Dying Light 2: Stay Human – Review

Our Score: 9/10

In Dying Light 2 the virus won and civilization has fallen back to the Dark Ages. The City, one of the last human settlements, is on the brink of collapse. Use your agility and combat skills to survive, and reshape the world. Your choices matter.

What is Dying Light 2?

We fought the virus in Harran almost two decades ago—and lost. Now we’re on the verge of losing again. Conflict has torn apart the City, one of the last big human communities. Civilization has slipped back into the Dark Ages. Despite this, there is still reason to be hopeful.

You are a traveler with the ability to alter The City’s fate. However, your extraordinary powers come at a cost. You go out to find the truth, haunted by memories you can’t explain. And you’re in the middle of a battle. Hone your talents, since you’ll need both your fists and your intellect to fight your adversaries and gain allies. Unravel the dark mysteries of power’s wielders, pick sides, and decide your fate. But, no matter where your actions take you, one thing you must never forget is to stay human.

Take part in the daily life of a metropolis enveloped in a new era of darkness. Explore the game’s numerous levels and locales to find new passageways and hidden tunnels. Use your parkour abilities to tip the scales in even the most violent of battles. Your best friends will be clever thinking, traps, and inventive weapons. Wait until nightfall before venturing into the Infected’s subterranean lairs. Monsters are kept at bay by sunlight, but once it fades, monsters go on the hunt, leaving their lairs open to exploration. With your actions, you can shape the future of The City and see how it evolves. Make choices in an escalating conflict to determine the balance of power and create your own experience.

Gameplay of Dying Light 2

If you’re familiar with Dying Light 1 then you’ll know exactly what to expect. This time, with a bit more polish and changes to make the parkour feel more realistic and fluid. Parkour has been one of the highlights of the prequel and that holds true here as well. When you start off, the parkour can feel a bit bland and boring. You can’t do any of the cool stuff at the start. Something like Crouch-Sliding is locked behind an upgrade in the parkour tree which was a bit frustrating. Besides parkour, you have combat skills. This allows you to improve your combat abilities and unlock new skills like the infamous dropkick.

But to unlock all this you will need to use Inhibitors to upgrade either your Health (Combat) or Stamina (Parkour). The more points you have in these, the more abilities you can then unlock. At the start of the game, you start with a pitiful amount of Stamina so upgrading that became my main priority and is something I recommend.

Additionally, you have two factions in the game. The Survivors and the Peacekeepers. Assigning resource towers like Water Towers, Windmills and Electrical Substations to either of them grants you perks in areas controlled by them. Every assignment leads to a new addition to the city. For example, the first unlock for Survivors gives you zip-lines across roofs. The second gives you airbags to jump off of. Similarly, Peacekeepers give you Car Traps to kill infected with. You can see the full “upgrade” path and I don’t think you can complete both paths so keep that in mind.

Choices are also important in the main quest. Every major decision is indicated before you make it and they can drastically change things up. From your relationship with a character to whether or not they show up to help or die at some point in the game. I was slightly disappointed with the choices given to me at the end and how confusing it was. Especially with the way the mission objective was written. Given that it was on a very short timer, I couldn’t really comprehend what was properly happening and ended up doing the opposite of what I wanted.

Look and Feel

Dying Light 2 looks absolutely gorgeous. The lighting and the environments are quite good-looking. Especially the skybox which produces breathtaking sunrises and sunsets. Furthermore, interior lighting for buildings can be quite eerie and feel scary. As they should, given they tend to be crawling with infected.

The music in the game is fantastic and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Sometimes the music felt odd that was playing. It felt too upbeat and happy when nothing of the sort was happening in the game. The acting by Rosario Dawson is stellar and the protagonist’s voice acting by Jonah Scoot is outstanding. I was a bit cold on him at the start but by the end of the game, I was enjoying his performance immensely.

I’m still curious to see how the PC Port gets improved because it felt quite lacking to me. Texture Quality settings which is a common setting to have in PC games was missing. Furthermore, Performance didn’t feel great so I hope driver updates and the retail version of the game help fix that. Especially since DLSS is now available in the game but wasn’t available at the time of me playing the game.

Final Verdict

Dying Light 2 is an extremely fun game that fans of the original will fall in love with. With an emphasis on choices, the game does genuinely change things up and the world around you reacts to it. I’m curious to see just how many different ways the game can play out. Plus, if you’re in co-op you can see the aftermath of your friend’s choices. Nonetheless, this game is a blast to play and I highly recommend it.