Dying Light 2 is a sequel to Dying Light and is an open-world parkour zombie survival game that has its emphasis on parkour movement. It’s about this guy, Aiden, trying to find his sister in this post-apocalyptic world. There’s a lot I have to say about this game and not a lot of it is good, so let’s get right into it. 

I think overall the movement is an improvement over the first game. I thought the first game was perfect when it came to its movement and yet I was proven wrong because Dying Light 2 did it better. There are new skills that allow the player a lot more freedom and a lot more options when it comes to traversing the world. 

Developers added a new feature where the player can pick up gear and clothing items like bandanas, running shoes, fingerless gloves, and that would boost the stats of the player and make them slightly faster or do slightly more damage to zombies and people, but it never really feels that impactful.

The game is way more focused on the story and they really wanted it to shine here because the first two or three hours of the game is just dialogue and exposition between characters in a story that unfortunately isn’t good. This game is just a mess narratively and they tried something different with this game where they gave the player choices to make throughout the story and those choices have consequences. At the time those choices feel like a big deal, but at the end of the game, those choices end up being worthless and don’t impact the ending of the story at all. 

In the first game, going out at night was terrifying and the zombies would get really aggressive. When night hits in Dying Light, the real big bad zombies come out because they get harmed by the sun and they roam the whole city that the game takes place in. The player would need a flashlight if they go out at night because it is pitch black and they can’t see anything. When those zombies see the player, they chase them to the end of the world. They don’t stop until the player is killed. 

In Dying Light 2 it is way less scary to go out at night and that was really disappointing to me. It almost feels like there are no zombies at all in Dying Light 2. During the day the zombies hide away in dark places and don’t really do anything. Going out at night isn’t really a problem at all. The zombies can’t really catch players and when they do, they don’t really do anything and just let the player go. They just shake the character down for lunch money real quick, then they just let them get away. The moon is super bright so the player doesn’t need a  flashlight most of the time. There are no monsters that come out at night unless the player tries to actively look for them. 

I was just looking for that thrill that I got when I played the first Dying Light when the first night hit. Unfortunately, they toned down the scare factor a lot in Dying Light 2 during the night and that was really disappointing.

The zombies just don’t play any role in this game at all. Narratively the zombies don’t exist. They are non-existent in this story and they do not have any role to play. The story is more focused on people vs people. There are just very few zombies in a zombie game and that blew me away. 

In the first Dying Light, there was this horrifying zombie called a Volatile and they were super fast and super strong and they were everywhere in the first game especially at night. In Dying Light 2 they are almost nonexistent. I think I encountered one or two Volatiles in my 20 hours of playing Dying Light 2. I think that developers were so focused on the story that they seem to be so proud of it. As a result, they just forgot that the zombies even existed.

Overall I give Dying Light 2 a 6/10. I enjoyed my time with it, but there were a lot of problems. I think the actual gameplay and movement itself is on par with or even better than the first game, but there are a lot of other factors that are holding it back and that is really unfortunate because I really loved the first game.