Recent reviews by Tortorion

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Edit 30.03.2022

The game got even worse. Tried to do achievements, inhibitors are locked behind main story choice and cannot be unlocked if you side with peacekeepers, so you will be stuck at 123/126. Achievements are still bugged and wont unlock when they should, even on multiple save slots. Techland decided to put collectibles into quests that may not spawn. For example: If you 1st enter Central Loop and unlock Metro Station for fast travel right under the Fish' Eye Canteen (before getting into Canteen), the quests that requires you to clear Metro Station will never spawn in the Canteen, making you unable to get another quests with that has one of collectibles (Avery's Map), bricking your save file for that achievement. Run 960km, the game doesn't have any Statistics menu.

Completed game once on Normal Mode to see if there is any major difficulty spike on Hard Mode, I'm mid-game on Hard Mode right now, so I can write a review because the game is not going to change much. PSA: Difficulty spike only visible early game, during first few hours.

CONS:

1) Story

- If you are looking for a good story, character writing, good main quests and decent side quests, then you should consider other games, because you are not going to find it here. Thank god I'm a gameplay andy, but me having pretty much no expectations towards story and the game not meeting these expectations is definitely something.

- You are flooded with dialogues everywhere, great majority of them are blant and predictable. If you want to get surprised or something, then you will get surprised, but by a random zombie teleporting right in a front of your face.

- There are multiple quests that you can complete by simply spamming [SPACE BAR] to skip the dialogue. These are actually very good, I should copy/paste this to PROS later.

- Out of 600 voiced characters and during ~60 hours of gameplay, I remember only like 10 of them. Thats sub 2%, actually a good percentage I'd say.

- Holes is the story.

- No idea if I should type it here, but one of the main selling points of the game were decisions you have to choose. Like 90-95% of them are pretty much cosmetic aka. doesn't change anything drastically, not surprised.


2) Gameplay + Enemies + AI

- A CO-OP multiplayer online game WITHOUT in-game chat? WHAT THE ♥♥♥? Why do I have to [ALT] + [TAB] every time I want to type something? Why communication via spamming flashlight got removed? Or maybe something new like a ping system? That's just cringe. This is some kind of Battlefield 2042 no scoreboard level.


⚠️ TRADE OFFER ⚠️
i receive: - zombies spin in air
you receive:
- simplified combat
- weapons swing through enemies
- less impact on hit
- cosmetic power attack


- The game is not difficult at all. You'll die mostly to fall damage, bugs, soundless propane tank explosions or player commiting suicide to progress a quest because it's stuck or bugged, than to Humans or Zombies other than Volatiles. Human NPC tried to headbutt me only 3 times, 0 times during 1st playthough. Good luck getting hit by an enemy with a bow, they charge their attack way to long.

- Low varierty of mutations. Only 3 new types (Revenant, Howler, Banshee) and 2 "new" (Charger, Drowner). I hoped for more GRE anomalies,

- Nearly 60 hours in game and I've seen Banshee twice, obviously both times during 2 prologues. Hmm... maybe once during normal game too, not sure about this. Chargers similar to Banshee, seen twice during main campaign, yikes. Drowners are unlocked when you're about to end the game. All other special infected like Goon are rare, Demolishers are very, very rare.

- Night time gameplay totally butchered ~ the night is not scary anymore. Chase system added, why. Volatiles appear 95% of the time only when Chase 3/4 starts. You get more XP from quests than fighting/parkour even at night.

- Early game seems to have low variety of normal zombies(?), I've seen like 6 zombies looking exactly the same in a group of 7 zombies. Later it's fine.

- Dying Light: Bad Blood died for this.

- Waltz as a threat during chase scenes is often bugged, it's also a copy/paste of Volatile AI (yes, he can spit on you). So underwhelming and lazy design.

- Soundtrack isn't good to me. Didn't notice it at all.

- Last boss fight, totally bugged I'd say. Unless the enemy running into chemicals, standing there and doing nothing is actually some kind of mechanic.

- Mini-Bosses like "Lieutenants" (no idea how to spell it) or quest NPCs etc. are just a normal enemies but with a boss health bar, can't even make them difficult or something?

- CO-OP is bugged. Quests bugs out very often, you have to die or go back to menu to fix that. Animations glitch out or lack frames, sound effects gets stuck, imagine playing with main character moaning 24/7 unless you restart the game.

- Parkour is floaty af. In CO-OP, another player very often floats on the textures, floats in the air, skips frames etc.

- AI is underwhelming, overally.

- Soundless propane tanks and a lot of bugs everywhere.


3) Other

- RPG/Class System. Totally pointless and unnecessary I'd say.

- Weapon crafting is underwhelming and downgraded. In compare to DL1, in DL1 I found a normal looking weapon, then I crafted it and it looks cool with all these extra elements. Meanwhile in DL2 you already find a wonky looking weapon, crafting it doesn't add much difference. Adding mods to weapons restores part of its durability. Good weapons are common, you'll find 1234123 as good or better weapons before you destroy your current one.

- Upgrading your blueprints is a grind. A decent amount of grind is always good, but not that much, cmon.

- The infection "timer" is pointless. There is so much shrooms/inhalators, making this mechanic cosmetic.


PROS and summary:

I don't suggest buying the game at current state and not for that price. Also I wouldn't bother with any story-expanding DLCs.

The game is playable at current state, you're gonna have some fun with combat, (floaty) parkour, paraglider and dropkicks. The game being open world is really nice, very decent amount of exploration and few random events. There is a lot of small mechanics that makes the game enjoyable.
It's definitely not a good game, but it's also not a bad game. It's simply mediocre. Despite Techland being free and not being pushed by anyone to release the game ASAP, they decided to release a buggy game. The marketing obviously exaggered a lot of thing, especially the story which is really bad, that's just marketing stuff isn't it.

Irrelevant but about +3k hours on standalone. Based game. Quality content every league. Quality changes every league. Malders every league because power creep goes down.

I've played the game for a few hours. What's bad about the game?

- P2W/P2S (less grind/farm, but not removed completely)
- Time-gate/Paywall (early-game to end-game / end-game)
- Lack of content for end-game players.
- Lags based on number of players in the world.

If you don't have any problem with all above, then the game is for you.

What's good about the game?

- You'll find it yourself.