Vigil Games set the bar incredibly high with their first installment of Darksiders, which had you playing through as War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Without giving anything away, this time around you play as the pale rider Death who is desperately trying to save War from a judgement that he doesn’t deserve.
Darksiders II at its core is fantastic. The level designs and puzzles are creative and really play well with the abilities and tools that you get while playing as Death. The game takes place across several realms that each have their own dungeons to explore, collectibles to find, and side quests to perform. For the most part, you find yourself just fast traveling everywhere after you have visited a place once, because everything is so spread out and it takes forever to go anywhere due to the sheer size of the environments. Compared to the original Darksiders, the dungeons are a little bigger and there are a lot more of them, making for hours of fun.
One of the aspects that I enjoyed the most is the equipment. For those that know me, know that I’ve always had a special place in my heart for RPGs and RPG elements in games and with Darksiders II, the equipment embodies the essence of RPG elements as you can customize Death with all of the equipment that changes not only his physical appearance, but also his stats.
Your primary weapon is a Scythe, but there are several types of secondary weapons which you can equip some being fast, while others being exceptionally slow (but hit very hard). Equipment is dropped randomly from enemies, found in chests, purchased, etc, but each piece might contain special characteristics (bonus Exp/money, increase critical hit rate, elemental damage, etc) allowing you to truly customize the effects you want to achieve. Each piece can add the same characteristics as well, making for some compounded effects that are awesome. Some weapons are possessed, which allows you to feed other items to it and level them up, which can further shape how you want to fight.
Similarly there are skills which can be learned as you progress through the game. Each time you level up you gain a single skill point which can be put into various skills to either learn new ones, or further develop existing ones. Summon some ghouls to distract and beat on enemies, or crows to steal HP back for you. Setup a protective barrier, increase your strength, or do a teleport slash. There are plenty of options, but you wont be able to max out everything. Thankfully you can purchase an item that will reset the skill tree and allow you to play with different skills to see which ones fit your play style.
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