After Earthblood grabbed my attention initially and HOTF deepened my appreciation for the lore surrounding the stories I was surprised to find out by sheer accident that 4 years after HOTF a sequel just got shadowdropped. A sequel that in terms of gameplay technicalities is just as good as HOTF was. Just like before the dynamic soundtrack is amazing and wisely walking the path of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" the devs have consistently maintained the same artstyle and core "gameplay elements" that made HOTF such a smooth and memorable experience through and through.

The story and it's variety howewer is another story (hue) entirely. Even after two wildly differently managed playthroughs I had the impression that the game is annoyingly hell bent on beating the "refugees sad cuz war is bad" nail into my head with little to no options for me to tint it's status quo or my stance in it's narrative in any meaningful way.
Don't get me wrong, the message is NOT my problem here. The unyielding agenda of communicating ONE uncompromising point of view in a game that should pride itself upon it's storytelling variety is what annoys me. There are like maybe TWO choices in the game that actually determine anything significantly. The narrative itself is many times annoyingly empty and as if the writers themselves weren't sure how to compensate for the lack of ideas, almost (if not) half of the game is made up of flashbacks, once again telling me, the player in a very announciated way that: war is bad, like super very bad. The story's refugee aspect is preachy and kind of underutilized at the same time. It felt to me that the game's overwhelming focus on "current year societal problems" is many times at odds with the desperately suffocating worldbuilding underneath it. Despite this for some reason the game takes a surprising amount of care into building itself up in it's earlier chapters (whenever we're not staring at "war is bad" and "refugees are sad" flashbacks mind you) only to end abruptly after barely even initiating it's promisingly intense finale. ANDTHENTHEYALLLIVEDHAPPILYEVERAFTERTHEREFUGEESAREHAPPYNOWTHEEND (no really, that's pretty much how the story ends despite me very actively trying to force different outcomes out of it).
And that's where our problem lies. The lack of variety and consequences. Yes, there are s o m e attempts at narrative variety, but they pale compared to the options the first game offered. Maybe HOTF's fish out of water setup spoiled me tho.
I completed the first game four times, got myself killed in my first two playthroughs due to my rash actions or misguided calculations. I finally reached the ending for the first time after my third playthrough attempt and randomly turned myself into a nahtzee for the final one. There are no such options here, you can't decide to join the "evil" side even out of curiosity and you're never allowed to challenge the status quo in any way. The refugees are sad, because war is bad, the trans woman leader of our werewolf sect is a strong individual and at least one of our companions are gay.

Again, in the first game if we wanted to we had the option to leave everything and everyone behind in order to follow our cursed "family heritage". Every playthrough was interesting in it's own way, because experimentation yielded results or in my case, death. Death that despite my best attempts I was unable to attain in this game, because the narrative always gave me a forced cheap get out of jail free card to survive everything no matter what. Even in the final boss battle if you're dying your pals just bail you out and that's the boring idea in a game like this. Maybe people complained about it the last time and that's why they streamlined it, but hey! At least now we have the puddle-like narrative depth of Life Is Strange and gay trans werewolves, shaka brah!

My salty ramblings aside, I don't actually think that the game is overall bad, it's just that HOTF is better. Much better.
Eh, give it a try if you're interested, just don't expect much. :P