2025-08-06

Sly 2 - Band of Thieves

So I played the first game earlier this year knowing that Sly 2 was where it gets really good. And that’s exactly right, I would’ve gone crazy over this game if I had it as a kid. The maps are all huge and dense, and I loved how missions mostly took place within the world. It’s impressive how seamlessly they’re integrated with the story. Since each episode is like a heist, all the missions involve gathering intel, setting up the plan, and then executing on it.

The missions have a lot of variety, which is both good and bad. It’s cool to see a new minigame just for one little level, but sometimes they’re overly tedious in lieu of depth. Way more of these than the first game too, you spend very little time in normal platforming levels. Instead, the hub map is the normal platforming level, which you learn while bouncing between episodes. Also new in this game, you get to play as Murray and Bentley. They have their own unique playstyle, but neither are good at stealth platforming.

That’s the biggest sign that it’s not just a platformer, it’s some other miscellaneous thing that will do whatever gameplay they find applicable to the story. It’s like the story and gameplay are both willing to bend to accommodate each other, which you don’t see in games that really want to have only one genre, or really want to tell a certain story. And the writing is really good! It’s still like a kids cartoon, but the jokes are great and there’s some really impactful twists. Everything is kinda grown up from the first game, it takes things more seriously and knows how to be wittier.

So, despite having similar flaws as the first game, Sly 2 easily beats it in every way. I can easily see this being someone’s favorite all-time game, even mine in the timeline where I had a PS2 instead of a Gamecube.

Still, I’m giving it a score of 2/3. I don’t think it’s going to click for everyone, but it is well worth checking out.