well that was underwhelming...
it is so apparent that netflix tried to milk this series like a cash cow, which is funny as the first season is supposed to be a direct critique of capitalism! would've been miles better if they fleshed out the newer characters instead of hammering us on the older (and frankly, boring) ones. show lacked depth and suspense, pacing was strange, and stakes felt as if they were at an all time LOW despite people dying left and right. yet i enjoyed seeing yim si-wan being the president of the sassy-man apocalypse.Was this review helpful to you?
He forgot to read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu
Well, it's complicated.Let me try to explain. The plot was intricate and creative. The characters are all high calibre. However, I found that having finished the series I was unsure if I really enjoyed it or not.
Good storyline, great cliffhanger at the end, plot twists and boring games. It was a good story, just not quite what I was hoping for.
I really enjoyed Squid Game1 and was very excited to watch the sequel. Unfortunately, I found myself really struggling with this series. The atmosphere and tension that made season 1 so compelling is sadly largely absent here. It was well thoughtfully and very obviously well written out and executed, but for me it was too much slowly. It felt kinda dull for most of the show and didn’t really catch my attention until about 3 episode in.
There are some characters and relationships that I liked, but honestly so much of this just fell so disappointingly flat for me.
I guess that is all a matter of personal taste, though.
I'd really like to rate this season one higher, as it had a lot of interesting stuff I enjoyed in it.
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Quit game
im not sure how to describe this, but the best word i can find is "nothing".Story :
so the story basically the mc trying to stop the "game" once and for all, but somehow endedup inside of it. i mean mc knew best that the game wont stop as long as there is a "client" that sponsors the game. so why ? why get in the game ? there are no guarantee that the "client" is on the island. in the end, the game ended up in a riot between players and staffs. why raise the weapon ? he knew the plan busted so bail out with as much people as possible is top priority. like mc doesnt even know what is he doing anymore, nothing changes, history repeated itself.
and the characters is pretty shite, hard to remember. i'll try my best at least with the "main roles":
-Mc : i dont think the mc knew what he is doing.
-The cop : what is he even doing ?. you are a cop, you work with evidence. you got plenty recruiter corpse, mr.kim corpse, soldiers corpse. why is he a cop in the first place if he cant see this ?
-Player no.230 : the joker of the game, special role yet pretty much got nohing, i cant see he barely can act.
-Player no.120 : got decent character, well your typical woke representative. somehow an allrounder that can do everything that makes me think he(she? they?) plays mc, however the biggest hypocrite in the series. playing heroes risking people life just because you want to cut your pp ? what a joke.
-the other players that on the main role list : why are they even considered main role ? some had some backgrounds but too insignificant. its okay for supporting but main role ?, is it becaus of the poster ?.
-Guard girl : decent character, but at wrong series. if i were the writer i would have keep this one as mc for a spin-off story as the guard pov
*special note : the recruiter has no significant story yet damn the actor is good, short but so memorable.
Acting :
the panicking player on the first game acting is awkward, toilet battle is awkward, im pretty sure the night riot is awkward too but the blinking lights saved it. my acting score is purely for the mc and recruiter russian roulette, just for that scene its worth high score. that was freaking good
Music :
that theme song, come on its a sequel know its iconic but atleast it should be rearranged or remixed or anything. and for the first game why flymetothemoon ? i believe there are a lot of old korean song that would fit better, arirang alone for example if it could be rearranged into a deadly vibe song it would be so cool.
and nah doubt will ever rewatch this, or even unless you got somehow fomo about it dont even start. the only factor of rewatching this is how good s3 is, yet even if its good still likely wont rewatch this
overall :
nothing in it, no story development no good character. not a thing just a hype thing. oh just 1 good thing, the picture pretty good they took the shot nicely or at least some of it does. not worth much of a try but well. thumbs up for the promotion team good job really, since this series is popular lets go milk this franchise until its dried out
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season 2 is simply useless and adds absolutely nothing to the main plot
season 2, apparently, was just made to make netflix and the screenwriter/director of this poorly written series even richer.the first episode is promising in starting to explain some things that weren't clear in season 1. it was good to see and give some resolution to gong yoo's character, for example, but what about the rest? what about the police officer's big brother? they waste about 4 episodes in that same nonsense of making people play and die. by the 5th episode i was already tired of watching it because... well, i don't want to see a remake of season 1, i don't want to see finalists in a game that already featured a finalist in the first season, i want to see something different. and they conveniently let this little difference appear in the last episode, giving NO ADDITIONAL EXPLANATION about various plots left along the way of this story. everything was done to trap idi0t viewers like me to give more money to the useless netflix and associates and in about 3 years or 1 decade later they will present a decent explanation for the main reason this game exists.
i can't believe i wasted half an entire day thinking i would see something more interesting, or even minimally interesting. the rehearsal of a revolution in the last episode could have taken a different path, but, no, the screenwriter consciously chooses to tie the story back to the starting point. if so, why does season 2 exist? it doesn't make sense!
and the idiot police officer who doesn't even know how to observe and understand that the boatman is an enemy? did he not suspect that his brother had spared him by shooting him? didn't you think it was too much of a coincidence to have been rescued? what kind of fuck7ng cop is this guy who thinks he's going to be able to solve a shitty game like this if he doesn't know how to put two brain cells together to understand it? you can't have patience with stories like that...
and what's with the boss of all this shit? his wife dies without a transplant and he does all this to arrange and create an underground market for organs? one thing i don't like about SK drama plots is that they exaggerate the actions of villainous characters too much. the guy needs to have a very convincing reason to come up with all this madness. having lost his wife does not seem credible.
the NK girl: she is useless. they created her character to bring some drama behind the scenes of the game, showing that the guys who kill also have some conscience or some criteria when doing what they are doing, lol. at the end, the father of that child with cancer simply dies like a cockroach and we don't know what the point of this parallel story existing within this crappy poorly written sequence. and no, she's still bad even though she doesn't leave her half-alive to have her organs removed. f7ck if she has a daughter in NK and does everything to see her again. killing people is immoral. period.
about photography: same thing
about the soundtrack: same thing
about the plot: it's more of the same, with the exception of episode 1 with gong yoo's character.
it will be easy to watch season 1 and skip straight to the future season 3 when it comes out in a decade.
about the performances in general: most are good, including TOP, who is a relief point in the plot
about this series: it's overrated and the screenwriter lost track of how to resolve what he presented in season 1. the last episode is extremely ridiculous. is it some analogy to the impossibility of beating the system, whatever it may be? maybe, but it seemed more like a war movie plot with so much tiring shooting.
summary: don't waste your time. the show is overrated and the writer and netflix just want you to give them your money. it's an unnecessary continuation that certainly won't be needed when they decide to make season 3. there are better series that respect the viewer's time and intelligence.
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Squid Game Season 2 hits on the red light.
Everyone knew that Squid Game was the talk of the town when it first aired, taking the world by storm. Hundreds of millions of people streamed it on Netflix, setting an all-time high record that no show has beaten to this day. So, when the second season was announced shortly after the first one ended, people were ecstatic, eager to have their questions answered when it finally aired.Just to preface this "review," I personally did not like the first season. I understood why people found it fresh concept-wise, but for someone who has been consuming the "death game" genre for years, the idea was nothing original. It just boiled down to how the creators would put their own spin on it.
My main issue with the first season was its inconsistent writing. You could tell the writer had incredible ideas but struggled to integrate them smoothly into the plot. There were also unnecessary elements that dragged the show longer than necessary (one example being Il-Nam's ten-minute monologue at the end of the season).
That said, I did appreciate the character dynamics and the overall simplicity of the story. I genuinely believe that simplicity was the key factor in its success, especially considering Squid Game served as many people's first experience of the "death game" genre.
When the second season dropped during the holiday season, I decided to give it another chance. I thought perhaps I had been too harsh on the first season, as I only rated it two stars. Maybe the holiday spirit would help me enjoy the new season more.
Trust me, I really wanted to like it. I truly did. I focused on a few good things during the first two episodes, but as time passed, I realized that the one thing I genuinely liked about the first season—its memorable characters—was stripped off from this one.
Although the second season introduced a plethora of new characters, none of them were memorable. They lacked depth, making them utterly forgettable. To be honest, I couldn’t even remember a single name by the time it ended.
Plot-wise, it felt as though the creators sacrificed the show’s core focus to expand the narrative. This season felt rushed, with too many things happening at once, which negatively impacted both the quality of the storyline and the development of the characters.
As for the games, while most were new, they were colorful like those in the first season but lacked the shock factor that made the first season interesting.
Squid Game, like many other series bearing the "second season curse," unfortunately wasn’t safe from landing on the red light. I attribute much of this to the abrupt, and unfulfilling season finale. But who knows? Perhaps what this season lacked might become the strongest element of the next.
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very much the bridge to get to the finale but i still had fun
not as entertaining as the first season but then, how could it be? we already know the gag so i guess the challenge for this show was to sustain it and i acknowledge that that's hard. i think it still had its charm and fun moments but i did feel like it is very much the middle season. the bridge to get to the climax which means the pacing here really started slow for me. we didn't get new insights to the game or story. we're still almost at the same place we were when the first season ended... pretty much? i mean we got a new perspective with park gyuyoung's character as one of the pink-tracksuit army but again, not enough insight.we got a bunch of new characters. acting-wise, i have no complaints here. they delivered in that category alright but these characters are mostly unforgettable. i think it's a mistake not to give them some sort of background stories just like what they did in the first season, even just a little. instead, a lot of the character are already connected somehow and the background stories are just off the screen. the conflicts and fights didn't feel as impactful and this resulted in me not caring much who dies next. well, i do care (especially to that mom who is also a senior! my queen!) but not as intensely as i wanted to. i want to be moved emotionally and to feel hurt and sad. i guess kang haneul's character might be my favorite one but shout out to TOP (man, i haven't seen this guy in years!). and the controversial one which is park sunghoon's trans woman character. i acknowledge this is a step forward in korean media but overall, they really didn't do much with that storyline so there's nothing much to say anyway. both things can be true.
back in season 1, my favorite parts where the games to be honest because it was just entertaining to watch and fun. the betrayals, the desperation, when characters suddenly switched, the drama and conflicts and chaos etc. that was just fun to watch for me back then (hey it was 2020. i needed entertainment lol). i'm glad they changed some of the games but of course, that first one remained. i get it, it was iconic. i just think this was all creative how they incorporated children's games. and i just love the sets and visuals of it all. but i think i'm in the minority because from what i gathered, the part where the contestants vote whether they continue the game or not is the more popular one because that scenes really got a lot of screen time.
but they did leave some mystery with whatever's happening on that boat with junho and i did like the twist with player 001 being there in the trenches with them. i wish he played more mind games with them to be honest lol still... it had its fun moments despite losing the shock factor. i am still gonna be seated for that third season so
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Middle seasons are always messy- let's keep patience
I must say, it is yet again proved that middle season's are always messy, feel incomplete and literally like they are going nowhere. Why? Because things start at a standstill and they end at yet another standstill.I felt that there were too many familiar faces, so I was kind of bouncing whenever I saw one of them, as if I have met someone from my apartment -"Oh even he is here, even she is here".
The series was quite engaging (not as crazy as first one) though many parts were quite predictable due to 1st season itself. I feel that the tension about the games was less in this was because- 1. There was someone who knew exactly what the motive of the games was, 2. Unity and cowardly betrayals that didn't give much impact.
(LITTLE SPOILER HERE)
But the highlight of the season and the reason for 1 additional star in all criteria- Park Sung Hoon. I am amazed how he chose this very role as an image breaker. It won my heart for various reasons- it's a transwoman character yet she has charm and depth, next is the person who performed it so well, I was all the while just admiring him with almost tears in my eyes like thanks for not being a psycho here😭.
Second, Gong Yoo. Amazing to watch him being a psycho on the other hand. His eyes robbed all my attention, where I was really wondering what this character is made of, what it's past might really have been.
Overall, I can see why people are disappointed, but this 2nd season is clearly better Gyeongseong creature 2 where I was in utter amazement as to how they could test our patience for this.
I hope the 3rd season comes with maybe not a bang one end, but please with a plausible and convincing end, even if it has death. We'll take it if it is worth it. Unnecessary killings will not be entertained.
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Worth the hype? YES
i watched s1 with no expectations loved it, and watched it with a lot of expectations still loved it from start it starts hooking u never drops in the ways, they added a lot of thinks packed up all are in the right direction some pros and cons are therecons are negligible just few words sit back and watch it ur going to love it
ur going to have the thrill factor, suspense, coincedce as all the satisfying.
some disappointments are
1. there is another season i thought they would finish up here but nope
2. some of the chracters which are negative and postive doesn't have much impact i thought it got wasted.
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A Season of Disappointment
What was the point of this season? Honestly, I couldn't tell you. Each passing episode led to more and more boredom. The last episode was exciting, but that is a given because it's a setup for the last season. They handled this season in typical Netflix fashion, it could've be one season. I'm sure the final season could have easily been meshed into this one.The story was weak. It was all filler. You're introduced to new characters, but barely. just enough to fill up time. It takes forever to get to the actual games. There's more time spent with random nonsense than being back in the game. They could've built the entire second season into 2 episodes of the final season with everything you do actually learn from the seven episodes.
The new characters, albeit a short time of getting to know them were WONDERFUL. They had a selection of great actors and they really brought their characters to life. You immediately hate who you're supposed to hate and love who they convince you to love. The portrayal of these characters are perfect. If ever we're told, "I originally had *insert actor here* in mind for this character" it'd be an immediate no for me. I couldn't imagine these characters being portrayed by anyone else.
The music is the same as Season 1. A focal part of the show, but nothing too memorable and keep on repeat.
I would rewatch the season again, but only go to through both seasons before the final season releases. Other than that, I'd easily skip this season.
Overall, once the fluff is over with, you spend the last four episodes in nostalgia over what made the show such a big impact three years ago. You learn about new characters, why they're there and the thought process of their desperation for the money. It's a great show overall and the new characters are great, but the delivery of this season was terrible.
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Enjoyable, but falls short to its preceding season
I don't mean to offend anyone and I'll keep it short... This is just my personal opinion, but there's nothing really special in this season for me. It's still enjoyable to watch, but not exciting. I found some things to be quite expectable as well, plot-wise.As for the characters, aside from the main ones from S1 and Hyun Ju (for what the character is, what it means/represents), I felt they pretty much lacked some serious depth. I didn't feel any special connection with them or felt invested in their stories. Actors like Im Si Wan, Kang Ha Neul... It seemed like they were just there to fill the plot and maybe attract/retain viewership.
I would say the most interesting bits of the season might be the possibility of In Ho being Il Nam's son (he said his son is allergic to milk and In Ho said he doesn't drink milk) and that No Eul might be Sae Byeok's relative/sister (both from North Korea, both having "Kang" as family name, one's name meaning "sunset" and the other "dawn").
Like someone said, maybe this season really is just a filler for S3. I hope S3 will be quite better than this one, if not better than S1. Otherwise, I honestly think that it will just be Netflix trying to "milk the cow".
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Was it really worth waiting 3 years?
No, but don't misunderstand me was it bad no was it super good no it was a bit in between. Although season 1 was super good, season 2 could really take an example. They were better off ditching the old cast completely. Don't get me wrong the new cast is good too. we have for example; a pregnant woman, old lady, mother and son,... but they could still bring in a new cast to play new games. there were a total of 3 games of which we already knew 1 (green light, red light) and 2 new games (Mingle) and (Six-Legged Pentathlon) if you ask me which game I liked best, I would say the Six-Legged Pentathlon was the most fun. because Mingle's sound already gave me a bad feeling. what had a major disadvantage was that there were so few new games. The entire first season featured six deadly games in nine episodes, while season 2 featured three deadly games in 7 episodes. The first was a repetition which I found very long-winded. each episode lasts about an hour which I thought was okay. I was able to watch this series in one day. I still advise you to watch these 7 episodes because there will be a season 3. Hopefully we don't have to wait 3 years for that. Thank you for reading this far and I hope I was able to help you.Was this review helpful to you?
New Characters, Games, Twists & POV - But No Progress in Storyline | Filler Season
With all the marketing hype around Season 2, I wondered if it was truly remarkable or just overhyped due to a lack of substantial plot. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter, feeling more like a bridge to Season 3. As a die-hard fan since Season 1, I eagerly anticipated Season 2 for its deeper story and new character journeys. While it had binge-worthy moments, it ultimately left me feeling a bit cheated, as it answered no questions and the story didn't progress as expected for a sequel.What I Liked in S2
➥ Biggest Thrill: Discovering Player 001 (no spoilers, but it's an early twist and the best one!).
➥ Overall Games/Thrills & Suspense: Maintains the same intensity as Season 1.
➥ New Characters: Offers glimpses into the Pink Soldiers, Front Man, and Recruiter's perspectives. Wi Ha Joon's police character reveals the game's ecosystem is larger than expected.
➥ Relationships: Explores the dynamics of being pitted against family, friends, and lovers in a survival game, highlighting how humanity can deteriorate under pressure.
➥ Best Character: Park Sung Hoon's portrayal of an ex-army man/trans woman is compelling. His character arc and acting are excellent, and the off-game challenges faced by a trans woman are well depicted. Also, kudos to mother/son characters - done well!
What I Disliked:
➥ Lack of Answers: No insights on why the game started, how soldiers are selected, or why Front Man joined. We only get glimpses of their backstories and therefore the story has not made any substantial progress.
➥ Under-utilized Characters: Too many characters, but none leave a strong impression. Big names like Im Siwan, Kang Ha Neul, Park Gyu Young, Lee Jin Wook, and Wi Ha Joon feel underused. Perhaps they’ll have bigger roles in Season 3, but this season lacked enough development time for them.
➥ Non-sensical Antagonists: TOP and Noh Jae Won, and other players who take the role of antagonists felt underused again. Their role seemed more comedic than having the negative aura something that S1 antagonists carried out very well.
Overall:
I really hope the next season provides answers and better utilizes the characters. This one seemed directionless, produced mainly to capitalize on the hype and global sensation the show has become. Even the characters' plans in the show felt futile. While I love the show, its brand, and marketing, a compelling story is crucial for it to succeed and for me to like and rate it higher.
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