this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
128 points (96.4% liked)
Games
36764 readers
1250 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here and here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd say that Portal 2 even improved the first one in every aspect.
I'm on the fence about which is better. Portal 2 is an improvement, but also has its flaws.
Part of the reason I would argue Portal 1 was better is because it was so unexpected. I went in expecting "interesting puzzle game" which it is, but I did not expect to also get "excellent humor with strange horror vibes and incredibly good personality."
If someone didn't know what a Glados was I think the first one is better. I also recognize that many people who have never played Portal are well aware of Glados.
I guess something Portal 2 lacked was the element of surprise.
Portal felt like a very long, pretty well-done tech demo, but Portal 2 is where it's at.
I dunno. Frankly they're both absolutely pantheon, legendary games that deliver a near-perfect gaming experience, but I feel like Portal 1 delivered a kind of tighter package where Portal 2 meanders just a little bit, and while Wheatley is still brilliant I'm not sure I he hit the same way or struck the same tone as GlaDOS. But we're talking about like nanometers of difference in quality here either way as both games are goddamn stellar.
I felt that Portal 2’s difficulty curve was a little off but was perfect other than that. It was too easy for most of the game and then ramped up to what I consider to be a good difficulty level later on.
The two player portion was fantastic though.
Difficulty balance is especially hard for puzzle games, I guess. You can get a good estimate with lots of testing (ha!) with many participants, but even then you or me personally can be outliers.