I want to start by apologizing if this post seems a bit disjointed. I’ve simply gathered all my previous comments that I wrote to different people in various places and decided to compile them into one single post here. So if you truly care about this game series, I kindly ask you to read the entire post and share your thoughts on the matter.

Unfortunately, the game left many unresolved questions related to the curse. During all the time we tried to reach the island and the place where Basilius was kept, we were shown only a short cutscene lasting about a minute and five minutes of running from rats. What did we learn about Basilius and Aelia? Practically nothing. We only found out that the first outbreak of the plague was connected to them, but the game didn't answer the remaining questions. The first game gave us more information: the curse is hereditary in the De Rune family, the carrier can control rats, and rats appear wherever the carrier is. If the carrier’s blood is injected into another person, they also become a carrier — though not fully. There was also a book that described the curse and ways to contain it. Moreover, it became clear that rats had appeared before and that people in the past knew how to fight them. For instance, the d’Ombrage castle had special mechanisms for controlling rats.

It feels like after Chapter 12, the developers ran out of resources or lost interest in continuing work on the second game. Because of that, Chapters 12 through 17 take only about two hours to complete, whereas before, a single chapter could take just as long. It seems like the ending was just written to somehow compensate for the rest of the story and make the game memorable.

The first part was much better in terms of storytelling. The antagonists had interesting goals and valid reasons for seeking out Hugo, and the characters acted more intelligently and played more meaningful roles. For example, their mother, Béatrice De Rune, was portrayed as a smart woman who, even without formal knowledge, almost fully prepared the elixir to help Hugo. She only needed five more minutes to finish — just one ingredient was missing. Later, Lucas added that final ingredient using the book.

И что мы получили во второй части?

And what did we get in the second part? An absolutely useless character who does almost nothing and is only needed in the final chapters as a catalyst for a few key events. That raises a question: why was the Order, which had been studying the Macula for nearly 800 years, so ineffective? If the only way to stop the rats was to kill the carrier, then why didn’t Vaudin, the Order’s alchemist, do that from the beginning and instead tried to heal him?

It also makes no sense why Amicia went searching for the next carrier if it was clearly stated that they’re born only once every few centuries and exclusively in the De Rune family. Who exactly is she hoping to find? The game had massive potential to uncover the mysteries of the Macula, the rats, the De Rune bloodline, and the source of the curse — and even to find a cure for Hugo. But in the end, we got none of that.

We only got information about a single carrier and protector, which didn’t really tell us anything useful, and absurd antagonists in the form of the Count and his wife with even more ridiculous motives.

I get that the Count probably had an expensive ship. But there’s one important point that raises questions:

1. During Arnaud’s rescue, we killed all of the Count’s men on the island. To warn the Count about our escape, someone would’ve first had to reach the scene and then return to him to report our departure.

2. There were no ships on our side of the island. So logically, the Count’s ships must’ve been either on the opposite side or at the sanctuary — and getting there, as Sophia mentioned, was no short trip. And with the rats involved, it would’ve taken even more time.

3. While the Count was trying to reach his ship and gather his crew, we could’ve already sailed far away. This is confirmed in the game itself: it’s mentioned that we sailed “beyond the horizon” (at that distance, neither binoculars nor a spyglass would help).

A logical question arises: how did the Count even manage to find us in the open sea if we could’ve sailed in any direction?

The first part gave us more answers, even if not to everything. That was the reason to create a second part — and yet, here we are. You truly feel sorry for the main characters, and all that’s left after the playthrough is emptiness and sadness.

I don’t understand why the developers didn’t give us a choice when it came to saving Hugo. Why should I have to save the damn world, if throughout two games we were only hunted, Hugo was scared, and the Macula was constantly provoked into developing further? Yes, there were good people, but after everything, I don’t believe Amicia would’ve killed Hugo for their sake. It’s obvious that her brother means more to her than anyone else.

We know that Basilius was consumed by the Macula, which caused the first Justinian plague. However, Julia didn’t make it to him in time to calm his mind. In our case, Amicia was only a few steps away from Hugo, but the developers didn’t allow us to save him. I’m sure there was a chance — it’s just that no one had ever tried to stop the final stage before, which is why all the alchemists assumed that once the Macula takes over the host’s mind, that’s the end. The game clearly showed us that Hugo was still alive, because he cleared the path for Amicia and Lucas, not letting the rats eat them.

Many people like to defend the Order by saying there were only two carriers: Basilius and Hugo — and that’s why the Order didn’t have enough time or data to study it. But then what’s the point of the Order? They built fortresses all over the world to contain the Macula — even though they supposedly knew nothing about it. SERIOUSLY? And where exactly is it said there were only two carriers? We were only shown two — no one ever said there weren’t more.

My opinion on this: In the first part, Vitalis clearly stated that the Macula had long appeared in children from the De Rune bloodline. So I don’t believe that Basilius with Aelia and Amicia with Hugo were the only Carrier and Protector pairs. The game simply told us about these specific characters and omitted a lot of other details. Because of this, any theory can be both proven and disproven. That’s why I’m sure the Macula appeared in previous centuries, but back then its hosts were immediately eliminated to prevent the curse from spreading. The game doesn’t tell us about other carriers, and we only learned about Basilius while exploring the island of Kalybeli. So we can’t rule out that the number of hosts was much higher than we know now.

The game clearly stated that Basilius was the same age as Hugo — and Hugo was only five years old at that point. Yet the Order managed to build a massive underground facility, the construction of which would take decades even today. But this was only the year 500. The only conclusion to draw is that the Macula existed before Basilius’ birth. But of course, nothing was explained to us about that. Even in the Order’s records, all we learned was that Basilius had been separated from Aelia — and that’s it.

The second part just turned into nothing. We were forced to run around and explore stuff without getting any real answers — [they might as well have dropped us on an empty map: no answers — no point]. Then, just for the sake of a sad and more memorable ending, they gave the antagonists absurd motivations to kill the main character. The funniest thing is that after half the island was destroyed, the Count’s guards calmly went looking for us and executed Arnaud like nothing had happened — even though earlier, when rats first appeared (without any damage to the island), they were already panicking and trying to act. Isn’t that ridiculous? If your city were split in half, would you just go out for a stroll down the street too?

I’m willing to accept Hugo’s death. But what really bothers me is that the developers deliberately led to it — without answering many questions, without finding a cure, and with antagonists that had questionable motivations.

When the Count attacked Amicia, he admitted that he had suspected from the start that Hugo was the Carrier. But how could he have known that, if during their first meeting everything was calm and quiet? There were no rats, no emotional outbursts — only the moment when Arnaud attacked him. And I don’t believe the Count could have heard Arnaud’s conversation with Amicia and Hugo in all that noise from such a distance.

So it turns out the Count decided Hugo was the Carrier purely on a hunch. They killed his mother and tried to destroy Amicia, only realizing Hugo truly had “divine powers” when he summoned the rats after seeing his mother’s corpse.

And what if Hugo had been just a regular boy? Then they would’ve killed his family for absolutely no reason, based purely on a guess. Isn’t that absurd? The developers created a situation where everything became irreversible, but failed to offer a logical explanation for how or why.

The ending feels like an attempt to cover up the game’s flaws and generate a strong emotional reaction. But after something like this, players are more likely to ignore all the inconsistencies. After the scene at Basilius’ corpse, where Amicia realized Hugo needed peace to recover, the characters should’ve been allowed to walk away. After everything they had been through, they could’ve finally found peace — or at least led Hugo’s death to a more gradual and meaningful conclusion, not the way it ended, where there were no chances left.

I really loved this series and thoroughly enjoyed playing both parts. But the ending just broke me. I was ready to accept the main character’s death if it had been presented and explained properly. But the developers simply killed off the main character for emotional effect — and I can’t accept that.

I can’t deny that the ending evoked strong emotions in me and revealed the characters’ stories in a very powerful way. However, I also want to point out some flaws that, in my opinion, led to such an irreversible outcome.

I’ve noticed that many people are willing to overlook the weak sequence of events and the fact that some questions from previous chapters were left unanswered. But that’s not right! 

The developers need to be made aware of their mistakes so they can fix them in the next installment of the game. Only then will we get a truly high-quality game that won’t cause such a wide range of conflicting opinions. на русский

I would like the developers to continue Amicia’s story in the third part, so that she finds all the answers about the curse — and, ultimately, finds Hugo. Since we didn’t see a proper death scene for Hugo, maybe the fan theory that it was actually the Macula talking to Amicia at the end of the second part could turn out to be true.

​Additionally, I'd like to offer a few more thoughts on the matter.

1. I strongly disagree with the notion that Hugo was a walking catastrophe. After the events of the first game, he learned to control his emotions — and that very control allowed the Macula to fall dormant. Because of that, the rats disappeared for a full six months.

However, the beekeepers’ attack on Amicia reawakened the Macula. From that point on, nearly every second enemy in the game only worsened Hugo’s emotional state by hurting the people he cared about.

No matter how emotionally resilient Hugo might have been for his age, he was still a child. It's completely normal for a kid his age to have breakdowns — especially considering everything he had been through. In this regard, Amicia was always right when she said he wasn’t a monster — the real monsters were the ones who had tormented him all this time.

If we had been allowed to reach the house in the mountains, which their mother had mentioned, perhaps Hugo could have found peace there. That peace might have helped him keep the Macula in check. And with time, as he grew older and matured, he would have learned to better regulate his emotions.

1. Why might the theory that it was the Macula speaking to Amicia at the end — and not Hugo — actually be valid?

We know next to nothing about the true nature of the Macula. Perhaps it hoped that, by pushing Amicia to kill her brother, it could finally subdue her and start fresh — while secretly continuing to gather strength inside Hugo's body, hidden somewhere deep underground. After all, the rats cocooned Basilius’ body, preventing it from decaying — perhaps for the very same reason.

But the Macula miscalculated. After what happened, Amicia will never stop until she uncovers the truth. I believe the third game has the potential to deliver a truly heart-wrenching reunion — a moment where, after surviving unimaginable trials and searching for answers, Amicia finally regains the one ray of light that had kept her going all this time. And that light, of course, is Hugo.

I can already imagine the emotional explosion when Amicia sees him again — how she’ll break down and do everything in her power to fix the mistake she made at the end of the second game.

There was something similar in the first season of Attack on Titan, when Eren saved Armin by sacrificing himself. Mikasa, having lost her reason to live, ultimately chose to go on — to carry Eren’s memory. And when she saw him emerge from the Titan’s neck, it was a deeply emotional moment that moved audiences around the world back in 2013.

I’m not asking for that exact scene to be replicated — far from it. It shouldn’t be copied, but rather surpassed. We deserve to see raw, authentic human emotion — a journey where the protagonist, after bearing the weight of her brother’s death and her failure to protect him, finally gets back the very thing she had lost. And after everything she went through, she deserves that.

1. Hugo spoke in a way far too mature for his age, which raised suspicions. I agree that mentally, Hugo was far beyond his biological years. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was still a child — one who had spent his entire life locked away. He only started to truly experience the world during the last eight months, and with such limited life experience, it seems unlikely that he could speak with such profound maturity.