Finally got around to finishing this. Always annoys me to pay for a game and not beat it. Overall I can't say it was a bad game, yet it always felt just a bit like a chore to play. The first game was fun enough I played it all the way through without switching to other games, but this one I kept having to force myself to go on.
I really think it's system bloat. The first game was pretty focused on the core things it wanted to do, this one tried to do so many more things but was less coherent as a result. There wasn't even a reason to explore the last two areas of the city in the final quests. It feels like they want you to play it forever co-op and just clear dungeons but it lacks the kind of rewards that really make that type of gameplay compelling.
Things I liked:
-Combat was generally improved, with blocks and counters and special moves. I liked the parkour jump attacks and it wasn't just zombie dropkick simulator.
-Parkour improved, I enjoyed going up the really tall buildings and finding interesting ways to use different moves to reach heights
-I liked the macguffin was a key that had actual use throughout the game.
-It was pretty long, 70 hours and I didn't even clear the whole city
Things I don't:
-Combat quickly becomes irrelevant due to levels. All the content is maxed at 5 or 6 and I passed that at the halfway point. Unless you rush the story (who does this??) last 30 hours were just a breeze of one-shotting everything. It was really funny when I entered a plot area and the game said watch out, there are too many zombies you need to run, and I proceeded to leisurely stroll through the zone killing everything. If ever a game needed some level scaling it's this. The combat is only fun when you're fighting level appropriate enemies and don't have maxed out legendary weapons. Which brings me to..
-Way too easy to get maxed out legendary weapons. Another game where if you want any semblance of challenge you need to avoid crafting. It's funny because upgrading health packs and bombs requires hundreds of zombie trophies, to the point I only upgraded maybe 20% of my gear, and you really have to pick and choose what you want to focus on. But weapon blueprints are very cheap to max out and plentiful to craft so then you have unlimited level-scaled legendary weapons making all the scavenging and looting pointless.
-Economy. Money is trivial, there are not too many different resources to find, and you can easily buy them all. So most of the copy-pasta open world content is a waste of time.
-Paraglider was meh. It was fun to fly around but it negates the parkour. Why try to find smooth routes between areas when the best strategy is always to climb up and fly?
-Repetitive. Every metro was the same, every electrical station, every GRE lab. There were a few interesting places but they were all story based (VNC tower). All the open world content took way too long to complete. Just unlocking fast travel is a massive hassle.
-Too many quests with crappy rewards. You're lucky if a quest gives you XP, but even that is bland (see next point). Mostly you get trivial amounts of money and more useless crafting junk, found in great abundance everywhere. The actual bottleneck on crafting is zombie heads which no quest gives you. I started skipping the side quests in the later half of the game and still clocked in over 70 hours. Each one has an unbelievable amount of blather. I can't believe how much effort they spent writing and recording dialogue for so many worthless tasks.
-XP system was bland. DL1's skill tree felt like it had a lot of heft to it, to the point that maxing out skills really made a difference. Not so much here. After level 10 or so in both trees I felt like I had everything good and the rest was just fluff. On top of that you had an extra set of collectables in the form of inhibitors to boost your health and stamina and tracking them down felt like a massive pain, further increasing the busywork and diluting the gameplay rewards.
-Lame bosses. Despite all the fancy moves available in the game all the bosses have exactly one gimmick: Knockdown spam, which you can't defend against. Dodging is barely adequate. In tough fights you spend more time on your back than your mom at the Sturgis bike rally. Yet due to high levels and gear the enemies can barely hurt you, so it's just knockdown chain after knockdown chain in between 1-2 hits. Snore.
-Factions. I went with survivors and had to fight the PKs. Then in the next area the game pulled an Invisible War and I was working with the PKs again. Weak. So picking a faction doesn't matter at all. In fact even awarding districts is pointless since the only story choice that matters is who you give the VNC tower to. I wish I had picked PK because traps are way better than jump pads. I enjoyed how the first game mixed traps with parkour and always had fun using the environment to fight zombies. I think it was a mistake to lock that gameplay type behind a faction choice, esp. the 'bad' guys.
-Story. Nice try, but it sucks. Lawan is no Jade. Rosario Dawson is like a 50 year old Abuela. No thanks. I'm pissed I thought she was going to die because I left her at the end; turns out you have to blow up the city and then save her, and she hates you so she leaves and you get the Bro ending with Hakon. Whatever. Who gives a crap. I never understood why Waltz was nuking the town, nor was it explained why Aiden is hulking out constantly. In the end he isn't even 'cured' apparently so he's just going to wander away become a volatile? It's like the game forgot that was even supposed to be a plot point. I think there's a reason why good zombie fiction doesn't push too far past the initial outbreak, because there's essentially no story after that that matters. At least we were spared some speech about "The next phase of human evolution!!!!!"
Overall, would not buy again. Wish I had picked PK zones to get the better crossbow and traps, but not enough to replay the game.
