A great open world adventure game with unconventional hack and slash characteristics.
Death is a fairly interesting character in Darksiders 2. A horseman who joined with three of his brothers, War, Strife and Fury, were forced by the Charred Council to slaughter the remaining Nephilim in return for incredible powers. Asked to destroy the souls of his fallen brethren, Death instead traps the souls in an amulet and keeps this a secret. Death has a slightly black sense of humour when interacting with other characters in the world. He is aggressive to anyone who stands in his path and even at times merciful, but it is unsure if his lack of emotional display is hidden by his mask or if he lacks the ability to display any emotion at all. Regardless of this, you will feel a sense of attachment to Death as you progress through the game and learn more and more about who Death really is and how he is more in touch with humanity than you could imagine.
In Darksiders 2 the game revolves around an open world 'over world' system. You will find yourself in a vast region to explore freely, with dungeons and quest objectives to fulfil. You can choose to navigate on foot or on horseback while exploring certain areas of a region. Once the main objectives in one region have been completed the game leads you to your next objective and a new region with new enemies, new quests and new dungeons to explore and if you choose to you can re-visit old regions although some quests may take you back. As you progress through the game you will earn experience and levels which earn you skill points that you can spend towards unlocking a vast amount of skills in two different class trees. You have a choice of placing your skill points into the Harbinger class if you fancy yourself the type player to tear through your enemies and leave a quake in your path of destruction or you can place your skill points into the Necromancer class and summon un-dead forces to tear through your enemies for you. And if you really want to you may mix up the skills to give you a balance of the Harbinger and Necromancer class. And if that's not enough for you, in two different regions you have basic and advanced combo skills to learn and add to your murderous ways.
Even with all these skills though, the game at times can get repetitive while fighting hordes of enemies and sometimes you may find yourself using the same skills over and over again but this can depend on an individual's play style. You may choose to go for a more Necromancer style and keep summoning a murder of crows in combination with Exhume which summons a few Ghouls to fight alongside you. The crows can be upgraded to return health to the horseman while the Ghouls can be upgraded to tank and inflict some fire damage. You can also choose Teleport Slash from the Harbinger tree to add to your health stealing skills and allow longer lasting battles, but don't be fooled by just picking a straight path of skills, at times you can find yourself in situations where stealing health and summoning the un-dead to do your bidding just won't cut it. At times the game will remove you from the hack and slash scenarios and occasionally puts you in control of different weapons that change the gameplays fighting style. This is also combined with the puzzles in the game. Some will make you think and even back track to see if you haven't made mistakes and some can be more obvious than others but even then the puzzles in the game are designed to work your brain.
There are very rare epic boss fights in the game which can make some of the other boss fights seem dull and forgettable. One minute you could be fighting a boss 20-30 times your size, using your trusty steed, Despair, to even help dodge boss attacks because they have such long arms and attack ranges, and having to use multiple small quick time events to finish off chunks of their health. The next minute you could find yourself hacking and dodging like a madman against another boss and finalising the battle by ending it with a single button quick time event.
The difficulty of the fights and puzzles are well balanced, especially if you play on normal. It provides a good balance of a challenge and still allows you to enjoy the game without getting overly frustrated. Depending on how much of a challenge you want you can even try to fight enemies in dungeons that are a few levels higher then you but your health will diminish very quickly. Armour and weapons will affect how well you do in a fight so make sure you upgrade your weapons and armour constantly or look for loot whenever you can, otherwise you may find equally skilled enemies somehow stronger then you.
The controls for the game are fine and are as expected for this type of game. Although even after 20hrs of gameplay in the pause menu you'll find yourself selecting things in the UI that you didn't intend to or struggling to select things you want to cause the controls feel different to other games as most of your selection is done using shoulder buttons. This isn't a major issue for some but for others it can cause frustration with something as simple as gear, skill or map selection.
Navigating through the game is easy enough though at times can feel illogical. Death is somewhat of a wall running acrobat, but you'll find yourself asking why he cannot grab onto certain ledges just because there are no wooden planks surrounding it. Eventually you unlock different methods to manoeuvre your way through the world and its dungeons. Initially you start off only being able to jump onto ledges and doing wall runs but as you progress you start to jump from wall to wall in halls or doing wall runs over corners and you can unlock a death grip skill which vaults you across certain gaps. This adds to the amusement in the game, especially once you master it and are able to fluently manoeuvre through obstacles. If you are finding yourself a little lost you can call on your pet crow, Dust, to lead you through tricky dungeons. Although at times Dust will not always lead you the correct way and can sometimes fly in the wrong direction before finding the right path. Sometimes Dust may even fly towards a locked door and re-summoning him will only make him continue to fly towards it so you are left finding your own way.
The graphics for Darksiders 2 are slightly cartoony but something about this feels right for the type of game it is. In a way you grow attached to the scenery and environments and wouldn't want it to be any different. The environment can be vibrant and breathtaking at times especially when viewing large plains or scaling large structures in an outside area.
The sound in the game may not be perfect and you may find some inconsistencies or out of sync sound effects. During large fights against hordes of enemies you may find yourself reaching for the remote to turn it down as the sound effects can collide and start to sound a little too unrealistic, loud and over the top. When you use Deaths soul splitter skill you may occasionally hear footsteps when you aren't even moving. They could have easily ruined the music in this type of game but a lot of the time it suits the atmosphere, although you really can't go wrong when Jesper Kyd is composing.
Darksiders 2 does well to engross the player in its immersive world. You can find yourself in some frustrating situations but it is overcome by the enjoyment of manoeuvring through dungeons by running across walls, using death grip to vault across gaps and tearing through hordes of enemies in gruesome ways. The breathtaking sceneries will occasionally force you to stop and admire them and the music will add to the atmosphere and make the pauses worthwhile. The story is stimulating and unique and after loading a save game, during the loading screen a voice over narrative explains where you are in the story and the game will even start where you last saved and left the game.
The game should last you roughly 15-20hrs with small amounts of exploration but a fully completed game should take an estimated 30hrs or more. The game does give you the option to play 'New Game+' but does not offer too much in replay value as the RPG elements do not involve a decision making system. If you are a trophy/achievement hunter then playing through New Game+ with the skills you unlocked should make the 2nd pass-through much easier. Otherwise you can continue playing and finish off unfinished side quests or explore places you haven't visited yet. At a first glance you'd expect Darksiders 2 to be the type of game that you can power through in 5hrs by following a linear story and then toss it aside, but you'll be surprised when you find out it is far from that. What makes this game great is that it may seem like it tries to be God Of War or Assassin's Creed, but only after playing it will you realise it all comes together as its own game and makes you thankful it didn't try to be like the other titles. It is definitely worth picking up a copy of Darksiders 2.