But this time their dialogue is far worse, and for every nice line ('Being careful is for people who don't like surprises.') there are a dozen that make absolutely no sense. The animation remains as splendid as the first part, and the voice acting is strong throughout. Instead you're given a great pile different places packed with ludicrously obscure puzzles, interconnecting with no coherent pathway. There's no graceful introduction of the locations, no slow spread as the best adventures do. This time, bewilderingly, the vast majority of the game takes place in a location even more sprawling, even more disparately linked, and even more obfuscated. Either side of this section, it was mostly a decent time, despite being plagued with translation issues. The biggest mistake the first game made was a bloated second act, that was set in a location far too sprawling, with too many puzzle chains open at once and little guidance as to what you were supposed to be doing.

But early on Goal's personality cartridge gets split into three, causing Goal to become three different characters, interchangeable in the same body. This time things pick up with Rufus and Goal back on Deponia, this time on a floating black market island, attempting yet again to escape. He pratted around a bit, met an arch enemy called Cletus, and then it sort of ended. In the first game Rufus met Goal, a sort of robot-elf lady thing, whose head contained vital codes for something or other. Rufus is an unliked loser, part-time inventor, and the man who believes is to save Deponia from being destroyed by the evil Organon - Elysium residents who want the planet blown up. The story is of a trash planet called Deponia, above which floats an idyllic city called Elysium. Partly suffering from middle-episode syndrome, and partly just being a generally poorer game, this second, shorter adventure focuses pretty much on what the first game got wrong, and little else.

So what about this time, with sequel Chaos On Deponia? Here's wot I think: A German point and click adventure from Daedalic, it managed to wobble along the line of decent and frustrating, mostly making up for its biggest mistakes with some fun puzzles, decent voice acting, and a good number of laughs. It really is only three months since the first part of the Deponia trilogy was released.

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