Darksiders II story takes place alongside the first one. War's brother and rider of the apocalypse, Death has heard of his brother's predicament and goes on a quest to revive humanity. Death is told the Tree of Life can restore humanity so is sent on a series of errands in order to get there. Just like the first game, the story doesn't really progress on your journey, although the first game developed the story during the game's conclusion, this one falls flat.
As you begin the first part of the game, you quickly see that the game draws more heavily from the Prince of Persia franchise. Death can run along walls, grab hold of wooden structures and climb poles much like the Prince can. Another influence is from open world RPG's. The dungeons are spaced out between large open spaces, where Death can summon his horse much like War did in the first game. Enemies may also drop loot, which can be equipped or sold which is also commonplace in RPG's. Item's that are marked as “Possessed” can be upgraded by sacrificing your unwanted items which increases the strength and inherits a property of one of your sacrificed items.
When enemies are defeated, Death gains experience and can assign a skill point every level. There are two skill trees (Harbinger or Necromancer) which you can develop simultaneously if you wish. Harbinger is for more offensive attacks (such as a teleport slash) and Necromancer is for support (summoning Ghouls or Crows to assist you in battle).
The larger world tends to be padded out with long passages and desolate areas. There are enemies scattered around to kill, but it's a bit boring and uninspiring. Luckily, there is a fast travel mechanic which is great for skipping over this.
Your primary attack uses your Scythes and your secondary attack uses your equipped weapon. You have a choice of slow or fast weapons. The slow weapons (axes, maces, hammers) deal heavy damage while the fast weapons (arm blades, gauntlets, claws) deal less damage. You are able to mix and match attacks to form combos seamlessly. To avoid attacks, you have to roll out of the way because Death cannot block. You also have a Reaper gauge, and when full, Death can temporarily take Reaper form which temporarily increases attack and defence.
The first Darksiders game followed the standard Legend of Zelda template with several dungeons defining the content of the game. Within each dungeon, you solved puzzles, acquired a new item and eventually find the boss key to reach the dungeon's finale. In Darksiders II, the dungeon style is more closer to Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, where there are plenty of smaller dungeons and distractions before you get to the dungeons. Additionally, you don't always pick up a new puzzle-solving item in each dungeon, although you do acquire some over the course of the game. There is no boss key, although you may have to defeat a boss at the end of a dungeon, and there's plenty of stronger enemies/mini-bosses as you go through the dungeons. In the first game, you needed to learn the bosses attack pattern and utilise your new item to exploit the bosses weakness. In this sequel, there are occasions where this is true, but mostly they feel like up-scaled enemies that you can just dodge and attack like usual.
The puzzles have mixed difficulty but nothing too taxing. Some require a bit of thought and observation, but there's plenty of moments that are there just for a slight distraction, such as placing a lever right next to the door that it opens. The bomb plants that featured in the first game are back, some of which explode when you throw them, and others you have to shoot in order to trigger. Death Grip, a phantom grappling hook can be used to grab out-of-reach bombs, or to swing over platforms. In the latter part of the game, you can summon ghostly spirits that can pass through gates then turn to stone to press switches. Once you have solved that particular quest, you get your own power, Soul Splitter which splits you into two and leaves a statue in your place. This is used for some particularly clever puzzles. The Voidwalker makes a return and is used in the penultimate dungeon, then upgraded for the final dungeon which makes use of time-portals. There's enough ideas in the game to keep things fresh, although each puzzle is relatively simple.
Following you around is your pet crow, Dust. He is supposed to assist in showing you your next destination, but can often just fly around or send you astray. He can be helpful on occasions though, but often you question whether he is correct, so is hard to trust and rely on him.
There's plenty of collectibles to look out for (runes/pages/tokens/stones), which often require a quick pan of the camera to spot, a slight detour, or a leap to collect. Completionists will enjoy this aspect of the game.
The camera can sometimes be too zoomed in when battling. Also, the camera doesn't cope well with moving platforms such as lifts. Although lifts are a rarity, the camera seems to want to drift low or high so you don't get a good view of your surroundings.
Jesper Kyd is the games' composer. The score really adds to the atmosphere of the game and is enjoyable to listen to on its own. The voice acting is also great, particularly Death, whose arrogant dialog makes you smile.
Once you load your game, you get a couple of sentences of narration, reminding you of the current chapter in the story. A menu is then shown, where the back-drop is Death standing in the place you left off. Selecting to play seamlessly brings you into the game which is a great touch.
Just like the original game, the final parts of the game really start to drag. The part on Earth seems like it was put there to merely drag the length of the game and also throw yet another variation of game-play in the mix (a third-person shooter), but it just feels mindless. I had mixed feelings about Darksiders II. It gets off to a good start, and despite its attempts to introduce new mechanics, it doesn't stop it from feeling that it is dragging on. The game borrows many mechanics from other games so feels familiar, but it doesn't feel like it enhances them. It is competent at everything it does but it never blows you away, or has the story to back it up.