State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition Reviews

I'm immensely positively surprised, and that after only two hours. I've been playing the first State of Decay since it came out for Xbox 360, and it's one of my favorite games, and I consider it the best zombie survival game out there, so I was skeptical. But the second installment deserves to bear the SoD name. Aside from stylistic changes (which I'm not criticizing), it's almost exactly the same as part 1! I climb a billboard to survey and find myself practically in SoD 1 (except that discovering locations is faster, thanks for that). Then I get the "Construction Complete" achievement and mentally hear it in Lily's voice. Then all the insider stuff with the clothes (yeah im one of those "cool kids from Danforth"). What strikes me most is that cars now need gas; I knew that day would come someday! And the best thing? They kept the music! Its almost the same! I LOVE the SoD 1/Lifeline Soundtrack! 10/10 As a SoD OG, I really enjoy this game and it's basically a constant nostalgia without dragging the previous game through the mud (looking at you Life Is Strange: Double Exposure!)

Really fun zombie survival with great action. Clearing out territories is fun, but there's a constant reminder of other missions for other enclaves, that often result in enclaves leaving if you don't complete the mission. I figured out you're supposed to help the enclave you feel meets your group's needs the most. But feeling that initial ticking clock vibe with some of the missions, that would often expire right as I started to do them, almost ruined playing for me.

Pretty fun and enjoyable game, i think the 5 difficulties it has and the community system are pretty well made and intersting. I love CLEO

one of my favorite zombie survival games, played mostly on my xbox but bought it on pc to play again because i like it that much

Absolutely worth the money,and the jump scares.Loved that when you beat the game you can save your favorite guys for round two on the next map. For this price It's either this or some medicore Only Fans hoe...choose wisely grasshopper and get the better value.

Grand Theft Auto meets The Walking Dead. Oh, and it's 4 player co-op, and well cared for by the devs. Great game all around.

With the devs finally laying this game to rest to fully commit their efforts to State Of Decay 3, now is a great time to review the game they have been sticking by for almost half a decade. In short, while $30 is a little bit steep you can definitely get the money's worth from it and $20 it's very much worth. It's just simply a good time to try and build up a community that you grow attached to and take on increasingly difficult regions, the game has a very customizable difficulty which is extremely welcome; Nightmare and Lethal truly lives up to their names and don't be surprised if your favorite person dies swiftly and horribly, always leave the base prepared. Co-Op is kinda jank but it is entirely functional and sharing loot between worlds is possible if a bit odd. I'm rambling, the game is worth it if you are into this kind of thing, even more so if you have a friend.

State of Decay will always have a special place in my heart ever since playing it as an Xbox Live Arcade title. I was elated when years later, a sequel was announced. Finally, the sequel arrived and it was... pretty bad. Bugs galore; broken multiplayer; you name it. But the developers kept patching it over years with consistent free updates adding new and meaningful content to the game. Eventually, SoD 2 became a worthy sequel to the first game, with improvements in many areas and some drawbacks in others. For example, this game added co-operative multiplayer, which is a definite improvement from the first game, however the way the multiplayer is handled leaves a lot to be desired. Only the host of the co-op session benefits from any of the actions of the party. Each player has their own separate loot pool of different containers to loot in each location, with some locations flat out giving co-op partners nothing. The multiplayer system is essentially only intended as an SOS flare for when you desperately need help, because otherwise it is mostly a waste of time for the players joining the host. The only benefit for co-op players is the limited amount of loot you can carry back in your pockets. Otherwise there are five 'tiers' of rewards you get based on how much influence you gain during your time helping the host. These rewards are granted once you return to your own world and are largely mediocre, with the highest tiers possibly granting a decent gun. All other benefit goes to the host, as you are there exclusively to help them in their hour of need. Another aspect in which I think the sequel does worse is the timing between missions. In the original SoD, missions were like putting out fires all over the place and really felt like struggling to survive. Each mission had a strict time limit before they would fail without your help, each of which could result in someone in your community going missing or losing a bunch of resources or some other consequence for failing to help. Not to mention that these missions overlapped and would pop up at random, with up to four or five possibly active at one time. It made the game feel like a desperate dash to help as many survivors as you could and added to the struggle for survival for me. By comparison, SoD 2 has much more lax missions that have little to no negative consequences for ignoring them. The worst that would happen is someone in your community would lose a bit of morale or an NPC enclave would not be your friend anymore and could leave the area. This may be more appealing to some, but I ended up finding myself bored between missions because I could complete them much faster than new missions would trigger. This can lead to a lot of time to loot, but once you've looted most things reasonably close by, it ends up being a lot of time spent waiting at base for something to happen. Finally, the last aspect in which this game truly devolves from the original is the story. SoD 1 was very much a linear narrative, but it had many randomly generated aspects such as the loot and many of the recruitable survivors you would encounter. There were, however, many set characters that would always be there at the start of the game and would continue to be relevant throughout the story. SoD 2 majorly differs from that in that every single one of it's playable characters is randomly generated, with no set characters or narrative. The story is made up of following one of four "Legacies", which are questlines that become active once you have chosen a leader for your community and will complete the game for the community. What little interesting writing is here is detracted by the off-putting, scripted lines that play awkwardly one after the other with one of the about twelve different voice actors in the game. They do not flow like any normal person would speak and feels like randomly generated jank in the worst way. I sincerely hope the narrative for SoD 3 is more interesting. After complaining about the things I dislike the most about the game, I should discuss the aspects in which the game excels. SoD 2 is a direct improvement on the original in just about every way except those mentioned above. At launch, there were three different maps to choose from compared to the original's single Trumbull Valley map. With past updates, SoD 2 has added two additional maps, including a remastered version of Trumbull Valley that follows the events of the Heartland DLC. The sheer variety of all the possible survivors you could add to your community is staggering; much more than the original, as is the benefits of random generation. It's also incredibly fun and immersive to be able to dress your community in different clothing options to roleplay. Each of these "closet" items can be found while exploring and looting in the open world, which was a massive quality of life update. Speaking of looting, if you are a loot goblin type of player like myself: I have great news for you; This game is for you! This game scratches the loot goblin part of my brain like no other. I love the feeling of sneaking into an abandoned gun store with zombies crawling around everywhere, to find several unlooted gun cases sitting about. After carefully and quietly opening each one, I collect a small squad's worth of firepower in my measly backpack and sneak out to the truck I left close by. After dumping all I could carry into the trunk, I quickly drive off to evade the horde and move on to the next potential loot horde; goblin brain satisfied. Overall, I truly love this game despite its many, many flaws. No other game has quite fulfilled the fantasy of building up a community of survivors in the zombie apocalypse and actually making you care about each member of your community because each person has some value to add. Whether it be knowledge of carpentry, medicine, or plumbing, or an individual's background as a military veteran affecting their combat skills, every member of your community is someone that contributes to the community as a whole; sometimes even if all that means is an extra hand for labor. It's incredibly rewarding to randomly find a survivor in the world and recruit them into your community only to find that they have some incredible skills that could massively impact your community's ability to survive. If you're remotely a fan of the zombie survival genre and are interested in building up modular bases with different facilities, then I highly recommend you pick this game up or wait for a sale if you want. I've loved playing it for however many hundreds of hours I put into it via the Microsoft Store prior to buying the Steam version and I'm sure I'll continue to love playing this game until SoD 3 comes out. See you all then!

Fun game if you plan on playing solo, bad experience if you plan on playing co-op with friends. Only the lobby leader can build stuff, accept missions etc, the one who joins can only walk around and kill zombies.

I love the scavenging, the freaks, the plot line, and the levels of difficulty. I also love how there isn't a main character, everyone is vulnerable to being killed, which makes it special and unique. Despite being an older game by now, I still prefer it over all other games and I am looking forward to the third installation.