2.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Dying Light 2 Stay Human.

[SPOILER FREE] Dying Light 2 is both the sequel I've always hoped for, while also being incredibly disappointing. The 7 year wait in between this game's release was a long road and I'd be lying if I said this hasn't been my most anticipated game release of the past few years. I was incredibly excited based on what I'd heard and seen leading up to it's release. The revamping of the Parkour system, branching pathways and this weird yet intriguing faction system all looked like it was taking the mechanics of the first game and fleshing them out more. What I didn't expect was how that could make the game worse off because of it. The first few hours of this game are really tough to sit through and I could honestly see a lot of people just quitting and never returning to this game because of it. On top of the non-stop exposition, since it's in the early game, your character has no upgrades or anything of the sort. The redesign of the stamina system really doesn't work for the beginning of this game. Whenever you're climbing stuff and run out of stamina your character will just let go of whatever they're climbing on and just die or become seriously injured. Now this isn't really much of an issue later in the game once you get at least 3-4 upgrades for your stamina meter, but you definitely feel over restricted in the early game, more than what I feel you should have been. This constant need to have to strain the stamina bar to the very end during the first few hours of the game just didn't rub me the right way. Combat in this game feels fantastic, whether it be against the various types of infected or the human enemy types, it all just feels fluid. The wide range of skills you can use to beat up enemies with, even without using a weapon makes each combat encounter really creative. You could drop kick enemies into walls, you could body slam enemies or you could just grab your hatchet and decapitate them. I found most of my enjoyment with enemy encounters came from the human characters, rather than the zombies. I found the zombies in this zombie video game to be really lacking. For a game series that's known for it's zombies, there really weren't as many encounters with them as I'd hoped. Most zombies are found in tiny groups in buildings and you never feel any tension when fighting them like you did in the first game. I remember the difficulty curve for zombies in Dying Light 1 to be much higher as compared to this game, where you can take out zombies in a few hits with pretty much any weapon. Not only that, but nighttime feels incredibly nerfed compared to the first game. Whenever you're roaming the streets at night, you'll sometimes be caught up in a chase where special infected are... well.. chasing you. You can easily outrun everything you encounter making the nighttime portions of the game lacking all sense of tension. I'd say it's pretty unanimous that even the fans of the first game thought the story of Dying Light wasn't very good. Luckily for that game, the story wasn't particularly shoved in your face as is with Dying Light 2. Now this is a non-spoiler review so I won't get into too many details on the story, but to say that the quality of the story hurt the game is an understatement. I don't know who wrote this game, but it is shockingly terrible. Every line delivered from a character feels like they are puking exposition all over you. Each character is just a pawn to get the story to progress, none of them have any unique personality traits that I can name off of the top of my head that aren't just stock character types you'd see in anything similar to this. If you've seen a zombie apocalypse movie, or hell, even played the first game, you've seen a story told beat for beat like this. Now I know the reason people play video games usually isn't for the story, but it has to be stated that the actual gameplay is interfered by this. You'll be in combat and suddenly BOOM... cutscene, you'll be just randomly opening a door and have to sit through a 10 minute cutscene that just doesn't seem to let up, giving you almost no new information. The game's constant insistence on the importance of what's happening in the game, just makes me care even less. I shouldn't have to have 1000 different lines of exposition to understand a zombie apocalypses storyline, and I definitely shouldn't be having the fun parkour sections of the game interrupted by said exposition. But I guess that's what the skip button is for. Outside of the early game, the parkour and traversal feels really great. I'd say the parkour in the first Dying Light was perfect, yet somehow they managed to make it better in Dying Light 2. Each jump has that certain momentum associated with it where you feel like you're actually doing something. It's not like an Assassin's Creed type game where you can just climb whatever is in front of you by holding one button. You have to actively look and find locations to jump towards while also using your correct traversal abilities on hand. It feels so good when you start running to different rooftops and the music starts blasting when you've gotten into a groove. It is seriously the best part of Dying Light 2. Dying Light 2 manages to include both moments of fun and tedium. While its parkour mechanics are perfect and the combat system is solid, it still doesn't hold a candle to the first game. With that being said, I still had a lot of fun with it, with curves of enjoyment throughout. I wasn't able to play this game in coop, but I'd imagine that if you're able to pick this game up on sale for cheap in a few years and grab a few friends along with you, you'll most likely have a great time playing this game. But as for right now, as a solo Dying Light 2 player who loved the original, I'd personally opt to play the first game instead.