In 2020 a surprisingly good “Resident Evil knock-off” called Heaven Dust got released. And by “knock-off” I don’t mean “a classic survival horror game”, I mean a game that actually used some of the assets of the original Resident Evil games. Except it was done in an isometric perspective and had a few ideas of its own. I liked it despite its flaws and questionable “borrowing” from the inspirations and wondered what would be next for the developers. A direct sequel, as it turned out to be. Which clearly aims to be a full on improvement but in reality is more of a mixed bag.
The core ideas of the first game are still here and are simply improved. The view is still isometric/top down with a twin stick shooter-like aiming system, inventory reminiscent of Resident Evil titles old and most recent and gameplay mechanics and flow are intact. The game still adheres to all of the true survival horror experience pillars with its resource management, combat that requires clever positioning and smart weapon usage and a huge interconnected location that you open up piece by piece by finding items and solving puzzles.
There are numerous changes and updates to all of the elements, however. Combat now features a fun additional element where holding aim at one enemy for some time shifts the reticle from the center mass to the weakest point for higher damage and this aspect becomes very important for smart ammo management. Manual saving is now locked to safe rooms, though the game also has autosaves. The concept of tokens and vending machines is dropped entirely, so enemies never drop items now. Due to that, the overall amount of resources is now limited and not respawning, despite the fact that the enemies still respawn at certain spots after different player actions. Overall, there seems to be a switch to RE2 2019 and RE3 2020 inspired mechanics and concepts from the elements of the classic RE titles and a much bigger emphasis on action.
Which is a strange decision, since action was easily the weakest part of the original Heaven Dust. And despite the improvements and changes, it remains the worst part of the sequel, even though there’s so much of it now. Yes, it is satisfying to prepare for a horde of enemies and pull off critical headshots for a few times, but the game constantly throws dozens of enemies at you and it gets tired really quickly. Just as with the first game, with careful resource management your first half is a complete breeze, while in the second half you barely ever have enough ammo to deal with the enemies.
And that’s when the encounters have at least some thought put into them. But more often than not, you just have ridiculously obnoxious monster closets suddenly bursting after performing some action, with several dozen zombies appearing from literally out of nowhere. And the boss fights are absolutely terrible. You either get lucky with a pattern that doesn’t overwhelm you (and grab enough healing items to get through many barely dodgeable or completely undodgeable attacks), or get destroyed for no good reason. There’s one annoying boss fight, after which there’s an autosave before a sequence that requires precognition to get through, otherwise it instantly kills you. And another annoying boss fight, where the boss can spawn multiple helpers that have a ton of health and hit harder than the boss, while on top of that that fight has an insta-kill attack that can just randomly do you in. The amount of incredibly dumb action moments in the game is staggering.
It’s a shame, because the core has really been improved by a lot. The game still rips off RE games, completely unashamedly, but has a clearer voice of its own now. It looks much better, controls much better, has lots of good locations that are exciting to explore and puzzles that are fun to solve. I’m still not sure if it really had to be more than twice as long as the original game, really, but if not for the terribly designed action, it would’ve been totally fine and I wouldn’t have gotten annoyed or bored. But every time I’d start appreciating how much better the game is shaping up to be, it would pull off yet another stupid decision that killed any enjoyment that I was getting.
Heaven Dust 2 could be a straight up improvement over the first game, but in the end I liked it less. It’s constantly frustrating, despite its enhanced mechanics and the longer length really makes these constant annoyances grate on you. If you really love classic survival horror games, there’s not much of a choice and this game is at least never as obnoxiously poor as Them and Us gets. At the same time, I’d rather recommend playing the first game instead. And only if you really want more you could try out the sequel. I can only hope that whatever developers do next will be better.