Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition Review (PS4)
NOTE: This review is 90% the same as my review on the PS3 version.
Introduction
This is the remastered version of Darksiders II. It includes all DLCs, new Trophy set, and slight graphical updates. It is recommended to download the latest update to avoid crashing issues and better graphical fixes.
Story
This game takes place during the first game's events, during War's years of imprisonment in the first game. Death, the leader of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is unconvinced that his brother is guilty for triggering the Armageddon on Earth prematurely. He traveled and looked for the Tree of Life, where he encounters the Crowfather, the Keeper of Secrets. After killing him, he was transported to another world, which is the realm of the Makers, Forge Lands. In order to get to the Tree of Life, Death need to help others in his quest to save his brother.
The story feels a bit weaker than the first game. I feel that the lack of plot twists in the game hurt it, but this game doesn't have interesting or expanded lore. Death however, is much more of a likable playable character than War, the hero of the first game. The supporting characters in the game fit their role, such as Crowfather, Eideard, and many others.
Gameplay
i) Exploration and Progression Section
The game feels more open world than the previous game, with four different realms that have bigger areas for you to explore. As you progress in the game, you will travel to new and different realms that have unique enemies live in distinct realms. Outside of dungeons, you can summon Death's horse for quick travelling in the game. However, you can summon him outdoors, and you cannot use him in dungeons.
To progress in the game, you need to complete your Primary Quest by going to the marker on your map. Many of the Primary Quests take place in dungeons, where you need to solve a number of puzzles and killing enemies in order to progress. You can use Dust as your guide in the dungeon if are you stuck somewhere. Like the previous game, this game mixes platforming sections, puzzle sections, and combat sections.
In this game, you can Fast Travel to any locations you have visited. If you use Fast Travel from a dungeon to another location, you can leave a Dungeon Waypoint where it allows you travel back to the spot in the dungeon where you have left. This is useful if you are short on supplies or finding that the enemies in the dungeon are tougher than usual.
You may also opt to complete side quests in this game called Secondary Quests, such as collecting pages, relics, helping someone to retrieve an item, and etc. Completing these quests will reward you many things, such as Skill Points, XP, money, and etc. Doing these side-quests will help you a lot in the game.
ii) Leveling, Upgrading and Customisation Section
This game uses leveling system and looting system. Death has his own stats, such as Strength, Arcane, and etc. His stats can be increased by leveling him up through accumulating XP (Experience Points) in combat and quests. As he levels up, his stats will increase and he will be able to obtain a Skill Point to learn or upgrade his skills.
Death's skills tree is divided into two, one is for Harbinger skills and Necromancy skills. Death can only learn new skills by gaining more levels. All of his skills are Wrath skills, and he has eight different Wrath skills. Some of is Wrath skills have upgrades that can make the particular Wrath skill be more potent in combat. For example, Aegis Shield has a side-upgrade that allows Death to reflect 10% of damage taken in combat. Skill Points can be used to upgrade your main learned Wrath skills, or to learn and upgrade side-upgrades for each main Wrath skills. Take consideration into what build you want Death to be, since his stats play important role in Death's abilities in the game.
Defeating enemies in this game will sometimes drop money, items, weapons, or armour pieces. There are two main items in the game, which are Health Potion and Wrath Potion. Like their namesake imply, Health Potion restores health whereas Wrath Potion restore Wrath. Money can be used to buy those potions or armour pieces. You can get money by opening treasure chests in dungeons, killing enemies, completing Primary Quests and Secondary Quests, or by selling items.
You may also customise Death's appearance by equipping him with various armour pieces, such as spaulders, boots, and etc. Not only they will give Death a unique appearance, the armour pieces will grant Death various stat bonuses, such as Strength bonus, Defense bonus, Arcane bonus, etc. Examine each armour pieces and use accordingly to your playstyle. For example, if you prioritise offense in combat, equip armour pieces that have Strength and Critical Damage bonuses.
Death can equip two weapons, one primary and the other secondary. His primary weapon is twin scythes, and there is a lot of variety of scythes that can be found in the game, such as scythes that allows you to deal fire damage, etc. His secondary weapons is varied, such as mace, axe, gauntlets, buckler, and etc. Like his primary weapons, there is a lot of variety of it, such as maces that deal ice damage and etc. Both primary weapons and secondary weapons have their own attack stat and stat bonuses such as Strength bonus, so try experimenting them to see which is best in different fighting situations. Likewise for Death's Wrath abilities, Death cannot use any weapons that have higher level than he is.
There are various types of vendors in the game that sell various pieces of equipment and other items to you. As you all may know, stronger equipment are more expensive than regular ones. You can also sell any unwanted items or pieces of equipment to them for money.
iii) Combat Section
In combat, you have access to primary weapon attack, secondary weapon attack, and Wrath abilities. Your primary weapon attack involves Death's twin scythes, where he can use it to attack enemies quickly with a combo. His secondary weapon attack is varied, such as powerful heavy attacks using axes or maces, or quick attacks using bucklers and bladearms. Death can have use both attacks to create deadly combos, such as chaining both primary and secondary weapons attacks together.
Usage of Wrath abilities drain Death's Wrath bar. His Wrath bar can be restored by hitting enemies, or by using Wrath Potions. In this game, health restoration is scarce, and can only be done by using Health Potions, or using weapons that have certain type of stats that allow you to recover some Health by killing enemies. As you all know, if Death's Health is empty, it is game over and you need to restart from your last checkpoint. You can also lock on enemies to focus your attacks, or you can also dodge any incoming attacks. While damaging enemies, sometimes there is a popup button that allows you to kill an enemy instantly.
Death can learn new combat moves by purchasing them from trainers scattered in the game. It is recommended for you to buy them to increase your combat versatility. Also, like in the first game, Death can transform temporarily into a more powerful form called Reaper Form. The Reaper Form allows you to hit enemies harder, and allows you to take reduced damage in a short of time. Reaper Form can only be used when Death has enough Reaper Energy, and it can obtained by hitting enemies or using a certain Wrath ability. Once you have enough, you can transform to Reaper Form to make short work on enemies and bosses.
In this game, there are many types of enemies, such as constructs, skeletons, necromancers, wraiths, and many more. They are easy to beat, but they can kill you if you are overwhelmed by many of those enemies. There are also mini-bosses, such as a skeleton giant. Although they are dangerous, they can be defeated if you have good weapons and skillful at dodging. There are also boss fights in this game. Most of it are fairly unique and fun, some are tough to defeat if you are low leveled or do not have good equipment. Many of the boss fights require certain strategy or method to beat them, but other boss fights require you to hit them mercilessly. Of course, bosses are more tougher than regular enemies, and they can kill you faster than usual if you are not careful.
iv) Gameplay Conclusion
I like the overall gameplay, with fun combat system, deep leveling, looting and upgrading system, bigger open world exploration, variety of enemies and bosses, as well as good and creative puzzles. Unfortunately, the game suffers mild repetition, such as repetition of Primary Quest objectives. All of the Primary Quests objectives require you to clear a dungeon, retrieve an item, and report back to the quest giver. The pacing also feels slower than the first game, personally.
Graphics
The game's atmosphere and art style are certainly unique, and I like both a lot. The different realms' atmosphere and art style are certainly unique and cleverly contrasting each other, such as the Forge Lands environment filled of rocks and trees that are close to the nature, whereas Kingdom of the Dead environment is filled with barren wasteland.
Unfortunately, this remaster suffers game-crashing issues. Not many as I encountered it twice while playing the game. The game's framerate was unstable before installing the latest update, so I highly suggest players to download it before playint this game.
Sound
Excellent voice acting all-round. Death's voice actor (Michael Wincott) is especially terrific, delivering memorable and sarcastic lines to other characters, as well as many other good voice actors such as the Crowfather's voice actor (Keith Szarabarjka), Samael's voice actor (Vernon Wells) and many others.
The soundtrack is good, filled with good ambient tracks that suit each realm's tone, both during roaming and combat. Not many tracks are particularly memorable outside from playing the game, however,
Replay Value
This game has fairly good replay value. You can attempt to complete the Secondary Quests in the game, play the game again in harder difficulty mode such as the Apocalyptic mode, or challenge The Crucible. You may also choose to complete the DLCs, but they can only be accessed from the main menu once you have progressed the game enough.
Conclusion
I personally feel that this game is an improvement since the first game, and I feel that this game is more fun to play with. Not only you get to play as Death himself, the game has good implemented RPG elements such as leveling and looting, as well as fun combat and creative puzzles. However, this game suffers mild repetition in progression, as well as glitches. I highly recommend that interested players to wait for the latest patch to be released so that you can play the game without worrying dangerous glitches such as game-freezing glitches while playing.
Score
Story: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 9/10
Final Score: 7.75/10 or 31/40
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Death is an interesting character.
- Interesting supporting characters and enemies.
- Simple leveling system.
- Good skill learning system.
- Fun and intense combat.
- Distinct and unique visual style for both characters and environments.
- Good replay value.
- Intense boss fights.
- Creative puzzles and platforming sections.
- Bigger open world exploration.
- Fun customisation for Death's equipment and skills.
- Good voice acting.
- Lots of side activities to do, such as exploring new and secret dungeons in the game.
Cons
- Story does not explain certain mysteries left in the first game.
- Mild repetitive of progression, with no variety of means of completing objectives.
- Repetitive objectives.
- Poor pacing.
- Linear and too obvious platforming sections.
- Gamecrashing issues.
**Screenshots are from official PlayStation UK game page.
Introduction
This is the remastered version of Darksiders II. It includes all DLCs, new Trophy set, and slight graphical updates. It is recommended to download the latest update to avoid crashing issues and better graphical fixes.
Story
Take control the leader of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death.
This game takes place during the first game's events, during War's years of imprisonment in the first game. Death, the leader of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is unconvinced that his brother is guilty for triggering the Armageddon on Earth prematurely. He traveled and looked for the Tree of Life, where he encounters the Crowfather, the Keeper of Secrets. After killing him, he was transported to another world, which is the realm of the Makers, Forge Lands. In order to get to the Tree of Life, Death need to help others in his quest to save his brother.
The story feels a bit weaker than the first game. I feel that the lack of plot twists in the game hurt it, but this game doesn't have interesting or expanded lore. Death however, is much more of a likable playable character than War, the hero of the first game. The supporting characters in the game fit their role, such as Crowfather, Eideard, and many others.
Gameplay
i) Exploration and Progression Section
Travel to many different realms in the game.
The game feels more open world than the previous game, with four different realms that have bigger areas for you to explore. As you progress in the game, you will travel to new and different realms that have unique enemies live in distinct realms. Outside of dungeons, you can summon Death's horse for quick travelling in the game. However, you can summon him outdoors, and you cannot use him in dungeons.
To progress in the game, you need to complete your Primary Quest by going to the marker on your map. Many of the Primary Quests take place in dungeons, where you need to solve a number of puzzles and killing enemies in order to progress. You can use Dust as your guide in the dungeon if are you stuck somewhere. Like the previous game, this game mixes platforming sections, puzzle sections, and combat sections.
In this game, you can Fast Travel to any locations you have visited. If you use Fast Travel from a dungeon to another location, you can leave a Dungeon Waypoint where it allows you travel back to the spot in the dungeon where you have left. This is useful if you are short on supplies or finding that the enemies in the dungeon are tougher than usual.
You may also opt to complete side quests in this game called Secondary Quests, such as collecting pages, relics, helping someone to retrieve an item, and etc. Completing these quests will reward you many things, such as Skill Points, XP, money, and etc. Doing these side-quests will help you a lot in the game.
ii) Leveling, Upgrading and Customisation Section
Level up Death so that he can learn new skills and wields stronger weapons, as well as customise his appearance with a variety of pieces of equipment.
This game uses leveling system and looting system. Death has his own stats, such as Strength, Arcane, and etc. His stats can be increased by leveling him up through accumulating XP (Experience Points) in combat and quests. As he levels up, his stats will increase and he will be able to obtain a Skill Point to learn or upgrade his skills.
Death's skills tree is divided into two, one is for Harbinger skills and Necromancy skills. Death can only learn new skills by gaining more levels. All of his skills are Wrath skills, and he has eight different Wrath skills. Some of is Wrath skills have upgrades that can make the particular Wrath skill be more potent in combat. For example, Aegis Shield has a side-upgrade that allows Death to reflect 10% of damage taken in combat. Skill Points can be used to upgrade your main learned Wrath skills, or to learn and upgrade side-upgrades for each main Wrath skills. Take consideration into what build you want Death to be, since his stats play important role in Death's abilities in the game.
Defeating enemies in this game will sometimes drop money, items, weapons, or armour pieces. There are two main items in the game, which are Health Potion and Wrath Potion. Like their namesake imply, Health Potion restores health whereas Wrath Potion restore Wrath. Money can be used to buy those potions or armour pieces. You can get money by opening treasure chests in dungeons, killing enemies, completing Primary Quests and Secondary Quests, or by selling items.
You may also customise Death's appearance by equipping him with various armour pieces, such as spaulders, boots, and etc. Not only they will give Death a unique appearance, the armour pieces will grant Death various stat bonuses, such as Strength bonus, Defense bonus, Arcane bonus, etc. Examine each armour pieces and use accordingly to your playstyle. For example, if you prioritise offense in combat, equip armour pieces that have Strength and Critical Damage bonuses.
Death can equip two weapons, one primary and the other secondary. His primary weapon is twin scythes, and there is a lot of variety of scythes that can be found in the game, such as scythes that allows you to deal fire damage, etc. His secondary weapons is varied, such as mace, axe, gauntlets, buckler, and etc. Like his primary weapons, there is a lot of variety of it, such as maces that deal ice damage and etc. Both primary weapons and secondary weapons have their own attack stat and stat bonuses such as Strength bonus, so try experimenting them to see which is best in different fighting situations. Likewise for Death's Wrath abilities, Death cannot use any weapons that have higher level than he is.
There are various types of vendors in the game that sell various pieces of equipment and other items to you. As you all may know, stronger equipment are more expensive than regular ones. You can also sell any unwanted items or pieces of equipment to them for money.
iii) Combat Section
Ravage your enemies with Death's deadly scythe moves and Wrath abilities.
In combat, you have access to primary weapon attack, secondary weapon attack, and Wrath abilities. Your primary weapon attack involves Death's twin scythes, where he can use it to attack enemies quickly with a combo. His secondary weapon attack is varied, such as powerful heavy attacks using axes or maces, or quick attacks using bucklers and bladearms. Death can have use both attacks to create deadly combos, such as chaining both primary and secondary weapons attacks together.
Usage of Wrath abilities drain Death's Wrath bar. His Wrath bar can be restored by hitting enemies, or by using Wrath Potions. In this game, health restoration is scarce, and can only be done by using Health Potions, or using weapons that have certain type of stats that allow you to recover some Health by killing enemies. As you all know, if Death's Health is empty, it is game over and you need to restart from your last checkpoint. You can also lock on enemies to focus your attacks, or you can also dodge any incoming attacks. While damaging enemies, sometimes there is a popup button that allows you to kill an enemy instantly.
Death can learn new combat moves by purchasing them from trainers scattered in the game. It is recommended for you to buy them to increase your combat versatility. Also, like in the first game, Death can transform temporarily into a more powerful form called Reaper Form. The Reaper Form allows you to hit enemies harder, and allows you to take reduced damage in a short of time. Reaper Form can only be used when Death has enough Reaper Energy, and it can obtained by hitting enemies or using a certain Wrath ability. Once you have enough, you can transform to Reaper Form to make short work on enemies and bosses.
In this game, there are many types of enemies, such as constructs, skeletons, necromancers, wraiths, and many more. They are easy to beat, but they can kill you if you are overwhelmed by many of those enemies. There are also mini-bosses, such as a skeleton giant. Although they are dangerous, they can be defeated if you have good weapons and skillful at dodging. There are also boss fights in this game. Most of it are fairly unique and fun, some are tough to defeat if you are low leveled or do not have good equipment. Many of the boss fights require certain strategy or method to beat them, but other boss fights require you to hit them mercilessly. Of course, bosses are more tougher than regular enemies, and they can kill you faster than usual if you are not careful.
iv) Gameplay Conclusion
Overall fun gameplay, but marred by repetition of progression.
I like the overall gameplay, with fun combat system, deep leveling, looting and upgrading system, bigger open world exploration, variety of enemies and bosses, as well as good and creative puzzles. Unfortunately, the game suffers mild repetition, such as repetition of Primary Quest objectives. All of the Primary Quests objectives require you to clear a dungeon, retrieve an item, and report back to the quest giver. The pacing also feels slower than the first game, personally.
Graphics
Superb and unique visual style, but bugged down by various bugs and glitches.
The game's atmosphere and art style are certainly unique, and I like both a lot. The different realms' atmosphere and art style are certainly unique and cleverly contrasting each other, such as the Forge Lands environment filled of rocks and trees that are close to the nature, whereas Kingdom of the Dead environment is filled with barren wasteland.
Unfortunately, this remaster suffers game-crashing issues. Not many as I encountered it twice while playing the game. The game's framerate was unstable before installing the latest update, so I highly suggest players to download it before playint this game.
Sound
Great voice acting and nice soundtrack by Jesper Kyd.
Excellent voice acting all-round. Death's voice actor (Michael Wincott) is especially terrific, delivering memorable and sarcastic lines to other characters, as well as many other good voice actors such as the Crowfather's voice actor (Keith Szarabarjka), Samael's voice actor (Vernon Wells) and many others.
The soundtrack is good, filled with good ambient tracks that suit each realm's tone, both during roaming and combat. Not many tracks are particularly memorable outside from playing the game, however,
Replay Value
Good replay value.
This game has fairly good replay value. You can attempt to complete the Secondary Quests in the game, play the game again in harder difficulty mode such as the Apocalyptic mode, or challenge The Crucible. You may also choose to complete the DLCs, but they can only be accessed from the main menu once you have progressed the game enough.
Conclusion
Weak remaster despite the solid game foundation.
I personally feel that this game is an improvement since the first game, and I feel that this game is more fun to play with. Not only you get to play as Death himself, the game has good implemented RPG elements such as leveling and looting, as well as fun combat and creative puzzles. However, this game suffers mild repetition in progression, as well as glitches. I highly recommend that interested players to wait for the latest patch to be released so that you can play the game without worrying dangerous glitches such as game-freezing glitches while playing.
Score
Story: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 9/10
Final Score: 7.75/10 or 31/40
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Death is an interesting character.
- Interesting supporting characters and enemies.
- Simple leveling system.
- Good skill learning system.
- Fun and intense combat.
- Distinct and unique visual style for both characters and environments.
- Good replay value.
- Intense boss fights.
- Creative puzzles and platforming sections.
- Bigger open world exploration.
- Fun customisation for Death's equipment and skills.
- Good voice acting.
- Lots of side activities to do, such as exploring new and secret dungeons in the game.
Cons
- Story does not explain certain mysteries left in the first game.
- Mild repetitive of progression, with no variety of means of completing objectives.
- Repetitive objectives.
- Poor pacing.
- Linear and too obvious platforming sections.
- Gamecrashing issues.
**Screenshots are from official PlayStation UK game page.
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