Like the first game's Director's Cut, this one features a story - but it's actually good this time! Also, not being able to skip the company logos at the start is quite annoying.
As I said in my review of the Directors's Cut, its story felt very forced and divorced from the gameplay - hell, it didn't even tie into the ending - but this game rectifies that by making it actually interesting, expanding upon the lore & ending of the first game, and making the story & dialogue tie into the game's ending, rather than just being background noise to fill in the voids between levels. Quite a nice change from the first one.
The ending itself is also great, building upon the dialogue and vague hints (as well as what the player thinks) with it culminating in a simple choice between two options, but one that I did actually care about.
And for completionists, the achievement list is also
vastly better than the first game's. Seems the devs realized a time attack DLC didn't fit
at al with the game's core mechanics, and instead gave us what we wanted: More puzzles (twice!). (Though the DLC ones have very similar names, which is a bit annoying. Would be nice if they were more clear about which one they're part of imo).
Finding the collectibles in the DLCs isn't all that hard, but getting to them is the tricky part - and I really appreciate that. Always annoying when games have collectibles (and achievements for them) while making them annoying af to find with no barrier other than time spent.
I noticed there's a few typos in the subtitles, and for some reason all my sound settings reset to 100% after I accidentally clicked F11 - but other than that, I didn't encounter any issues. Not being able to skip the credits is also a bit annoying. Also noticed that it just went to a black screen after them.... for some reason. You can at least pause and quit to menu/OS though.
The DLCs are also quite good, with the only real issue being that selecting a level is made into a little mini-hub area - neat idea, but you can't move very fast so it ends up making walking to select a level ~5 minutes of your total playtime in the DLCs. Aftermath does it better since all the levels are in a square ring rather than being spread out (and has the kinda neat points mechanic). And their achievements aren't clearly labelled, so you're not exactly sure which one corresponds to each DLC.
All the timing based levels are bullshit though, so if you wanna 100% the game be prepared to suffer for a few hours. Physics ones are annoying too. And the parkour ones just make me want to die. Movement is
not robust enough for that.
But otherwise, I recommend you get this game and the season pass, as the DLCs make some some good post-game content. Even without playing the first Q.U.B.E, it's still a great standalone game (though I do recommend you play both this and the original, or the tenth anniversary edition said original).
4.5