History YMMV / Dishonored2

*** For Corvo, it's Bend Time. This power was broken in the first ''Dishonored'', and it's just as broken here. When fully upgraded, this changes from slowing time to outright stopping time for ten seconds, allowing you to move freely through the world without fear of detection or interruption. Got a Wall of Light in the way? Have a bunch of enemies that you'll never sneak past without one spotting you? Need to kill or knock out a few targets all at once? Bend Time is your answer. There's nothing that can counter this power, nothing that can reduce its effectiveness, and no way to interrupt it once it's on. Bend Time costs a grand total of fourteen runes to fully upgrade, but once you've got it, you'll break the game's difficulty over your knee.

** [[spoiler:The finale is a virtual replay of the Daud DLC where a battle takes place in a Void/Painting realm and the low-chaos ending has Delilah once again trapped in a painting. The fact that she worked her way out of that prison the first time around makes this resolution especially unsatisfying to some]].

*** Even for the Low Chaos route, the Crown Killer is contained to a single, isolated area in the back halls of Addermire, aimlessly pacing back and forth along a single balcony, despite supposedly "hunting" the player. The trip to create the cure for Hypatia's PsychoSerum would've made for an interesting game of cat-and-mouse, had this superhuman lunatic made any effort to stalk the player through the rest of the building.

* GuideDangIt: There's an incredibly useful tactic for dealing with enemies non-lethally once they've been alerted. Just shoot them in the leg to knock them down then you'll get a prompt for an instant takedown. Nowhere in-game is this ever tutorialised.
** Another special takedown can be triggered by sliding into an unaware enemy, though you have to be directly in front or behind to use it.

* GeniusBonus: You get an achievement for opening the Jindosh Lock, without first obtaining an explicit solution from an NPC. The puzzle is a randomized variation of the infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_Puzzle Zebra Puzzle]], where the setup is that there are 5 women, each with a unique heirloom, and you have to figure out who owns 4 of them. You can either solve the crunchy logic puzzle, or notice that despite its intimidating setup, it is about 8 times easier to brute-force it than any other code lock in the game: a regular three-digit safe has 1000 possible combinations (i.e. it takes 500 tries on average to guess the code), while the "unbreakable" Jindosh Lock only has 120 (5-factorial options[[labelnote:Definition]]5*4*3*2*1[[/labelnote]]), so if even you don't read any of the hints, it takes 60 attempts, on average, to brute-force it -- although, of course, figuring ''that'' out requires some combinatorial/cryptographic background, as well.
** If you '''do''' read the hints, you'll know who owns at least one of the heirlooms, meaning that there are only 24 (4-factorial) possible options, needing only 12 guesses on average to brute force, given that the first sentence of second paragraph is of the format (emphasis added):
--> '''So [character] showed off a prized [heirloom]''', at which the lady from [city] scoffed, saying it was no match for her [heirloom].

-->'''Delilah:''' There are more things in the endless black Void, Kirin Jindosh, then are dreamt of in your natural philosophy.[[note]]There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.[[/note]]

*** Emily's ''Domino'' power is probably the best ability she has. It allows you to "bind the fates" of two people (what she does to one is inflicted on the other) which is often enough to make the difference between an alarm and a stealth run. The power has a large amount of flexibility, and notably only consumes mana upon proccing the effect, meaning Emily can take her time choosing how best to dispose of her targets without wasting resources. Better yet, Domino can be upgraded to a maximum linking of ''four'' targets at once; Emily will rarely see more than four guards patrolling at any given time, and she can take them all out in one stroke. The best part is that it can be used lethally or non-lethally, making it useful even on a non-lethal run.
*** For Corvo, it's Bend Time. This power was broken in the first ''Dishonored'', and it's just as broken here. When fully upgraded, this changes from slowing time to outright stopping time for ten seconds, allowing you to move freely through the world without fear of detection or interruption. Got a Wall of Light in the way? Have a bunch of enemies that you'll never sneak past without one spotting you? Need to kill or knock out a few targets all at once? Bend Time is your answer. It costs a grand total of fourteen runes to fully upgrade this power, but once you've got it, you basically break the game's difficulty over your knee.

** While it is hard to justify putting one of the powers here ([[PurposelyOverpowered as they are meant to be extremely overpowered]]) Emily's ''Domino'' power is probably the best ability she has. It allows you to "bind the fates" of two people (what she does to one is inflicted on the other) which is often enough to make the difference between an alarm and a stealth run. The power has a large amount of flexibility, and notably only consumes mana upon proccing the effect, meaning Emily can take her time choosing how best to dispose of her targets without wasting resources. Better yet, Domino can be upgraded to a maximum linking of ''four'' targets at once; Emily will rarely see more than four guards patrolling at any given time, and she can take them all out in one stroke. The best part is that it can be used lethally or non-lethally, making it useful even on a non-lethal run.

** The NewGamePlus option gives you a substantial power boost. Not only do you gain access to both Corvo's and Emily's powers (imagine the potential for combining powers like Bend Time and Domino together!), but you also carry over any Bonecharm traits you've learned, and every Blueprint you've collected is available for purchase right away (collecting the same Blueprint again will give you 200 coins). On top of all that, once you get the Outsider's Mark you get back all of the Runes that you spent in the previous playthrough, giving you the chance to unlock a bunch of powers right at the start of the game.

* TheWoobie: Aramis Stilton, mining magnate with blue-collar origins and rare BenevolentBoss in the setting, watches his paramour Duke Theo Abele's life work undone by Abele's vicious idiot son, and is a broken shell after seeing the [[EldritchLocation Void]] during the fateful séance. Poor guy just wanted to fit in with the elite crowd.

* PlayTheGameSkipTheStory: The game's plot is straightforward and the game really works in terms of level design, gameplay and presentation. This was also present in the first game as well, and more or less a general characteristic of games with multiple choices and pathways (which demand a simple plot and situation to accommodate multiple variations).

* PlayTheGameSkipTheStory: Some fans think like this, because while they see this game’s gameplay and combat as much better than in the first game, they believe that the first game has a better story. Some of them also see this game’s story as just being [[ItsTheSameSoItSucks a re-thread of the first one]].

* ContestedSequel: A mechanically superior sequel, with a greater atmosphere, and social density in the original, with possibly greater amounts of replay value, or a glorified retread of the original game with no majorly different plot twists tied together with a shoddy PC port at launch? Take your pick.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: The dev team felt that the representation of female characters in the first game was somewhat lackluster (Details on this can be found on [[Trivia/{{Dishonored}} the first game's trivia page]]), and [[OldShame expressed some regret over it]]. As such, they decided to address the issue in this game by giving female characters larger roles, and other minority groups are also represented more than in the first game; there are at least two homosexual relationships [[note]]Theodanis Abele & Aramis Stilton, and Delilah & Breanna[[/note]], and the minor character Mindy Blanchard was confirmed by WordOfGod to be transgender.
** One of the biggest criticisms of the first game is that despite giving you a huge suite of tools to kill people in odd or creative ways, you're punished with a bad ending by the KarmaMeter for killing too many people. This means that the most fun way to play the game is also the one that will result in an ending most people won't like. ''Dishonored 2'' rebalances the karma system so that it's possible to kill more enemies without triggering the High Chaos ending.
** The original game had very lackluster ways to take down your foes nonlethally. You could either choke them out or snipe them with sleeping darts, both of which took a long period of time and were fairly repetitive compared to the numerous powers and tools that the lethal path offers. Dishonored 2 new avenues for nonlethal takedowns:
*** Stun grenades and stinging darts give you more options to knock out targets or make them flee.
*** Nonlethal drop attacks can be used to instantly KO targets inside or outside of combat.
*** Players now have a variety of tools to deal with enemies nonlethally in direct combat by triggering a chokeholds after a parry, knocking them down (e.g. with a dart to the leg) then stomping them unconscious or sliding into enemies for an instant takedown.
*** Where several of Corvos powers (e.g. Windblast and Rat Swarm) were only useful on loud or lethal runs, Emily's new powers are designed to be equally effective whether the player is going loud or stealthy, lethal or nonlethal.

** Emily and Alexi. They are noted to be childhood friends and one of the first scenes of the game is Emily confiding in Alexi about being Empress. Alexi is also [[spoiler:more relived and relatively calmer if she sees Emily escape, telling her to get out of Dunwall before bleeding out, Emily clearly distraught by her death. If Alexi sees Corvo instead, she tells him the same and begs him to save Emily before dying.]]

** The player eventually gets to witness the experience that left Aramis Stilton a broken wreck, namely [[spoiler: watching Delilah get summoned out of thin air and placing her essense in a statue]]. The experience is not very dramatic when viewed from the outside and considering the other people present are unphased it comes across as if Aramis is just massively overreacting.

* TheWoobie: Aramis Stilton, mining magnate with blue-collar origins and rare BenevolentBoss in the setting, watches his paramour Duke Theo Abele's life work undone by Abele's vicious idiot son, and is a broken shell after seeing the [[EldritchLocation Void]] during the fateful seance. Poor guy just wanted to fit in with the elite crowd.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Yes, that is [[Creator/PedroPascal the Mandalorian]] and [[Creator/RosarioDawson Ahsoka Tano]] as Paolo and Meagan Foster.

* EightPointEight: Fans weren't pleased by Jim Sterling's review, which they gave the game a 5/10, mostly complaining about technical issues and calling the game a retread that introduces nothing to write home about.

* WifeHusbandry: An article the player can find reveals that Jessamine met Corvo and made him her Lord Protector when they were 12 and 19 respectively. While it's made clear their relationship didn't begin until she was 18 the fact Corvo essentially acted as a parental figure to her (a full time companion and bodyguard) since she was twelve leaves some players feeling uncomfortable about them starting a relationship even if it did ultimately prove to be a loving one.