Darksiders 2 is a fun game all around. Death is on a mission to prove his brother War’s innocence in starting the apocalypse. and thus dooming mankind to extinction. Death believes if he can resurrect humanity, he can absolve War of his crimes. Now if you have played Darksiders, Death is very different from War. Death is more about agility and chaining together some amazing attacks and rapid speeds, equipped with dual scythes and secondary weapons, Death is a blur on the screen in battle. The game has a skill tree mechanism, and as you level up with Death you can assign points into two different trees, Harbinger and Necromancy. Harbinger is your straight up physical attacks and Necromancy controls the dead, by summoning ghouls to fight for you. Several special weapons are repeated from the first game, like the portal gauntlet which allows you to teleport yourself around the map; however there are two new abilities you can unlock as you play through the game. Death can split into two copies of himself, each individually controlled. When you split, a stone statue acts as the anchor for your spiritual selves. You can only control one spiritual body at a time, using this technique to solve several puzzles, plus each spirit is full combat ready in case you need to beat down some enemies. And the second, the portal gauntlet, also lets you travel back in time in the place you are currently in. So from a once-destroyed tower in the present, when you use the ability you go back to a time when the tower was whole. Also the skill tree abilities are quite impressive, giving you a mix of straight up physical attacker, or magic caster, or you can opt to be balanced in the two. The game features several puzzles, each needing a different ability.
Now for not so great parts. Combat can get bland quite fast, there are weapons you can find that can refill your Wrath meter (Wrath allows you to use your special combos), thus allowing you to infinitely use your special attacks which are, let’s be honest, a little overpowered when you have assigned points correctly.
While there are several puzzles, they are overly repetitive, and the time travel ability is only useful in one place in the entire story of the game.
Death’s motivation in the game is extremely vague. Everything feels like a fetch quest — go here, get this, come back, get reward. It becomes stale quite fast.
While I love the Lore behind the entire concept of Darksiders, the way the aforementioned lore panned out in the game, I was quite disappointed. The ending in itself was quite a letdown, where demons you meet hint at a second possibility, when I got to the end of the game I was not allowed to make that choice.
Final Verdict? The game is fun, although it reminds me too much of Prince of Persia. it felt lacklustre, and also lacked the depth that I found in the first game.
Buy it just because Death looks awesome. Otherwise you can always easily pass this up, or get it when it comes on discount.