Beyond Sunset Early Access Playthrough (Jun 2024): Chapters 2-3

I've elected to upload Chapters 2 and 3 as one video, since what currently exists of Chapter 3 is surprisingly short.

It's clear that each chapter contributes something unique to the experience. Whereas Chapter 1 felt like it had a healthy focus on storytelling and unguided exploration, Chapter 2 feels far more formulaic, but has some extremely cool-looking environments and an interesting choose-your-own-adventure moment that ultimately may not amount to much, but does dictate which areas you will revisit. (It seems that there are intentionally no secrets within the inner areas of each section because of this.)

I will say I am at this point quite bewildered at the February patch notes alleging that fights were massively reworked to not drag on for more than 2 waves,. because I certainly saw many fights with more than that many waves in Chapter 2. The locked sections in the Antimatter wing were particularly problematic, as one arena had awkwardly little ground to work with, another had the objective tucked far away in an alcove where the player is likely to never see or hear it, and the third finishes with geometry seemingly designed with the express purpose of killing the player by bonking from the nearest bounce pad and falling into a death pit. I quite enjoyed the Chapter 2 boss, though.

Chapter 3's plot escalates surprisingly quickly, but then pulls the rug out from under us just as quickly as it presented it. What follows is a quite surprising (and hectic) section with new mechanics... and then that's the end of the chapter already, in under an hour. Looking at the patch notes, it's clear there was supposed to be more to this but they removed some parts to rework them. I'm hoping they also flesh out NPCs in that area more, since it has the potential to be very interesting, but seemed like it had a lot of repeated filler dialog right now.

All in all, there's plenty to like about Beyond Sunset, and the aesthetics are very impressive. However, there's also plenty of room for improvement, which hopefully we see by the time it leaves early access.

00:00 - Chapter 2
3:15:28 - Chapter 3 (and Chapter 2 closing thoughts)
4:02:13 - Overall closing thoughts