves, the security guard will continuously chase the player until they manage to get far enough away from them or end up dying. Any health that is lost (shown via blood appearing on the screen) will regenerate over time as long as players aren’t being chased.
Unfortunately, the AI on the security guards, ghosts, and other threats is both incredibly poorly handled and frustrating at the same time. This is because while their pathing is random and players can often sneak past them, once they are in a chase it is almost impossible to actually avoid being caught and killed. Players can make use of a disposable camera (of which multiple can be carried) to stun the guard and some other threats but the only way to actually escape is to simply put distance between players and the guard. Hiding behind furniture, going into a classroom, or even ducking into a bathroom stall will just have the guard instantly spot players and kill them. The AI hunts players down no matter what as long as they are within a certain distance seemingly. It also doesn’t help that, even if players stun a hostile foe, there is no way to duck or move around them. Meaning that if players happen to get stuck in a dead-end, tight corridor, or even in a locked room, they will die.
Thankfully, it does appear that either due to the random nature of the guard’s pathing or a bug, reloading a save often spawns the guard in a different location. Ironically, this bug is fairly prominent throughout a few “boss” style encounters that ended up being disappointing as a result. One of which saw a twisted game of “Red Light/Green Light” instantly end when, upon reloading from failure, saw the objective autocomplete itself. Even with these random bugs, the unique nature of some of the boss encounters as well as how players must solve the puzzles involved with them makes them quite memorable when they work right.
Audio & Visuals
The design of the school as well as the ghosts is handled incredibly well though the general character models of most of the actual characters are a bit simple even if most of the cast has two or three costumes players can swap between. Some of these costumes need to be unlocked by obtaining specific endings while others are part of the “Complete Edition” bonus. Thankfully, as mentioned, the real star is the layout and design of the school rooms. Players will find themselves traveling through each chapter and uncovering more interesting hints and encountering dangerous ghost stories all the while, with the ghost designs being the spookiest parts as well as some of the best jump scares. It is worth noting that it is unfortunate that some of the best designed scares require actually failing a task sometimes and while players can save anywhere with multiple slots, it is disappointing.
Another disappointing and often dangerous element at times is how long the title can take to load in the actual environmental objects. Despite playing on the Xbox Series X and setting conditions to favor performance, every reload saw pop-in that would require a few seconds to load in. Sometimes an entire room wouldn’t even load until we had left and returned to it. While this wouldn’t usually be too problematic, this happens during the game’s chase sequences as well, including ones that feature instant kills should the player get caught. This results in either getting caught on unloaded pieces of school equipment or killed simply due to lag and hoping that the game would load faster the next time through.
As for the voice work, the English dub is… there. That being said it is a nice option for those who don’t want to use subtitles in any way but players should swap the voice track to the original Korean to get the best possible experience as the voice actors handle their roles much better there. The atmospheric sounds of navigating through the haunted school at night are wonderfully spooky and the game does an amazing job of making players feel unsettled even when they are exploring a place they’ve been before, whether it be the distant cries of a ghost, unnatural flushing of toilets, or even the radio chatter of a pesky possessed officer, the atmosphere does wonders in White Day 2.
Overall
Although the original may have been seen as a cult-classic and saw new interest in the West with its remake, White Day 2: The Flower That Tells Lies – Complete Edition fails to maintain most of the magic that the first entry had. The lore surrounding the school that players can encounter as well as the ghosts that haunt the halls make for a wonderfully spooky atmosphere and the puzzles can be some real brain-scratchers that take actual work to solve but nearly everything else falls apart. From poor character models and animations, terrible stealth mechanics, a storyline that is barely strung together, and some awful technical issues this horror game is one that only the most die-hard will likely find themselves powering through.
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