STORY
Just like the first game, Frenni Fazclaire's 2 exists in a FNAF-like universe alongside characters from CryptiaCurves. This time, Nightfox brought original characters to his universe, mixing up the story considerably. The new animatronics are well written and pack considerably more personality. Without spoiling too much, you'll again play as an engineer trying to help out the club. This time run by Seraphina, Mr. Smith's sister-in-law. You remember the rule not to fuck the Animatronics, right? Well…
As Gregory Wood, prepare to become chief engineer at a new club. This club holds four different animatronics, who supposedly chose to continue life as animatronics inside the club. Pretty soon, you will be fixing up the four girls - Mia the bunny, Chi the duck, Roxy the wolf and Aurora, the first tiger animatronic.They all malfunction in their own way and it's up to you to figure out why and how it happened.
Pretty soon, you'll find out you have around two weeks to fix them and from that point, just like the original game, the pressure is on. The second game is definitely more story-focused than the first, doing away with point allocation in favor to just experiencing the story. Add to that a couple callbacks from the original game and you have got yourself a nice cocktail of nostalgia and curiosity that benefits the game.
PRESENTATION
Much of what worked in AFAFF 1 is here. Vector club environments, sexy cartoon sprites and a bunch of humoristic situations. Although this is somewhat of a straightforward novel, the recognizability of locations make the story easier to navigate. It's a perfect blend between minimalistic backgrounds and a typical style.
As far as UI has been presented, things seem clear and simple enough. Dialog choices make sense and most of the time, you know what you're potentially getting yourself into. That might change later in the game, but for now it's a pretty smooth story ride. Unless you choose to mess up a few things.
While in the original the sexual content was reserved for just a few single moments, this game does away with most of the sexual allure the first game had. Fapping players might have a harder time to get through this, but every piece of nudity you eventually get to see has to be earned and has to make sense in the story. While the intimate scenes aren't as tightly drawn as the sprites, they do definitely evoke an anime feeling that fits the aesthetic. No animations, no notable sound design. And honestly, I didn't miss it for a second.
GAMEPLAY
The points allocation system from the first game is absent here, and honestly it's a welcome change. While the game might miss one of it's puzzle elements, the story does work enough to keep you guessing which animatronic you want to spend time with next.
AFAFF 2 is split up over a series of days, where you get to decide which problem you want to fix and which animatronic you want to visit. The key is to figure out where to be when and what moments you can skip out on in favor for others. This time, developer Nightfox has done an even better job of letting us see the different choices at hand. Where the first game became a bit convoluted due to choice paralysis, this game keeps the choices short and sweet. And it works.
OVERALL
Breaking away from the original story is the best choice Nightfox could have done. With original characters, a new plot for the engineer to solve and the option to hack into animatrons to figure out their other sides, the game simply draws you into its storybuilding. We suspect this might end up being a better game than the original already was.
Rating: 8 / 10
Developer: Nightfox Itch.io
