As far as Zombie games go in the past years, they’ve either been too dull or unfinished to satisfy any zombie game fan for a long while, until the Dying Light series changed that, and with this new installment improving on every aspect that made the original Dying Light the game that it was, but of course, somethings were left on the quality as the original.
Table of Contents
The Gameplay
The gameplay loop for Dying Light 2 never gets boring, the parkour is the best we’ve had in any game for years, the combat is improved from 1, the alignment system gives new ways to traverse the map or take out infected, and the enemy variety never gets repetitive compared to Dying Light 1 where its common to keep finding the same normal infected over and over.
It still has a lot of value even after finishing the game, by joining your friend’s world or a stranger’s world and helping them out with you’re end game level gear, or replaying the game again if you went all the way with either of the two factions for their upgrades, making the world seem much more different to traverse than your first playthrough.
The Immunity system is also not a bad addition; it might be very intimidating, especially for newer players, but the timer goes up with every Inhibitor upgrade, and it makes going out at night time much more thrilling with the chance of falling off a building and starting a chase, which will get dangerous even with the strongest gear once it reaches level 4.
The only negative I can point out about the gameplay overall are the bosses, which are just normal enemies with a big health bar for most cases, except one boss, but still, the bosses were a big disappointment.
Story
The story was not one of the game’s strength’s, far from it. The story was very focused on the choices part, where every choice you make influences the story, which is true to some extent, but still, you always get the same outcome afterwards it’s just different dialogue or routes, the alignment system story-wise isn’t influencing a lot too, only for the early parts with the Peacekeepers and the Bazaar, which really won’t matter later on, unlike what they showed in the trailers.
Without spoiling plot points, the story is extremely disappointing, especially the alignment system story-wise; hopefully, they can learn from their mistakes in the hopes of another sequel in the future.
Side Missions & Activities
The side missions in the game were not bad. Even though a good number of them were parkour challenges and combat challenges, they were fun to do; it made the game look like The Walking Dead interrupted by an episode of Family Guy.
The game also has a lot of spots to search for loot, be it Dark Hollows, Forsaken Stores, Evacuation Convoys, or Military Convoys, which are easy to do; it gets pathetically easy once you group up with friends as the enemies really can’t do anything, especially when it’s night time, where the number of enemies drastically decrease compared to daytime. There are also Military Drops that only require parkour but have the best loot.
It gets especially dangerous with that in GRE Facilities; wherein the daytime, I found at least 12 Infected and 3 Volatiles, I died 3 times, then when I went there again at night time, there were only 4 sleeping normal infected, and I was dumbfounded.
GRE Facilities, and GRE Anomalies, where you fight the Revenant boss in every single one of them, are one of the only open places that hold Inhibitors, other than hidden ones and ones that are on the story path, they’re all fun to do and are rewarding for the Inhibitors, just wished GRE Anomalies switched up the boss for a couple of them at least, since the Revenant stops being that challenging after beating it for the 2nd time.
The Night runner hideouts and windmills were fun to climb and unlock, some of them are hard to reach without the required stamina or good skills to find a way to climb one; an example is me having Wall Run to get the windmill with me 220 stamina when it required 300 normally without any skills like Wall Run.
Verdict
7/10
It’s a good game, the gameplay is great, the world is interesting, bosses needed a little more work, and the story is not worth mentioning when bringing up this game again.
I also didn’t encounter a lot of bugs other than some models heads going crazy. It’s possible to overlook them, I did, and I enjoyed the game for what it offered.
I just hope the story gets better if they ever think of a sequel. This is why I’m giving the game a 7/10. Great game; gameplay will never get boring.
