I finished this up last week. This one was a pretty big disappointment for me as I recall enjoying the first Dying Light. I’ll go on record and say this is one of the worst games I’ve played in a while.
No spoilers:
I played on Normal Difficulty which I feel should adequately express all the things that game is about.
The story is flat out horrible. Tonally it’s all over the map. I think they were maybe going for 80s Action Movie part of the time? I don’t know. The motivations for the characters often made no sense. I’m still not entirely sure why the ending escalated the way it did. As in, why did the main bad guy want to do the thing he wanted to do. There are so many laughably bad and completely nonsensical moments toward the end.
The final boss battle glitched out on me, with the enemy jumping into the geometry. They couldn’t get out and I couldn’t get to them. Had to kill myself and start again. This happened twice. And it also happened to my son on his playthrough,
The big bugbear of having a limited time in the dark or at night amounts to nothing once you’ve leveled up a bit. I had tons of inhibitors and rarely needed to use them. 2/3ds of the way through the main game I think the devs just gave up as there were UV lights everywhere.
Anyway, the main offender here is the design. Don’t get me wrong, the parkour stuff is great, and as you unlock new moves and ways to navigate, it gets better. Combat is fine but ultimately not very nuanced. Initially it seems like they want you do use these parkour combat maneuvers. There’s even a tutorial about how important this will be. But none of it matters. Combat is rote. Get the dropkick move and you’re good to go. I ended up with parkour and combat skill points I was having trouble allocating because none of the skills looks interesting or useful.
Others have mentioned this, but night isn’t nearly as scary or dangerous in the first game. And they clearly wanted you to go out at night as lots of optional/looting areas are night only. I did a few at the beginning as I figured I’d need lots of stuff for crafting and merchants. Not so.
The lack of depth manifests the most in the weapon, clothing, crafting, and upgrade system. Basically the entire economy of Dying Light 2. Literally none of it matters. There are a crap ton of weapons. As you progress through the story, the game makes sure you get powerful ones to deal with any tough fight. There’s no meaningful reason to upgrade your weapons. I tried out a few, but often forget to do it as I got more powerful ones which seemed to dispatch everything without much effort.
For clothing, I just looked at the big number at the top. If it was higher than what I had, I swapped it out. There are these minuscule bonuses to things like stamina recovery time, but again, none of this mattered.
Crafting and upgrading. I crafted bandages, knives, and molotovs. I started upgrading stuff, but never bothered to keep doing it because I was plenty powerful to deal with anything. I never figured out if the crystals were good for anything. I guess I sold them? I don’t know, I always had a ton of money.
This is a great example of a game that has a decent core game loop… parkour and zombie combat. Then they muck it up with a bunch of “things that need to be in modern games”. Incremental upgrades, loot chases, crafting, factions. The game doesn’t do any of these things well and it had a real impact on my ability to enjoy what Dying Light 2 does right.
On to Elden Ring (which I’m already enjoying a lot).
