This is not the first time I have played this game. In fact, not only is the first time I played also here on this very site, but it was the first game I ever played on the ill-fated WiiU. And back then, I absolutely loved it, even as I had some serious issues with it on a technical level. But over time looking back, I found myself disappointed with the support the game (and console in general) received. While other platforms had DLC campaigns to extend the game itself, they were never even offered to Nintendo's system.
But then the Humble Bundle came through and suddenly I found myself with not only the PC release, but the "Deathinitive edition" containing technical updates, game balance updates, and most importantly, all three DLC campaigns. Coming back was inevitability.... but was it worth the time?
The Horseman War has been charged with the ultimate crime. He is being accused of going to the Kingdom of Man and triggering the end of days before the seals were broken. But the Charred Council, a group of entities that exist beyond creation and who all of creation (including Heaven and Hell) answers to, is not unreasonable. If War claims his innocence, he is allowed to try to prove it. But he is not alone in these endeavors. For Death has also decided to try to clear his brother's name, though in a different way. Where War is trying to prove he did nothing wrong, Death believes he may have found a way to reverse the crime so that there is nothing to charge his brother on. With this mission in mind, he goes to find the one soul who might hold the secret he seeks. He rides off to find the Crowfather.
Not that the man is particularly happy to see Death. You see, Death and his fellow horsemen are supposed to be all that's left of race known as the Nephelim: beings about halfway between demon and angel that before the beginning of time threatened all of creation in a conquest across the universe. That ended the day the four who would become the enforcers of the Charred Council betrayed their brothers and killed off everyone else. But Death did not destroy the souls of his brethren like he was supposed to. Rather, he collected them in an amulet he had given to the Crowfather for safe keeping. It has tortured the man ever since and he has no intention of lending a hand to any of the horsemen, much less Death without giving it back.
After the inevitable battle to force the Crowfather's hand, Death killed the guy. But he did get the "help" he asked for... at a price. With the shards of the amulet now embedded in his chest, he was sent to the world of the Makers who could help him find his way to the Tree of Life. With it's power over life and death itself, maybe Death could undo what his brother had done and restore mankind.
You will take control of Death as he finds his way to the Crowfather, making this early part of the story basically used to give you a tutorial of how you will play, giving you some basic battles and obstacles to get used to how Death moves. And while his running speed is basically what you would expect, he is a very mobile combatant to take control of. Dodges actually put some distance between where you were and where you go, both on an individual leap as well as chaining them together for a lengthy acrobatic escape or close in, and combine in free-form with melee and jumping techniques which give you a great feel right away. You will even be given the chance to use Reaper mode, a special ability that charges up as you battle your foes and allows Death to unleash his ultimate form for a temporary time. And even then you are only getting a small taste of what will be available to you as other weapons and abilities will become yours to further mix into the madness.
How you will get these abilities will vary, however, and many will be based on what you choose to do. Unlike the original game in this series, this time your horseman levels as you fight the monstrosities in your way. Gaining a level not only grants you better stats, but also gives you a point to place in the skill tree, either granting or strengthening a new "wrath" ability you can map to your controls and use at will, provided you have built up enough wrath to fire it off. This adds an incredible flexibility to mold Death's style to suit yours even more. From Area of Effect damage to life stealing, to even swarms of summoned minions to attack along side him, it's all available. But with a limited number of points (a few given as rewards for quests and one per level which seemed in my run to cap out at 22) you will not be able to fill in the tree, so your Death could play very different then mine.
You get this wrath-fuel, along with health and reaper power usually by beating up monsters. What you get and how much beatings you have to do are also effected by your gear. Yes, this game includes a loot-element where you will pick up weapons and pieces of armor as well as gold and even health and wrath potions to increase you capabilities. Sometimes monsters will hold the goodies, but the real caches of loot are the chests you will find throughout the world. These will not respawn, but there is plenty to provide for you throughout the game.
And that gold just might come in handy from time to time as you are not alone in the worlds of Darksiders 2. Across the worlds you travel you will meet a variety of characters: from kings to traders to overzealous warriors eager to show you they are better then Death in a sparring match. And the latter two are where that gold matters. Not that you will likely buy much equipment, as the game is fairly generous on the battlefield, but health and wrath potions are nice to pick up when you can, and those warriors also tend to offer training for a price, further allowing you to customize death with combo moves you can buy and add to the combos on the field.
But for how deep and varied this combat system can get, you will often find it falling into the background as travel between and exploring dungeons becomes the main objective of the game. Much like adventure games of old, these places are full of puzzles you will need to navigate and resolve to progress to the goal of your current quest, most of which will end with some kind of boss encounter. These dungeons themselves are for the most part a reward onto themselves as you navigate the twists and turns left for you to figure out, be it navigational puzzles or something new to go with your newest ability found within it. In fact out of the entire game and all three DLC campaigns included, there were only two areas that I could say were not at least up to par for a gamer who wants to explore and discover.. and sadly since one of these is mandatory, I can also see it being a point where a lot would likely get frustrated and rage-quit the game.
At these two moments, you will find yourself in a shaft with a deadly floor of lava or very sharp and spikey debris. To escape, you need to climb an obstacle course of platforms and posts in the walls to reach the top before the bottom reaches you. This should not be an issue since the path to follow is very easy to see and understand, but this is also where a real weakness in Death's movement becomes obvious. He is reacting to your button presses, but not in time to them. His reaction time is limited to his animation time. Normally this is not an issue, but in these two moments when you have to get through before you get killed by the environmental disaster below, you will often find yourself pushing to do things faster then Death can, resulting in him reacting to your actions from his position. In essence, if you reach out to run along a wall, but don't wait for Death to do the same before you hit the button to jump, Death will not do as you expected, but instead launch himself straight up the wall, scrabble to find something to hold onto, and fall down several seconds later and now likely too far behind the time needed to escape. It's frankly infuriating when your character fails to keep up with you in such demanding moments, which is why we should all be glad if you do everything in the game, you will only see this twice, as noted before.
Much more common (if not universally) to the dungeons are boss battles. Occasionally you will run into mini-bosses in the middle of your dungeon crawl, but far more often you will find a final encounter waiting or you at the end. These can be very hit-or-miss, unfortunately. And the reason for that is when you find one in a dungeon that just gave you a new skill, the developers often wanted to make the boss based on what you just learned, making for many gimmick bosses that are needlessly frustrating, confusing, or some combination of the two. This is much more common towards the beginning of the game with later bosses being more about learning how the enemy fights and how to counter it, but they still remain from time to time.
For example, early in the game, you will go face off with a hulking living robot who's core is a bundle of viney corruption. He takes very little (if any) damage from you directly, but his attacks shake the room, including bombs off the wall you are supposed to throw at him to knock him out and then rip apart that core that falls out. This will require you to take your eyes off him to grab and fling them, which can be more then dangerous on it's own while he is slamming the ground, charging you with drills, or summoning smaller mechanical minions to fight you. Add to this that you better have been close when it dropped, as they will blow up after a short amount of time, and you have a very frustrating gimmick to base a boss on indeed.
But on the other hand, you get bosses like the Arena champion who's just monstrous, epic, and amazing in his own right to balance things out as he shifts between multiple forms, combat styles, and required tactics to hit him at will., so while the game isn't known for great bosses, it certainly has some shining moments even here.
And all of this looks absolutely amazing for the most part. This game claims to be a remastered version, which I have to question. After all, I did play this back in the day and outside of the resolution (which I would argue is because I was playing on Wii U), I didn't notice any real difference. Still, Death looks amazing and his animations are absolutely nothing short of epic as he rips apart everything around him, whichever move you choose to use to do so. It is simply a spectacle you will not get tired of seeing. Even other enemies are allowed their moments (well, if you allow them anyway, but that's on you and how you decide to engage them) of pure awesome to call you out or make their move on you... and this isn't even including the bosses, just the tougher minions that make up the mini-showcases along the way. Those bosses often get to be just as epic as Death, from Crowfather's mockup War to the final boss of the entire game.
The worlds all look varied and beautiful as well! From the mythical and almost dwarvish world of the makers to the completely metal, yet desolate land of the dead, and even a post apocalyptic and demon infested Earth, it's mostly looks amazing. In fact there is really only one detail that ruins these impressions during the main campaign, but it's a shame it happens so often. Death's shadow when against a wall can look pixelated and awful to the pointof immersion breaking. But I have to single this to the main campaign as the DLC "The Abyssal Forge" adds a new issue in which late in the quest, you are made immune to the poisons in the water, but you don't swim or even trudge through, but simply walk on the surface of it. It's a small detail to be sure, but when it's one of the key details of the quest you are offered, it stands out.
Bugs: While this game is overall one hell of a good one, it is frankly one despite being a bit of a buggy mess, and while playing I had SEVERAL issues occur.
- Crashes: Yes this game crashed on me a handful of times, outright freezing before Windows informed it stopped working and I was kicked back to the Steam screen. It was rare considering how long I was playing but it definitely happened more then once.
- What happened to the sound? Another rare, but annoying issue that happened from time to time was with the sound. Random channels of the audio can just stop working for no really appearant reason. For me this was acceptionally annoying as one of the times it occured was for the final animations after the last boss of the main campaign. Im thankful I finished this game before on the WiiU so I knew what was going on, but no speech and no subtitles (unlike the REST OF THE GAME) means if I had never seen this, I would have been a lot more in the dark.
- Gear special powers not working: Not quite as rare as above, but also a lot less of a game breaker, I found sometimes it just wasn't worth using gear that had special powers... because the powers would arbitrarily stop working. Most of the time this manifested with a special charm called the Grim which was supposed to make every attack add to my reaper meter and bring me closer to being able to use the "Reaper" mode. However, I would notice it not moving when it should.
- Lighting system kinda breaks in a few places: Basically the game employs a filter for overall dark/light levels in a room on top of lighting effects. And in some places, it's actually not places right, resulting in the upper right area of the screen having a darker square area for no good reason.
Score:
System Requirements:
- 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD equivilant
- 4 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT with 512 MB VRAM or AMD equivilant
- Windows XP/Vista (SP1)/7/8/10 (64-bit only)
- 13 GB hard drive space
- Ryzen 3 2200G running at 3.5 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 10
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
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