With basically everyone's psyche being related to everyone else's psyche in this game, it really does start to make the story feel... almost oddly flat with how little there is outside of the main plot. Zanotto, Hollis, Ford, Compton, Cassie, Helmut, Bob, Lucy - you weirdly never go into Otto's head, I'm guessing he was cut - so much of the game is these characters and their perceptions of each other. You never really get to explore some random bystanding weirdo's mind, like the asylum inmates in 1. And for all the cross-charactering, Cassie never appears in Compton's mind, and likewise Compton is barely present for Cassie.
How many of these people's problems could have been resolved by, oh, I don't know, LITERALLY ANY PSYCHONAUT GIVING THEM A CHECK UP? I count at most three worlds that needed Raz's influence - Helmut, Lucy, and Hollis - and one of those he caused the problem himself!
And what the fuck is up with Hollis' level? She has an actually pretty good premise for her level, and then the game decides they need to just fuck it up for whatever reason. Is it because it was giving her what Milla's motivation was without ever really giving an explanation as to why she's so risk-averse? Is it because they couldn't connect that to Potts being a killstealer?
We never get a chance to really step away from the main group until the very end, which means we never really get any chance to leap off the beaten path. Everyone we meet is also a trained psychic and mentalist so it really doesn't justify much. Did Cassie and Bob never try to talk to each other? Did Otto not do anything to save his crumbling friendship?
And so many levels should have gotten a good boss fight. Lucktopus was decent. the three goats were okay (it was better once i learned the levitation ball could clean up the goo). Helmut's boss battle with maligula was a fucking joke. Bob's boss battle made no sense to me. The Librarian was a boss fight, but I never really felt scared or worried, and I didn't really notice a shift in the danger level. By that point I had shittons of HP, and it was still giving me health pickups. The only time i was remotely concerned I might die, was A: fighting the double panic attack, and B: fighting the final boss.
So many levels also feel like they got cut back. More specifically, they feel like the dev team made one big area and then realised they couldn't make them that big for the entire world, so the rest got smaller and smaller. Bob's world is a notable exception with a really good balance between it's three main arcs. Teacher cassie makes it sound like you'll be recruiting a whole army of cassies, but after Teacher, you only get one other cassie before the end. Helmut had two characters in each section after vision, including his lover being paired with Otto. Otto I'm convinced had a level cut, as the Otto-matics make him seem like a standoffy, paranoid guy, but when you meet him in his office, he's cheery with Raz like a personal friend. And the hollis mind connection thing literally never comes up again. You don't really fix Hollis's actual issues, with the stress of taking care of the children and her seeing everything as a matter of life and death.
My favourite levels were Nona and Gristol. Watching Nona's mind shift from the flea circus Ford constructed, to the quilted world she made herself, to the dark dam of Maligula's mind was really good, and I loved how all her emotional baggage was at the dam. Gristol's world - going through an It's-A-Small-World-inspired exploration of Gristol's life and plans, perfectly summed up how spoiled and childish he was, and it was often genuinely unsettling to explore. And then the entire 'boss fight' against gristol is 'use time stop on a fan.' And the final giant sequence was just... so lame. That mechanic can be done well - mario and luigi did it at least twice - but it has to feel like you're earning every step, and it really didn't for Maligula. Even more importantly, it's better for that to feel like an actual ring, with 2-3 stages of progress.
The interns were there, except for the yoyo guy, who mostly wasn't around and I never found. None of them really stuck out, and I only really got a sense Sam was unusual or interesting. Granted, it might just be that I am waiting for some easter eggs other people found.
One more thing: You're telling me this is a major bully?
This isn't a bully! she looks like her nose should have bumps along it from the inside of her locker!