Just Cause 2.....I heard this game was great for so many years and a lot of people on to go on about how awesome it is, and I occasionally hear people say it's better than 3 and I especially hear people it's better than 4, and I am going to be really as honest as I can here and say that I really didn't enjoy this game that much, I prefer JC3 and 4 way over this game, but even me prefering those two games over this, I found so much of this game to be a dull grind and a chore to play, if it weren't for me liking 3 and 4, I would've dropped this game hours ago, that and I love good feedback for weapons in games and this game does provide it.
I'll start with the good, the weapons and feedback you get from killing enemies feels amazing, whenever you kill an enemy they have really over the top animations and blood effects you could possibly even juggle them in the air with bullets if you wanted to. The grappling hook feels very good to use and it's also refreshing even now to use a grappling hook in a game that isn't automated or contextual. I did have a lot of fun using it and the game does push you to use a lot during missions and combat. The game also checkpoints really well so even though I would occasionally frustrated by the difficulty due to reasons I will mention later, the game at least never made me repeat a lot of content. This is where my praise ends.
The game has so many aspects about that hinders my enjoyment of it by a large degree. The map is way too large, waaaay too large, to the point where just using your grappling hook to get to mission start points is not going to be enough, you will need to use vehicles and anything that is not a helicoptor has extremely loose handling, drive a land vehicle and whenever you break or turn the game will over do it every single time, it's impossible to be precise since whenever you try to turn or do any kind of driving where you need to avoid traffic and enemies you will crash or turn so hard that you could damage your vehicle. During the missions where you need to ride a plane and if you turn before you take off, you could possibly over do it and crash before you take off making these missions or any missions involving vehicles outside of helicoptors a pain in the ass and extremely grating. As a result, I eventually abused the fast travel system the game offered since driving and getting to missions especially without the wingsuit in JC3 and 4 was a complete and utter chore. It just feels weird when you jump out of a helicoptor in this game or whenever you start falling, it feels like you can move around but can't even the game's parachute offers movement in air that is super slow at best and isn't fast enough especially when you are chasing someone and don't have a faster way to move. Speaking of fast travel, the game also makes it super inconvienent for you by not making the missions on the fast travel menu, making it hard to tell where you want to fast travel to in order to get close to the mission and start it. The black market system is also poorly handled, in JC3 and 4, supply drops are simple and easy to use, in JC2 you need to select and pay for each individual weapon and vehicle so you will be cycling through the black market menu more than once just to refill ammo on more than one gun and to get a vehicle, I will admit, it was cool experimenting with this system during main missions, and getting sttuf like cars, rocket launchers and helicoptors during main missions, but this isn't enough to save the game.
While I praised the combat, rocket launcher users and snipers can wipe away your health in a few hits even on easy mode which can be jarring and lead to random deaths since you didn't know where the enemies were. The health system also felt like a missed opportunity since I would've prefered for enemies to drop health during combat rather than med stations so I can continue being aggresive during combat.
Now the missions, this is where the game really starts to grind my gears. JC2 is one of those games where if you played 4 or 5 hours of, you played the whole game, I don't mind some repetition, but this game really did test my patience. The faction missions you do are so short and revolve around the same objectives so much to the point where it felt like it was just padding to hide the fact that the game barely had any story missions, basically what this game is, maxing out the stronghold and faction meters enough to get the agency missions which are the story missions to unlock. You can destroy red marked property and take over military bases to increase these meters, but either way all the stuff you are doing is a grind to unlock the next story mission. I say it's a grind because the agency meter moves at a super slow rate no matter what you do, it's going to take many hours either way. Faction missions are the best way to go but those just revolve around the same objectives over and over, escourt this guy, blow up this thing, wait for hacking meter to finish, kill this guy, chase this thing, sure the game will throw some gimmicks but the missions are so short and are over so quickly that it feels like you accomplished nothing substantial and the whole thing is just waiting for the agency mission meter to go up. Taking over military bases is a chore and a waste of time since you need to find upgrades in order to take it over and finding these upgrades is liking looking for a needle in a haystack since the game will not always tell you where the upgrades are actually located on the base and you can spend hours trying to find them just to ignore it and move on. I thought it was just blowing up the property but no, you got to actually look for optional upgrades just to 100% a military base and make that agency meter go up. Stronghold missions are the same thing throughout the whole game, escourt a technician to hack into a console, there is nothing here to shake things up, they are the same the whole game.
It all starts to get so old after a few hours, especially the start of faction missions where the leader shows up on a vehicle and gives Rico some orders while he just stands there and says nothing or just how little the plot progression even happens and Rico just stands around taking orders with nothing to say. I can take this for a few hours but for around 20? This can get extremely grating.
Overall, JC2 is not a game I like all that much and I only played it through to the end due to my liking for JC3 and 4, that and I don't like leaving games I get some enjoyment of "unfinished". I am glad Avalanche found their stride with JC3 and 4, and it was probably a mistake playing this game after 3 and 4 but at the same time, I argue playing game franchises out of order isn't always bad and some early entries to a franchise still hold up despite the sequel improvements, this game is not one of them and while I appreciate for the grappling hook and having some kind of cool movement system for a "realistic" open world game at the time, I argue this game has been surpassed now and is hard to go back to.
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