Dying Light 2: Stay Human review: Less talk, more dropkicks

digitaltrends.com:

Dying Light 2: Stay Human has been a long time coming, and the many years worth of effort put into it really show. Its world is a meticulously crafted parkour playground, somewhere that I, in my 30 some-odd hours of play, have enjoyed simply running through. This is the Dying Light franchise’s niche in the ever-growing sea of zombie games. Its movement and world are unmatched — and dropkicking a zombie off a roof is pretty fun, too.

But that’s the beginning and end of everything interesting in Dying Light, which makes Dying Light 2‘s narrative-based adventure all the more confusing. Instead of focusing on its free-running and zombie combat, the game delivers a muddy story, burdened with too many uninteresting characters, and puts it in the limelight.

Dying Light 2 is a wonderful game to play, but listening to its characters speak wears off faster than the soles of the main character’s shoes.

Picking up well after the original game, Dying Light 2 places players in the well-worn sneakers of Aiden Caldwell. He’s a Pilgrim, a wanderer between the few human settlements left in the world, who is searching for his long-lost sister. That brings him to the city of Villedor, a stand-in for Dying Light‘s Harran, albeit one that isn’t flirting with the apocalypse, but has been living in the aftermath of one for over a decade.

From its outset, Dying Light 2 is an expansion of everything from the original Dying Light. The city of Villedor is a grander, larger jungle gym than Harran was. Players can customize their character through an RPG leveling system, and modify weapons that have been taped or welded together from the ruins of the city. It also means the game’s story, which throws Aiden in the midst of a conflict between two