Darksiders 2: Deathinitive Edition Review

This was a game that helped me through some tough times when I originally played it. I was very depressed and down on myself and this was one of the games I played during that period. Back in that time, I was obessesed with it's ambient music, really enjoyed the performance of Michael Wincott as Death, loved the puzzle and dungeon designs and combat was solid too. Over the years, I have heard criticism about how padded the game can be. I also tried and failed to replay the original Darksiders. That game I did enjoy at first but The Black Throne was so terrible and it was also followed up with a fetch quest after that I gave up on it. I was hesistant towards to even try DS2 again due to the stories I've heard regarding the padding it had. Luckily, I was able to look past it. Don't get me wrong, it's by no means good but compared to DS1's padding, 2's is more bearable by comparison. It is more of a pick your poison situation with that said.

When starting Darksiders 2, the soundtrack is already an improvement over the first game with how epic the guardian theme is when riding your horse. The narrative hook isn't as interesting but it's made up for in visual specticle and music.

One improvement here is that Death is far more charismatic and has more of a light sense of humor by comparison to War's endless stoism espeically with the latter's lack of interesting character interactions

The music by Jesper Kyd is amazing with it's roaring battle tracks and of course is very memorable ambient music that permeates many of the exploration and puzzle sequences of the game.

Platforming is more involving this time around, it's very similar to the Ubisoft Prince of Persia games in how it's an automated and Death is a death defying trapeze artist. It is however one aspect of the game and when combined with puzzles and exploration it can add some verticality to the dungeons.

This is where DS2 strongly shines. The various puzzles Death will have to do throughout the game. Activating switches to open new paths, throwing bombs to destroy yellow corruption stones, using golems, finding pathways to unlock more parts of the dungeon, using clones to get past obstacles, using the Deathgrip, moving around statues and obstacles to find different areas of the level. When it comes to this aspect, the game shines.

I'm not even a super big puzzle guy, I do enjoy enviromental puzzle mores and DS2 does such an incredible job with them. There are moments where it can feel like I'm stumped and then I ponder on it enough and eventually figure it out. The abilties you have plus working with what's in the level makes for enjoyable scenarios where it feels like you are solving a puzzle within a puzzle like in say an exploration Resident Evil map. This can apply to the first game by extension before the Black Throne.

Combat is also good and do a good job at breaking up the exploration. I'm not big on the loot and RPG levelling systems. The former I can forgive since you are always given good loot just by looking around the levels. The latter not so much since it's hard to tell what abilities are useful and which aren't. I mainly just used Teleport Slash and dumped all the XP I got into that. This is something DS1 did better since there was no XP systems or skill trees and you just got extra abilties through buying them in a shop.

Outside of that, it's good. You still have the direction based inputs from the first game, and it's fun to slash around and hit enemies with various combos. Moves like deathgrip can even used in combat.

This does unfortunately lead to the game's biggest problem and that's the pacing. When judging the game based on The Forgelands, DS2 is fantastic and the plot moves and flows at a reasonable rate. Then when you get to the Well of Souls and then Death touches the door to it, everything goes downhill. Kingdom of the Dead is one big filler arc. No meaningful plot progression or plot revelations even happen. All you do is 3 of something constantly. There's even a part where you have to 3 of something while already doing 1 of the 3 of something.

It doesn't help that you get an ablitiy of using the souls of the dead generals just for the end of the level to take that power away from you.

Then you get to Lostlight and while it's better there's still macguffins you have to collect and the plot building up to moments that never had any like Death meeting Lilith, him fighting Samael and his final confrontation with a character that shares a similar look to the Superman villain Doomsday. The final boss itself felt like a mini boss encounter.

That and Death being a kinslayer and having the nephelim never really goes into interesting places due to so much of the story being padding.

Overall, Darksiders 2 feels like a 7-8 hour game that stretched to being 10-12 hours. I really wanted the game to end when you had to get two keys to open a door. A better middle half would've made a good game, a great one.