After revisiting the remaster of the first Darksiders, it was time to revisit the remaster of the second game (that was actually released before the remaster of first). It was curious to see how the developers wanted to expand the universe they’ve introduced us to in the first game and make some really curious and somewhat innovative changes to the gameplay again and the ideas put into the remastered version were pretty great as well. Though, sadly, the game, especially in this version, is also somewhat of a glitchy mess.
While the first game focused more on the big plot of Earth having the apocalypse brought upon it via a conspiracy of several powerful parties and War, on of the four Horseman, being framed for it, second game tells more of a side story. Which is why it’s so confusing that this side story and the characters featured in it are so much more interesting than the rather dreary tale of the first game. Though, truth be told, it has more to do with improved storytelling, than with the fact that the events are now happening not on post-apocalyptic Earth but in other realms. Even if it is nice to visit those realms and they continue to show how the universe created for the series is indeed rich on possible stories and interesting events we might see in future games.
Along with the more interesting story, Darksiders II also manages to have a more refined and fun gameplay mechanics. It’s still quite Zelda meets DMC, but this time there’s a lot more Diablo-esque action RPG elements added into the mix. On the positive side, this means that you use abilities more often, rather than relying on the rather primitive, even if improved for this game, hack and slash, healing is less reliant on finishers and the leveling up works based on the aRPG-like XP, rather than on different ways for different things to upgrade. On the negative side, however, this means dozens of boring loot items showering you and more grindy nature of some sections (though rebalanced for Deathinitive edition).
In general, it feels like you are playing Prince of Persia 2008 meets Diablo, which is extremely exciting at first, but later starts to bring in more bad from both influences. I’ve mentioned the bad of Diablo side, but as for the traversal, while it is more fluid and fun in this game compared to very God of War-like in the first game, it suffers from the exact same issues as the PoP (2008) – if you do anything, and I mean anything, not precisely as the game works, Death will do some wrong move and fall. It’s rarely a big source of frustration, but the game has a few timed sections where the fact that the game can ignore the direction of your input at any point is infuriating and leads to replaying the same section over and over again.
It is also somewhat disappointing that while all the item-use Zelda-like puzzles are used to a lesser extent here. I mean, there’s plenty of them, but as the game goes on, and you realize that there are only 4 special puzzle abilities, only 1 of which is used constantly in puzzles and in combat, while the rest are barely necessary outside of several locations. This gets somewhat expanded in the first two DLCs (and is completely absent in the third), but still feels lacking compared to the first game. Then again, it feels like the developers didn’t even know how to account for backtracking with items in many sections, so most dungeons or places you might need to return to later with new items, and those that do, often feel like a completely superficial addition done because they felt like they had to do it.
And while some things, mostly combat, feels a bit rebalanced for the Deathinitive Edition, a lot of things are not and stay as poor or as broken as they were in the original release. Game can be somewhat unstable at times, the sound disappearing problem from the original is still present and can kick in at any point and require a restart of the game to fix. Some people are reporting serious game breaking bugs that I was lucky to not experience, or continuous crashes on specific locations. DLCs are still not really part of the game and has to be loaded from the main menu instead of being more organically fitted as some teleporters or main game events, despite their stories fitting the idea perfectly, with the second DLC, for example, story-wise supposedly happening as a teleportation accident, something that you just read as text in a popup window when you unlock it, before awkwardly loading it from the main menu. At least the rendering update indeed makes the game look generally much better with some terrific dynamic lighting and PBR that enhance the way the game feels.
Darksiders II is a curious game. On one hand it’s a very interesting take on action RPG/action adventure, an improvement in many ways over the original game and a really fun game to play (with pretty solid music from Jesper Kyd). On the other, it’s somewhat of a mess (especially in this Deathinitive Edition version), some of it’s optional content is lucky to be optional because of how dreadfully tedious it is and the game drags for a bit too long for what it offers, with opening two areas being huge and overwhelming, while the final two being extremely short (and DLCs are ridiculously abrupt in whatever “stories” they try to tell). I enjoyed returning to the game and am excited to see what direction the third game will take, but at the same time I cannot help but wish this game would receive more updates to make this edition truly definitive.