First off, sorry it has taken this long to get this review up, but it's actually a good thing. Darksiders II (heretofore to be labeled "DII" [as opposed to D2:The Mighty Ducks]) is a delightfully long game in a time where it seems 6-8 hour campaigns are the norm. My game time after finishing the story was just south of 21 hours and I still have 4-5 sidequests to complete before starting a New Game+ to go get my platinum (I stupidly didn't do this playthrough on the hardest difficulty so now I have to beat the entire game again!).
Enough of my long-winded intro though, DII is a game that every action-adventure RPG fan should play. DII casts you as Death, one of the four horseman of the Apocalypse, and the tale takes place during the 100 years your brother (and "hero" of the first game) War was imprisoned by the Charred Council for bringing about the Apocalypse. Death's task is to clear his brother's name.
If you haven't played the first game, it's not necessary to understand for DII , but you should play it. I labeled the first game as "The best Zelda game I've played in a while," and DII sticks close to that formula while expanding on other components.
One of those components is the addition of sweet, sweet loot. What "serious" gamer doesn't love loot? There's a reason (besides being good games) that Borderlands, Fallout and Diablo are such loved games: loot. The joy of killing an enemy only to see a pair of scythes (main character Death's primary weapon) come bursting out is unexplainable. In the first game, you simply leveled up War's sword by using it, but in DII you get all new weapons. Developer Vigil Games also does the nice thing of displaying the stats before you even pick up the weapon! Thanks Vigil!
Another addition is some skill-tree building. Death levels up (to level 30) by killing enemies and completing main and sidequests (also a new component). Vigil did another thing to keep gamers playing by having your EXP bar on display at all times. It's tough to put down a controller when that bar is nearing the end on the right.
The Darksiders franchise has been described as a mash-up of Zelda, God of War and Devil May Cry. Now add Prince of Persia to that list. Death has many ways of traversing the environment. He can vertically and horizontally on walls and hang from ledges and wooden planks. It's fun watching someone who is good at platforming (i.e. not really me) play DII. The Zelda comparisons are fine as DII has an "open-world" overworld and features dungeon crawling and puzzle solving. The God of War and DMC comparisons are due to the free-flow hack-and-slash style gameplay, and you know what? All of those disparate parts fit well together. DII is absolutely a fun game to play. The combo-driven gameplay works. The Zelda-elements and platforming are fun. If you play any of those games, give DII a chance.
The voice acting and writing is also top-notch and at times downright funny. Death has some really funny one-liners (try summoning your horse, Despair, where he isn't welcome.) The writing fuels a good story that is well worth the 15-20 hours of gameplay.
(Here comes the "Having said that.")
Having said that, there are some weak points to DII, mainly, this game feels like it should have been the first in the series. Remember when I said you don't need to play the first game to understand the second? I'm not in favor of that move especially because of how the first game ended ("No, not alone.") The first game set itself up perfectly for a direct sequel but instead we were given an (admittedly very good) side-quel or what Japanese developers would label as "Gaiden."
Vigil would have been better served giving fans of the first game the sequel we were led to believe was coming after that ending. It was frustrating finishing this game because it ends with the same scene as the first (that's not a spoiler)! By doing that, Vigil (if it gets to make a DIII and I hope it does) has no reason not to give us a direct sequel now. Now, it could go the other route and give us games featuring the other two horsemen, Strife and Fury (one is a female!), showing what they did during War's imprisonment, but we want to see what happens when they all get together! Come on Vigil!
The fact that my biggest criticism of the game is "Why should I care about the story?" shouldn't scare you away. It's still a good, albeit hard to follow, story. I'm just not sure it was needing to be told. We learned who the main villain of the Apocalypse is in the first game and there's a sidequest in DII that features a character that says something like "I need to find out who is behind all of this!" We know who's behind all of it! If this game was the first to come out, it would make sense, but as it is, it's frustrating. We know that character failed to do anything.
Another omission left out is probably a very personal thing. I love hunting down heart pieces in Zelda. In the first game, War hunted down life and wrath (mana) stones. Those have been removed. Granted there are more collectibles in this game, but I enjoy searching for those.
Darksiders II takes many cues from many different games and fuses them together to make a very good game that deserves to be played.The game falters behind the original only in story. The first game told a great and compelling story, the second one, while still good, falters. DII also doesn't look quite as good as the first one for some reason, but it still looks good.
Hopefully THQ's financial situation will strengthen and we can get one
or two more of these games because there is a lot of mythology to tell. If THQ falters, I hope another publisher picks up Vigil and lets them continue.
Rating: 9/10
