The Surge 2 Reviews

[h1]Disclaimer[/h1] I finished the game once. [h1]TL;DR[/h1] Technically a better game than The Surge 1, but also much worse in pacing and overstays its welcome by a lot. Both games are equally janky. Buy on a sale if it looks interesting to you but it's not a great game, at most it's okay. [h1]Description[/h1] I won't recount mechanics of The Surge 1, I've described them in the review for the original. The new mechanic is a directional parry system. It's jank and makes 0 sense how some attacks look unblockable, but are, while others look to be from a certain direction, but are from a different one. There's a special implant you can equip that shows you a direction of an incoming attack and parry timing, so you can use that, I guess. I mostly played through the game without using this mechanic because it's slow and boring, relying on dodge instead was more fun to me. There was 1 boss that pretty much demanded usage of parry and that's about it. Story is nonsense, a bunch of religious freaks worship the nanomachines and try to become one or something, I don't know, I don't care. [h1]Pros:[/h1] [b]+ First half of the game[/b] It's actually good. A fun exploration and challenging combat as well as The Surge's unique dismemberment mechanic makes it fun and rewarding to actually play and farm for parts and upgrade your character. [b]+ Lots of parts[/b] I didn't find a single interesting one-handed weapon, which was a problem because I played using that type almost exclusively, but if you are a fan of other types then there's a lot to choose from, and a bunch of elemental options too. [h1]Cons:[/h1] [b]- Too long[/b] Second part of the game makes you retread and re-explore things you already saw, but not with a bunch of passages blocked off, forcing you to use some new unlocked passages, but this feels artificially constraining and not engaging at all. There's suddenly a lot of big enemy groups instead of giving you actual interesting encounters to fight through, so the game becomes a slog. [b]- Story[/b] All characters are awful and boring, religion angle is overplayed and dumb. [b]- Many minor issues[/b] Camera sucks a. I died many times due to how I get blocked on random piece of scenery and an enemy keeps me stunlocked. Some enemies are just badly designed, being far too aggressive and having attack hurtboxes completely disjointed from their actual attack animations (like the tri-legged big drone's flip, which was just as broken in the first game, so there's no excuse to still have it be this bad). Implant menu isn't fit for purpose in it's current form, having eaech implant being a colorful icon that barely gives you any idea of what it actually does is annoying when you want to find something specific and implants is the one thing you cannot put favorites in (you can favorite weapons and drone modules for example). Areas have confusing layouts that don't feel fun to explore, mostly starting to happen around halfway point. Near the end of the game there's a random medbay (rest area) around a large group of enemies. That is - it's right next to them. If you rest there, they will respawn and prevent you from resting again until you kill all of them, and while 1 by 1 they are easy - the whole group is designed to really mess you up with slows, dot's, damage areas, etc. On the other side of same area there's a shortcut to the starting point where there is also a medbay. But what's even better - activating that shortcut will make that big enemy group not respawn anymore! So if you go to the medbay in the front - you are screwing yourself over with an annoying fight every time you want to leave, but if you go other direction - the entire area is fixed. It's such a dumb design decision - why even have that medbay there? To bait people? The game should do a better job directing the player to the shortcut and not have that forward medbay at all, or have it placed right before the end boss. [h1]Lowdown[/h1] The best thing I liked about this game is I liked when it was finally over and I didn't have to play it anymore. The start is fun, the end is not. I'd give The Surge 2 a [h1]5/10[/h1] Mediocre, only buy on a sale if it looks interesting to you.

I got it for free with TS1 and wish I could refund it, actually terrible in comparison

have this on ps4 did not complete but had to get on steam you c the hours says it all, real fun real gem

Another solid early soulslike with a dismemberment system, directional parries and more!

Very enjoyable. Runs and controls very well. Has nice style. Easy to recommend at this point. Update: I'm about 45 hours in and this game is exceptional. There are a lot of quality of life implements. The map is great. the armors and weapons look cool, especially as you get farther.

If you never played the first game, you're perfectly welcome to jump in here. Overall this game feels a lot more balanced than the first game, although I feel the story is a little bit weaker. The combat scenarios feel well thought through, and the hubs are fun bits of respite from the action. Also the variety of environments is a nice change of pace.

I love this game serie so much and really hope they are secretly working on the third game and bring back Warren as the main character following his departure from Jericho City and finally ending it all.

Rating: ★★✮☆☆ (2.5/5) stars Review: The surge 2 takes the ideas and problems of its predecessor and improves, but also worsens certain aspects. The surge 2 loses its sense of grounding that the first game had, ditching slower punishing combat for a faster pace that the character, conveniently still seems to be built for the original slower pace. The world, weapons, and armor are greatly expanded which is nice, although most of it is completely reused with no update or some nano status attached. The story gets less coherent than the first game and it feels like half the bosses in the game are an upgraded version of a boss you fought previously. Combat remains solid but imbalanced. The largest issues from the surge 1 were enemy placement and map design. The surge 2 takes these and make them 10x worse. Most of the game enemy placements always feel like an ambush and certain enemies feel designed around this entire idea. Map design was tough in the surge 1 but in the surge 2 there were multiple instances I had to look up where to go because I absolutely could not figure out where to go or how to navigate the confusing maze it feels like every region produces. All in all the surge 2 is an expanded scope of the surge 1 at the cost of some of the ideas the surge 1 gets right. It feels heavily lazily designed. I enjoyed the surge 1 more, but this game is still playable with a unique style.

I've never really played many souls-like games before as I'm not a fan of that genre, but I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic mega-corporation industrial-hell sci-fi types of games, so when I saw The Surge 1 & 2 pack on sale, I had to give it a try. The first Surge tickled all the right neurons in my brain, so naturally I had to give The Surge 2 a chance too, despite the theme being quite different from the first one. I am personally not as much impressed with The Surge 2 as I was with the first one, but on the other hand it does improve certain things. My biggest praise for the first one was the incredible level design, which unfortunately does not hold up in this one. While the first game was mostly about staying in one level for a very long time before moving on to the next one (with the added freedom of backtracking), this one is more like an open world where you constantly have to move between different locations. That means you are going to see loading screens way more frequently. There are also certain locations that you enter (loading screen) only to find out that you can't really make any progress there at all because you lack a certain tool or ability and have no choice but to go back (another loading screen). The level design is overall much more frustrating and confusing. Now the sequel does improve many gameplay aspects. You can now change all implants at any point and the injectables got reworked in a way that makes more sense. The enemies show their level, making it clear what tier items they are going to drop. The combat got fleshed out a bit and drones can do more stuff than before. I'm definitely going to miss these improvements when I return to the first game to finish all the achievements. To me this is like 8/10, not as good as I'd hope for, but still worth playing.

If you love dying a lot and have patience, give it a go. A lot of builds and weapons to craft. Writing this while i have died 500 times already.