Concept Overview
The player plays as Death, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Your brother, War, is on trial for exterminating mankind, something you believe he is not guilty of. Now you must journey around the human realm in an attempt to fight back the corruption and bring back mankind to free War from his unjust persecution.
Darksiders 2 is a third person hack and slash game, with elements of climbing and puzzle solving thrown in. The game is fairly linear, as you go from zone to zone killing enemies, solving puzzles, and fighting bosses. You can move back to previous zones, but there is no real reason to do so other than for the sake of collectibles. The game includes a simple progression system, learning and leveling abilities as you level up. There is also a basic loot system. You can pick up and purchase items and gear to increase your damage and defenses, as well as get health and wraith potions. As a more linear game, side quests are not a big factor. The game's content is all through progression through the story, with occasional optional objectives. Perhaps the most important system of the game is the combat system, which features intuitive combo-style attacks and timing based dodging.
Artstyle & Sound | Great Design
The art style of the game looks great. It takes a slightly more cartoonish look than a game attempting realistic graphics, allowing for characters with exaggerated features and interested designs. Every animation in the game is thoughtfully designed, from flashy combat animations to simply tasks like opening doors and chests. You don't simply open the door, boney skeletal arms appear behind Death and thrust the door open for you. Cool animations are important for combat, as without it slashing your enemies to bits isn't nearly as satisfying. The cutscenes are always action packed and are worth sitting through, but for those who want to get right back into the action, yes they are skippable. Story may not be the most important part of this game, so you won't be missing too much, but the awesome art was enough to keep me captivated.
The game's sound is nothing special, but it is certainly competent. The voice acting and sound effects are good, with no noticeable flaws. The sounds for swinging your weapon around add to the satisfying feeling of the combat, so no complaints there. When Death throws his scythe, it spins rapidly, making a very satisfying blade whirlwind sound, resulting in me using this move far more than necessary. The sound track is not particularly noticeable, which is fine as it's not the type of game that you need to be focusing on the music for.
The atmospheres all have a nice look to them. One advantage of the game not being open world with a massive world to traverse is that all of the content is compact into interesting looking environments rich with puzzles and activities. There are few areas with nothing cool to look at.
Playability | Some Issues
The game is very easy to pick up if you've ever played a third person game. The combat system works smoothly and comes naturally, with each combo being simple enough to executed even by the worst of players. Because of Darksiders’ similarities to many other games, tutorials won't be necessary for most. The game adopts the controls standard of it's genre, so you can jump right into the game with little to no adjusting needed. The UI works just fine for the most part, being nothing special. There are some slight design issues, such as it being difficult to tell which items are equipped and which aren't, but any issue in this department is easy to overcome.
The real issues lie with the climbing system. Just like in many third person games requiring climbing, this can often be frustrating. You will very easily accidentally jump off of ledges at random, leaving you cursing at the bottom of the climbing puzzle. Climbing can feel like quite a chore, which is a shame since you'll be doing it a whole lot. When it works, it really works, and you feel fast and powerful scaling large walls and jumping from pole to pole. However this fluid experience may be interrupted when your character glitches partway through the wall, or when you jump on what totally looks like a climbable ledge but turns out not to be. The issue of not being able to jump or climb on things that look like you should definitely be able to climb on will be a frequent issue that may cost you a lot of time.
The last issue is the camera work. The camera will awkwardly adjust for you mid combat, and simply won't let you look wherever you want to without resisting and forcing you to look elsewhere. The game has a focus feature where you can lock your camera onto an enemy. This works great for bosses, but obviously is not ideal when fighting multiple smaller enemies when you may want to swap to specific targets frequently and fluidly. The camera work really shows its flaws when you're running through one of the game’s beautifully crafted environments and just want to take a look around. If you want to take in the scenery, you’re going to have to come to a full stop. The camera might not even let you look around the room without some struggle. Looking upwards at what you hope to climb is particularly difficult. You'll manage, but its an annoying flaw for a game that requires you to look around so frequently.
But is it Fun? | Yes
Despite the flaws above, the game is still very fun. Combat, especially boss fights, are all fluid and flashy and reasonably challenging. Comboing enemies and dodging around attacks gives off a great sense of accomplishment. When the climbing system goes well, it feels great with how fast Death will move and how fluid the animations make it all look.
I really appreciate the simple combo system. Each button combination needed to perform specific moves are easy to memorize and take little to no practice. It didn’t take me long to be able to get Death to perform exactly the attacks I wanted him to. You won’t need to button mash through this game!
Some of the game's mechanics, in particular the puzzle mechanics, feel uninspired. Puzzles such as rolling a large boulder into a hole that activates a door are very frequent and often just too easy, as the player might be shown both the boulder and where to put it with no notable obstacles between them. Darksiders 2 holds the player's hand too much during the puzzle segments in the first few hours of the game, making puzzles feel more like a chore than a challenge.
The simplicity of the puzzle segments could be excused if puzzle solving took more of a back seat during gameplay, but the amount of time the player will spend climbing and puzzling solving instead of fighting enemies means more creative puzzle mechanics are a must.
One of the few side objectives of the game is finding "hidden" chests that are scattered around and give you valuable gear. However these are also extremely easy to find since they are on your mini map and take little effort to get to.
Combat is the best part of the game. I want to be running around fighting monsters, but instead I'm pushing large boulders into place to open obvious doors, or throwing explosives at telegraphed breakable obstacles.
Death is given a crow that follows you around and can be used to show you where to go if you get stuck. Despite what I've said so far about Darksiders 2’s hand holding, I like the crow. I hate running aimlessly through environments, unsure of where to go. Being lost doesn't make the game more difficult, it makes it boring and frustrating. The crow can be used whenever you wish, so if you don't want the help, you don't need to use it. It won't solve puzzles for you, but I will save you from staring at your map for extended periods of time, which is great, because the map is pretty ugly.
Darksiders 2 features areas that are more "open," where you rise your horse around. While I can understand adding this to make the world feel more connected, these zones also feel uninspired and unnecessary. They feel more thrown in to make the game a little less linear. Even with multiple "options" available in these segments, the player has no real choice for where they are riding to. They can either ride to the next objective, or ride in circles. No other area other than the next objective ever seems worth exploring. Fast travel is only used in place of having the game help you turn in quests for you, and you will never want to fast travel anywhere other than straight to your objective or to a merchant.
Replay Value | Low
Being a fairly linear single player game with little customization, your second playthrough won’t be all that different from your first. You can go for a more difficult setting, but you really won’t want to drag through all of these puzzles again. If the game was non stop action, perhaps it would do better in the replay department.
Conclusion | Try it
Darksiders 2 was definitely worth the price I paid for it, and if you catch it on sale on Steam, which being an older game, is inevitable, I recommend you consider it. Darksiders 2 is a great edition for anyone who enjoys it’s genres, and provides a fun experience overall. You’ll love the fast paced combat, and you’ll tolerate, or maybe even enjoy, the puzzle solving.
