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

First and foremost - No, you don't need to play HOTF to understand and enjoy Purgatory, but it adds depth to a lot of characters from Chapter 4 onwards.

It is a superb sequel to HOTF, building on top of what made it good and polishing some rough edges. I'm glad to see Different Tales do justice to the studio's name and embracing boldness when it comes to choosing and positioning in political issues )which are core to the World of Darkness, making me not understand why there are some dudes around complaining about it? Have you even picked up one of the WoD books? Lol).

I can't really review whether they did a good job educating themselves about Afghan culture or not, because I'm not from that country. I'll leave that to them. So far seems a respectful and sensible portrayal.

The game is a bit longer than HOTF with two main storylines to choose from, making it replayable for at least one more time if you want to see the other one. It will take around 6h on average to just finish them, but the game's achievements encourage you to pursue other choices (Tribe, Auspice, etc)

Writing wise, there's some hiccups but nothing outstanding unless you're really deep into WTA. Plot is easy to follow yet rich and full of nuance -if you know where to look-.

If you're unsure whether you'll like the game or not, you can pick up a demo both for this and Heart of the Forest, allowing you to play the first 2 chapters for free, as much as you want. Unfortunately, progress on Demo doesn't carry over so you'd need to replicate every choice.

Ok, it's Werewolf the Apocalypse, one of World of Darkness best titles. But of course this is 5th Edition so it is as Woke as you can expect. There are certain paths that are locked because they assume, or they want you to think THEIR WAY. The whole thing is completely skewed and politically biased even politically missionned and arrogant. There is simply no player agency, this is not a roleplaying game. This is clumsy obvious woke propaganda. This is not a game about werewolves, it is a game about people who want you as a person to think like them. Do not buy. Boycott World of Darkness and Renegade, boycott all woke non-sense, because THEY WANT YOU DEAD. This Polish studio looked promising, now they have sold their soul. Forget about them.