I purchased this at half off, out of anger. And I started this game wanting to hate every bit of it, because, well, no Chloe.

I loved it.

The good:
Max is back ya'll! Everything you disliked about her has changed. This is a nearly 29 year old Max attending a gorgeous private University with some amazing characters and dialogue. I absolutely love that they fixed those repeat background nps everywhere and gave a good variety. While Chloe is gone, she isn't GONE gone. Every choice Max makes, every friend and proffessor you speak to, it's like she's inside of them all. You mostly see it in Gwen, Safi and Amanda. Beautiful scenery, musics decent, dialogue has improved and is less awkward than in past games. Her new power is pretty cool. The game has my attention from start to finish. There's plenty of twists and turns that you don't expect (enter spiderman trio pointing meme, Max would love that)

The bad: The number one complaint I have is her love interests. The game didn't need love interests. It felt forced. Amanda doesn't seem interested, and Vinh is a rich mommys boy duechebag who is too sexual for my liking, and even worse, no matter what choice of dialogue you choose to reply back with, it sounds like Max is flirting, which is not at all like Max. Iwould prefer to have complete control over where and when I use the camera, because I was super excited to play a photographer, only to find out you can only take photos of certain things, from certain angles. There's a professor similar to Mark Jefferson, there's a character similar to Juliet Watson. While most of Max's past friends are mentioned multiple times, two are mentioned only once, and one of them upsets me. Don't Nod, I'm giving you a chance to fix this. WHERE IS KATE MARSH??? No letter, no text, no social media.

I am feeling very conflicted about this game.
I do not come from the camp of people that are unhealthily obsessed with virtual character shippings, so that will not affect this review.

Overall i had a pretty good time. The vibes of this game were absolutely on point and the Art & Audio departments of Deck Nine really did fantastic work with this game.
I also generally really enjoyed almost all characters and it was a lot of fun to get to know them and interact with them.

It took about 20h for the first playthrough and i think thats a pretty good time for a game of this kind. It did not feel unnecessarily dragged out or similar, however there were a handful of parts that i feel like could have been more fleshed out.

Unfortunately, the game keeps interrupting you with absolutely nonsensical dialogue options, consequences and story progression. There have been a lot of moments where i was seriously bothered by how unrealistic reactions and dialogues were and they got increasingly more common in the later chapters.
To give an example, there have been several times when i picked seemingly innocent and harmless dialogue options, only for the character i talked to to react like i had just insulted their entire ancestry and everything they achieved in life.
There are a large number of occasions where a few simple words would have completely defused a situation, only for max to just stutter around and say the exact wrong things without player input. Its infuriating and often feels like the game forces you into difficult situations instead of letting you either tap into them or not, naturally.
Not to mention that there are countless cases of the game auto-progressing because you wandered into an area that just so happened to trigger a cutscene.

I feel really let down by these moments, because on other occasions, the game shows you that i can absolutely do it differently.
Given that these are major parts of the game in general, this really drags it down.

I am also not a fan of the ending that i got in general and i like it even less that apparently none of your major decisions have any impact at all, outside of some flavour text. <- spoiler about major decisions

I'd really like to give it a mixed review and i would say its still worth your time when its on sale.
Just don't even bother with the Ultimate Edition because the Outfits are entirely useless.

"I’ve played all the Life is Strange games so far. This one has a very interesting story, but its ending isn’t as satisfying as the previous ones."

- DIFFICULTY -
🔲 Simple Smartphone skills are enough
☑️ Telltale Game
🔲 Normal - if you choose the normal difficulty
🔲 Hard
🔲 Demon Souls

- GRAPHICS -
🔲 Editor App
🔲 Bad
🔲 They tried
🔲 Graphics is relative / Great Artstyle
🔲Good
☑️ Beautiful
🔲 Am I still playing a game?

- MUSIC -
🔲 You need Ohropax
🔲 Boring but not annoying
🔲 Good
☑️ Beautiful
🔲 Goosebumps / Earworm / You will never forget it

- STORY -
🔲 Wait what? There was a story??
🔲 Like playing Battlefield for the story.
🔲 It's there and it's ok if you need it.
☑️ Well written and worth your time
🔲 Epic story - don't dare to skip dialogues or cutsceenes
🔲 Naughty Dog

- PRICE -
🔲 Free but pay to win
🔲 Free and no pay to win
🔲 I need to buy the game twice
🔲 Perfect Price
☑️ Could be cheaper
🔲 Wait for sale
🔲 Total waste of money

- REQUIREMENTS -
🔲 You can run it on a smartwatch
☑️ Average
🔲 Close to High end
🔲 High end
🔲 Let's wait for 2050

- PLAYTIME -
🔲 Very Short (0 - 2 hours)
☑️ Short (2 - 10 hours)
🔲 Average (10-20 hours)
🔲 Long (20-50 hours)
🔲 Extremely long (50-100 hours)
🔲 You probably wont buy anything else for a long time

- FUN -
🔲 I'd rather watch the installation progress of Windows 95
🔲 Why are you still playing? Ah yeah I only for Trading Cards
🔲 Wait, how often did I repeat this?
🔲 Only with friends and small talk
☑️ Very amusing and totally worth my time.
🔲 I can't get enough of the game. I wish I would've infinite free time.