Compare CONTROL Resonant vs Qliphah in Providence’s Shadow

The postgame gives completion-minded players room to keep exploring, finish side stories, refine builds, and chase remaining discoveries after the main campaign.

Postgame content is limited, which reduces long-term appeal once the campaign is finished.

The best missions keep escalating into strange, memorable scenarios, giving the campaign a strong sense of surprise beyond standard combat objectives.

Mission structure repeats heavily, with investigation nodes, short dialogue, and battles cycling in similar ways.

Physics, destructible scenery, telekinesis, and gravity manipulation make the environment feel like part of the action rather than a static backdrop.

Tokyo lacks the towns, NPC interaction, and freely explorable spaces needed to feel fully alive, making the world smaller in practice than the story suggests.

Traversal is one of the game's most consistently celebrated strengths. Double jumps, air dashes, hovering, grappling, and gravity shifting make moving through Manhattan fast, expressive, and frequently exhilarating.

Movement is functional but not especially smooth, particularly when combat flow stalls while waiting for the next enemy action.

The writing is strongest when it balances human vulnerability, bureaucratic absurdity, and strange lore. Some dialogue and thematic beats are less elegant, but the overall character and world writing earns substantial praise.

The writing has strong concepts and some good character work, but it often leans too heavily on exposition, stiff dialogue, technical lore dumps, and confusing terminology.

Side stories, altered objects, puzzles, bosses, and strange one-off scenarios keep the world varied, though a layer of repeated activities and combat encounters can feel like busywork.

Reused backgrounds, repeated encounters, and a narrow investigation-to-battle rhythm are persistent weaknesses. The limited asset pool makes the campaign feel more repetitive than its ideas suggest.

Newcomers get helpful recap material and can follow the core story without exhaustive Remedyverse knowledge, though the early combat and build systems are not always explained as clearly as they could be.

The opening does not consistently teach the unusual systems well, and forced or unclear tutorials can leave players confused before the combat begins to make sense.

Zoe is the standout supporting character, with her radio banter and evolving bond with Dylan giving the journey warmth. Some sources find that relationship rushed or uneven, but the supporting cast is usually viewed positively.

Most supporting characters lack the depth and memorability of the two leads, often functioning as archetypes, villains, or exposition devices.

The game generally feels polished for its scale, but scattered technical hiccups, stuck enemies, audio cuts, and other small scuffs prevent it from feeling immaculate.

The game often feels short of final refinement, with rough systems, inconsistent presentation, and QA or balance issues making the ambitious design feel unfinished.

Dialogue is uneven: the best exchanges give Dylan and Zoe warmth and personality, while snarky banter and some overt thematic writing can feel forced.

Dialogue is often stiff and exposition-heavy, weakening scenes that already depend heavily on text.

Upgrade materials are criticized for being overcomplicated and awkwardly distributed, making some desired upgrades harder to complete than the rest of the progression system suggests they should be.

Research Points are limited enough to push selective skill investment. That can encourage focused builds, but it also reduces freedom to experiment broadly.

Dylan's growth from damaged FBC test subject to a more self-directed person lands strongly, and his evolving relationships give the story a clear emotional spine.

Rena and Soma divide opinion: some find their growth believable and touching, while others see bland interactions and underdeveloped arcs. Supporting character work is less consistently effective.

Exploration is a major draw thanks to vertical movement, hidden routes, bespoke side stories, and dense environmental storytelling. Confusing entrances and map limitations occasionally turn discovery into circling the same blocks.

Exploration is mostly map-based rather than free-roaming. Some appreciate the efficient mystery-game structure, while others strongly miss real detective work, towns, field exploration, and richer interaction.

The roughly 25-to-40-plus-hour scale gives the world room to breathe, but the campaign can outlast the combat system's depth. Late repetition makes the length feel excessive for some players.

Runs of roughly 10 to 16 hours are seen as a reasonable fit for the scope and price, without feeling excessively condensed.

Manhattan is packed with strange signage, abandoned interiors, warped streets, and small physical details that reinforce the setting, though some sewers, warehouses, and city blocks repeat too visibly.

Backgrounds and battle spaces frequently feel sparse, reused, or visually limited. Strong individual images cannot fully hide the small environmental asset pool.

Assist Mode is a major strength, with granular sliders and presets that can soften damage, dodge timing, resource pressure, and other difficulty spikes. It gives story-focused players unusually fine control over the experience.

Ease-of-play options are uneven: PC settings were called basic, while an Easy mode with automatic dodging gives struggling players a useful fallback.

The story is broadly praised for Dylan's redemption arc, surreal set pieces, and powerful character moments, but the central plot is less consistently loved. Some critics find the overarching tale, finale, or emotional transitions weaker than its best individual scenes.

The premise, lore, and central mystery can be compelling, but the story is highly divisive. Dense exposition, confusing structure, and limited dramatization prevent the narrative from matching its strongest ideas for many players.

Documents, recordings, side stories, and environmental details keep the FBC mythology rich, with the best optional material adding texture to Manhattan and the broader paranatural world.

Qliphah’s lore is dense and ambitious, with the Collapse, Tiny True, cult activity, and supernatural rules giving the setting plenty to dig into. The downside is that the sheer amount of background detail can become difficult to follow.

Performance is generally smooth on stronger hardware and PS5 Pro, while base-console stress scenes and Steam Deck play can show dips or compromises. The overall picture is solid rather than flawless.

Performance is generally smooth in the hands-on reports that discuss it, including stable PS5 Pro play and combat without noticeable slowdown.

Zone leveling, skill points, powers, and build choices often make exploration feel purposeful and Dylan's growth tangible. Criticism focuses on opaque power-level tracking, restrictive respecs, and progression that can become busywork.

Skills and passives can deepen builds, but their value is inconsistent. Some unlocks open tactical possibilities, while others feel marginal or can overpower the timing-based challenge.

The warped Manhattan, Patterning effects, impossible architecture, and surreal set pieces are among the game's clearest triumphs. Its visual identity is repeatedly described as bold, gorgeous, and unlike almost anything else in the genre.

The macabre cyberpunk/anime look has strong identity and often looks striking in combat. Reused assets, clashing character-art styles, and sparse environments keep the presentation from feeling consistently polished.

The strongest mechanical moments come from combining traversal, gravity shifts, powers, combat, and environmental ideas in ways that feel purpose-built for this world.

The two-character counter system rewards patience and learning, creating an interesting tactical experience for players willing to absorb its rules.

Dylan's guilt, childhood trauma, bond with Jesse, and search for redemption produce some of the game's most affecting scenes. Several critics describe moments that hit harder emotionally than they expected from a Control sequel.

The growing bond between the two leads gives several later story beats genuine emotional weight despite the uneven pacing around them.

The sequel keeps Control's uncanny blend of cosmic dread, bureaucratic absurdity, and offbeat humor alive across Manhattan. A minority feel the broader city setting dilutes some of the Oldest House's concentrated unease.

The dark post-apocalyptic tone generally lands well, with horror, sci-fi, and urban-fantasy elements giving Tokyo a distinct mood even when the story falters.

The roster has memorable supernatural designs and multiple factions, but ordinary encounters can still feel repetitive. Reused archetypes and endless smaller enemies weaken the sense of variety over time.

Regular enemies are widely criticized for repeating models, attacks, and encounter patterns, though a minority found later enemy and boss variety stronger than expected.

The strangest spaces still generate strong cosmic-horror unease, using impossible geometry, isolation, and paranormal imagery to make exploration feel unsettling.

Grotesque monsters, body-horror ideas, dark music, and unsettling imagery create effective horror tension even without constant graphic presentation.

Reality warping, particles, reflections, shadows, and large combat effects create spectacular scenes, though the sheer visual noise can occasionally hurt clarity or expose platform-specific image issues.

Counters, special moves, shaders, and corruption effects are frequently praised for making combat look energetic and distinctive.

The game is widely praised as a visual showcase, especially for lighting, surreal geometry, and dense effects. Lower-end modes can introduce softness, artifacting, or weaker lighting that undercuts that presentation.

Character models, illustrations, and cel-shaded combat can look excellent, but basic environments and inconsistent art treatment reveal the budget.

Most sources found the game highly enjoyable once its systems open up, especially when traversal, powers, and side quests click together. A few harsher takes found the repetitive combat too intrusive to sustain that fun.

When counters, combos, and tactical planning click, the game can be genuinely satisfying and fun. Repetition and weak pacing cause that enjoyment to fade for more critical players.

The combat-exploration loop can be exciting once a build comes together, but repetition is a persistent concern. Several critics felt the same encounter rhythm and combo patterns wore thin well before the campaign ended.

Queuing attacks and counters can be exciting moment to moment, but the repeated cycle of map selection, short scenes, and similar battles wears thin over time.

Movement and combat animation generally look polished and energetic, with finishers and traversal selling Dylan's speed and force. A few rough character-animation moments keep it from being uniformly pristine.

Combat animation is a standout, with smooth movement, convincing attack weight, and flashy sequences that sell counters and special moves.

Upgrades provide plenty of specialization on paper, but restrictive respecs, material requirements, and number-focused improvements can make the system feel cumbersome or less transformative than expected.

Many upgrades provide only small statistical changes and do little to alter the repetitive combat loop, though selective build choices can still matter.

Technical bugs are not portrayed as constant, but the glitches that do appear can be disruptive, including enemies getting stuck, traversal oddities, and occasional postgame or loading issues.

A tutorial-related trophy appeared to fail to track correctly, suggesting at least one noticeable progression or achievement bug.

Combat is responsive, aggressive, and capable of spectacular build-driven highs, but opinion splits sharply on its staying power. The strongest criticism targets repetitive strings, damage-spongy enemies, and a system that can feel shallower over a long campaign.

The counter-timeline battle system is the main attraction: timing color-matched counters, managing two characters, and pausing to plan can feel fresh and exhilarating. Its complexity, repetition, and uneven explanations make it equally capable of frustrating players.

Pacing is a recurring weakness: the opening can be slow, progression sometimes stalls the story, and several late sections drag. Other sources find the game accelerates impressively once it opens up.

Pacing varies sharply across the campaign. Slow openings, dense reading, and repetitive encounter structure can drag, though the chapter timer sometimes adds useful urgency.

The skill tree supports multiple builds and can be satisfying to optimize, yet several critics find its apparent depth overstated or its upgrades less transformative than the sprawling layout suggests.

There are many skills and passives with room for build experimentation, though some options feel redundant while others meaningfully reshape play.

Even skeptical critics repeatedly call the game singular. Its collision of character-action combat, non-Euclidean Manhattan, paranormal comedy, and art-house spectacle gives it an identity few other open-world games resemble.

Few sources dispute the game's distinctiveness. Its blend of visual novel, mystery structure, and timing-focused dual-character combat feels unlike most contemporary RPGs.

The sequel earns broad credit for refusing to repeat the original: its melee focus, warped open zones, gravity traversal, and structural experimentation feel unusually bold for a major sequel.

The game takes substantial mechanical risks, especially with its counter-timeline combat and hybrid structure. That willingness to experiment is one of its clearest strengths.

The opening can be daunting because movement, builds, enemy pressure, and RPG systems arrive before the combat fully blossoms. Once more tools unlock, the learning curve becomes far more rewarding.

Combat takes real time to understand, especially when managing two characters and several simultaneous systems. The payoff can be strong, but the early hours are demanding.

The default difficulty is one of the most disputed elements, especially in the opening hours and against tanky late bosses. Better builds and extensive Assist Mode settings help, but progression walls can still feel abrupt.

Difficulty is inconsistent. Some settings provide satisfying tactical pressure, while harder modes are frequently criticized for inflated health pools, damage sponges, or encounter spikes rather than smarter challenge.

One critic found repeated combat and progression interruptions strong enough to pull attention away from the world and story, reducing immersion despite the striking setting.

The switch between empowering combat and passive visual-novel reading can create a jarring disconnect that pulls attention away from the world.

Level design is a standout, from folding streets and gravity-shifted city blocks to stranger interior spaces that turn perspective itself into a traversal and puzzle mechanic.

Battlefields lack variety and are reused enough to make encounters feel visually repetitive.

Bosses are visually memorable but mechanically divisive. Some fights are inventive spectacles, while many others are criticized for huge health pools, limited move sets, and late-game battles that turn into endurance tests.

Bosses are among the strongest encounters, adding new patterns, phases, and visual spectacle that break up the repetition of regular fights.

Routine world events and chore-like objectives can clash with urgent story beats, making some mission structure feel like open-world padding rather than purposeful adventure.

Missions are strongest when they ask you to connect clues or make meaningful choices about where to spend your limited time. Too many still fall into a repetitive pattern of selecting a location, reading dialogue, and entering another battle.

Puzzles can be clever and visually inventive, especially when gravity and perspective are involved, but they also produce some of the game's most confusing or progress-stalling moments.

Password and clue puzzles can be satisfying when their logic clicks, but vague wording and unavailable information can make them feel more confusing than clever. Some players may end up guessing what the game wants rather than solving the puzzle naturally.

Side quests are a major strength, often delivering the funniest, strangest, and most memorable stories in the game. A smaller layer of repeated tasks and weaker rewards keeps the optional content from being uniformly excellent.

Later quests do a better job of making the mystery feel interactive, especially when progression depends on connecting clues yourself. Earlier objectives are more passive and can feel like a string of map selections, dialogue, and battles.

Hits, metal transformations, spatial ambience, and supernatural effects are repeatedly praised for giving combat and exploration weight. The audio mix helps sell both spectacle and unease.

Sound effects are effective at selling impacts, gross story moments, and combat intensity, making audio one of the more reliable presentation strengths.

The FBC's bureaucracy, Manhattan's altered neighborhoods, scattered documents, and small survivor stories deepen the setting at nearly every turn. World-building remains one of the sequel's most dependable strengths.

The ruined Tokyo setting has a strong identity, blending supernatural horror, a drug crisis, cult activity, and reality-warping catastrophe into a distinctive backdrop. Its ideas are compelling, though the game often explains the world more effectively than it lets you experience it firsthand.

Progress and power-level information can be buried too deeply in menus, making it harder than necessary to understand whether upgrades are meaningfully changing Dylan's strength.

The interface has style, but targeting, meter density, and busy combat information can become difficult to read when several enemies and systems overlap.

Navigation is one of the most consistent pain points. The flat map, unclear entrances, multi-level spaces, and gravity-bent geometry can leave players lost even when the world itself is visually compelling.

The selectable Tokyo map is functional and can expose many points of interest, yet its flat presentation can make the world feel more like a menu than a place.

Inputs are consistently praised for immediacy: attacks, dodges, air movement, and cancels respond quickly enough to support the game's fast, aggressive action.

Precise counter timing is central to play, but important inputs can feel inconsistent in boss fights or stressful multi-enemy situations. Some sources also note imprecise or awkward timing responses.

The cast is usually praised for grounding the strange material, especially the supporting performances, but Dylan's delivery is unusually divisive and receives a few pointed complaints.

Voice work is generally well received, with the Japanese performances and the two leads drawing positive comments.

Dylan is deliberately awkward and damaged, and most sources warm to his vulnerability, guilt, and dry personality. A vocal minority strongly dislike his writing, voice, or demeanor and would rather have stayed with Jesse.

Rena and Soma are the strongest characters for several sources, with an appealing contrast and growing partnership. Others find them underwritten, so attachment depends heavily on how well the central dynamic lands.

One source specifically criticizes loadout management for making important changes more cumbersome than they need to be during an action-heavy game.

Terminology, clue tracking, and reference material can be difficult to navigate. A stronger encyclopedia or reference system would make the dense systems easier to manage.

Build experimentation, postgame exploration, missed side content, Resonant cycles, and New Game Plus-style interest give enthusiastic players clear reasons to return after the credits.

Replayability is mixed: New Game Plus offers a reason to return, but limited postgame content and no branching routes reduce alternate-playthrough appeal.

The Portuguese localization is received positively overall, including the dub, but the reviewed build had enough missing or inconsistent localized lines to keep it from being fully seamless.

Awkward phrasing, inconsistent clue wording, and grammatical errors can interfere with both story comprehension and puzzle solving.

Positive value comments point to the substantial campaign, side content, replay potential, and localized pricing, making the package feel generous to players already invested in its style.

At about $24.99, the game is generally seen as fairly priced for its 10-16 hour scope and unusual combat, especially for players already drawn to the concept.

Music and licensed tracks remain strong and often memorable, but some critics miss a single transcendent set piece on the level of Remedy's most iconic musical moments.

The music generally fits the dark action and several battle or vocal tracks stand out, but repetition and limited track variety keep it from being uniformly memorable.

Technical performance is usually strong, particularly on high-end PC hardware and PS5 Pro, with ambitious effects running smoothly in many accounts. Some platforms and heavy scenes still show frame pacing, image-quality, or optimization compromises.

Technical performance is a relative strength in the sources that test it, with stable console play and solid PC behavior at high settings.

Enemy behavior draws a sharp complaint for leaning on hectic pressure rather than convincing intelligence, making some fights feel artificially chaotic.

The camera and targeting can struggle when arenas get crowded or fights move vertically. Mis-targeted attacks and awkward framing around large or airborne enemies are recurring frustrations.

The lack of branching routes limits how much the story can meaningfully diverge and reduces reasons to revisit the campaign for alternate outcomes.

Documents, recordings, hidden reports, and other collectibles make exploration feel worthwhile by feeding the world's mysteries rather than functioning as empty checklist filler.

Several takes describe the game as undercooked or insufficiently realized, with strong concepts that feel short of the refinement needed to form a cohesive whole.

Facial work is one of the visual weak spots, with some expressions looking stiff or strange compared with the quality of the environments and effects.

Despite changing protagonist, setting, and combat style, the sequel usually retains Control's strange humor, paranormal logic, lore, and visual identity. A smaller group feels the open-world structure leaves too much of the original's magic behind.

Requiring physical fast-travel points can be inconvenient, but it also nudges players to stay in the world and stumble into side content rather than teleporting past it.

One critical take finds progression too dependent on repeating activities and combat to keep pace with enemy scaling, turning advancement into unwanted grind.

The compact battle structure and map-driven progression are described as an excellent fit for handheld play.

DualSense feedback is used effectively to reinforce powers and supernatural moments, adding tactile texture without being treated as a defining feature.

Passcode and clue guidance is often too vague or unintuitive, making some puzzles feel like exercises in interpreting the game's wording rather than solving the mystery.

Combat screens can become overloaded with meters, timers, and targeting information. The interface can still look stylish, but readability drops sharply in crowded fights.

Attempts at humor do not consistently land, with at least one source finding the jokes flat.

Loot and world rewards can make exploration satisfying, especially when discoveries feed upgrades, but some reward placement and generic material boxes feel less thoughtfully integrated.

The overall response is mixed: admirers see an ambitious cult-style RPG with excellent combat ideas, while detractors find it repetitive, under-polished, and poorly explained.

Stopping or slowing time is a valuable tactical tool that can make complex battles manageable. The automatic slowdown behavior can also become intrusive when players simply want to wait.

Precision platforming becomes frustrating when gravity changes, tight trajectories, or awkward geometry demand more exact movement than the traversal system comfortably provides.

Tutorials are one of the most repeated complaints. They range from adequate at the basics to dense, excessive, or incomplete when the combat starts layering more advanced rules.

The dark and gruesome material is often conveyed through description rather than constant graphic imagery, a restraint that at least one source preferred.

Weapon forms offer different rhythms and build possibilities, but critics disagree on how meaningfully those choices change combat. Some forms feel expressive, while others seem like variations on the same basic loop.

Dual-character commands are reasonably accessible through the face buttons and D-pad, though the broader combat load still makes the scheme demanding.

The zoned Manhattan is admired for feeling hand-crafted, vertical, and distinctly Remedy rather than like a generic checklist map. Still, some critics see bloat, repeated activities, or a loss of the first game's tighter spatial focus.

The advertised tactical counter-timeline concept accurately matches how the battle system actually plays.

PS5 Pro receives especially strong praise for ray-traced reflections, shadows, reconstruction quality, and a cleaner presentation, while Steam Deck support is notably less convincing.