Recent reviews by ViBro

EDIT:
After revisiting the game in January/February 2024, it's clear that the game has received some well-cooked love. Off the top of my head I immediately think of the Good Night, Good Luck update, the added legend levels and the craftmaster repair system. All great additions that brought the game closer to what DL1 is.

Will I change my recommendation though? No. Every update Techland goes one step forward but a hundred steps back. Nowhere is this as evident as in the recent gun update. Sure, the guns are great (albeit stupidly weak, even with the legend upgrades), but the bugs, man. Co-op is nigh unplayable - there's huge amounts of desync and some enemies don't even spawn for all the players (and idk what's going on with the audio, it seems that it just randomly bugs out and just flat out doesn't play the sounds that should be played), the viral spawn system is still broken (it seems even worse now, Aiden could just cough and already have 3 virals on his tail) and so on.

However, the truly most heinous thing is the agents system. Whoever thought up this idea should be fired and not allowed to work on any single-player game, ever. I shouldn't have to grind for weeks on end just to get to the max level of the vendor by doing the same repeatable "quests", right? Harper and Shen Xiu are okay-ish, at least they level up quickly, but the altered XP gain for Jai is atrocious (someone did the math, you'd need at least a few months playing the game religiously to reach max rank which is unbelievable). I highly recommend getting mods to either unlock the vendors or up the XP gain so you don't lose sanity.

All in all, the game indeed is better than it started out but Techland is slowly making it into a generic Ubisoft RPG with predatory systems like the agent grinding and microtransactions. Please devs, if you're reading this, cut back on this ridiculous design and don't forget what made the first game a behemoth in the game industry. Give us a great DLC (or two, because Bloody Ties was lazy, where are the cars/buggies?). Because right now playing the game isn't fun, it's a chore.

PS:
By the way, I forgot to mention how sh*t the story and the "deuteragonists" are. Just playing through it this second time I felt like dying (no pun intended). Everything is just so...uninspired and boring and the end twist is so so stupid. If I found a genie that could grant me any wish the number one would be to recreate the game according to Chris Avellone's vision, because if you're going into the game after watching the E3 2018 and thinking, wow, the choices and possibilities are endless, you are going to be ripped off.

Original Post:
Unlike the first game, this one was pretty unremarkable. For me, personally, DL1 did almost everything better, whether it be the story, the characters or simply gameplay.

That's not to say this game was bad: the launch was pretty solid (as opposed to some then-recent titles), there were new additions that made the game more fun for some, and the design of Villedor is outstanding. All in all, it was a solid 6.5-7/10.

For a while, Techland appeared to be heading in the right direction: numerous QQL updates, the DLC and the community maps. However, the recent direction of the updates, chiefly the monetization of the game by Techland/Tencent is an outrage. Imagine having microtransactions in a singleplayer game :facepalm:. Therefore, I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to neither newcomers to the franchise nor DL1 enjoyers.

Funny, when CP 2077 came out I trusted Techland to not do a CDPR and create a worthy successor to the masterpiece of a zombie game that was DL1 and couldn't wait to play DL2. I surely could abide without this pile of garbage today, though.

michael zaki never disappoints