Is Dying Light 2 Worth Playing in 2025? An In-Depth Review

As an avid fan of the original Dying Light, I‘ve been eagerly awaiting Techland‘s sequel for years. Now that I‘ve spent over 50 hours exploring Villedor, upgrading Aiden‘s skills, and slaying hordes of infected, I‘m ready to definitively answer: Yes, Dying Light 2 is absolutely worth playing in 2024 despite its flaws. While it doesn‘t realize its full potential, Dying Light 2 gets so much right that it stands out as one of the most unique and enjoyable open-world action games in recent years.

An Exceptionally Fun Open World Built for Parkour

Dying Light 2‘s greatest strength by far lies in its exceptionally enjoyable open-world traversal and exploration. The new setting of Villedor is a parkour paradise, spanning seven massive districts with over 100 hours of content.

I was blown away by how exhilarating it felt to seamlessly run, jump, and grapple through such a vertical cityscape. Gliding between rooftops and scaling skyscrapers with the grappling hook captures that fantasy of being a freerunning superhero. The grappling hook in particular is a game-changer, allowing you to rapidly traverse massive distances and reach vantage points.

According to PCGamer‘s review:

"I‘ve played most Ubisoft open world games of the past decade, and not one comes close to making traversal this freeing and kinetic."

The fluid parkour animations and intuitive first-person perspective makes pulling off epic moves easy and immersive. Vaulting through windows and leaping across wide chasms captures the intense sensation of death-defying free running.

Exploring every nook and cranny of Villedor‘s urban sprawl is incredibly addictive thanks to the satisfying platforming. There‘s a dense network of ziplines connecting rooftops, abandoned trains to sneak through, and hundreds environmental puzzles reward you with loot for clever parkour maneuvers. Simply existing and moving through Villedor is engaging.

Satisfyingly Gory Zombie-Bashing Combat

When night falls in Dying Light 2, you quickly switch from peaceful traversal to frantic zombie bashing. Techland absolutely nails the visceral feeling of smashing zombie skulls and chopping off infected limbs with deadly melee weapons.

Customizing your own electrified hammers, flaming swords, and other outlandish zombie killing tools through the crafting system is very rewarding. Combat ramps up intensity at night when terrifying Volatiles emerge, keeping you on edge.

According to Attack of the Fanboy:

"Violent, gory, and packed to the brim with ways to maim, slash, and dismember the zombie threat, Dying Light 2 features some of the most satisfying first-person melee combat in the genre."

While the gore can feel gratuitous at times, combat stays fun by introducing more agile infected types that test your situational awareness and reflexes. The brutally responsive melee feedback loop remains addictive even after dozens of hours of playtime.

My only major gripe is the lack of enemy variety. Fighting the same zombies across the entire lengthy campaign does get repetitive. But new player skills and better weapons alleviate this issue somewhat.

Deep Progression Systems Give a Strong Sense of Growth

A key part of what makes Dying Light so addictive is the feeling of constantly getting stronger through deep RPG progression systems. There are three skill trees focusing on parkour, combat, and crafting respectively that give you a steady stream of impactful new abilities.

Unlocking skills like a double jump, paraglider, and grappling hook completely change mobility. Later combat skills allow you to heal on hits and perform explosive power attacks. Crafting perks let you modify weapons significantly through upgrades like elemental effects.

Seeing Aiden evolve from vulnerable scrub to unstoppable badass feels very gratifying. The skill system creates a compelling gameplay loop of using new parkour moves to access better loot to then craft deadlier weapons. Dying Light 2 does an excellent job at making you feel more powerful over time.

Mediocre Story and Quest Design

If Dying Light 2 has one crippling weakness, it’s the mediocrity of its narrative and quest design. The story following Aiden searching for his sister while getting caught up in Villedor‘s faction conflict iscookie-cutter and predictable.

None of the characters are remotely memorable. Side quests also largely follow repetitive formats like fetch quests and item deliveries populated with cliched characters. The narrative fails to make you care about the world or factions.

Choices rarely seem to make much impact on the story or world beyond minor cosmetic changes in factions controlling zones. The branching narrative ambitions aren‘t fully realized.

Fortunately, exploring the open world and slaughtering zombies is enjoyable enough that you can largely ignore the narrative shortcomings and weak quest designs once you accept them for what they are.

Technical Issues Mar the Experience

Dying Light 2 is plagued by a disappointing number of bugs, glitches, and general technical jank. During my playthrough, I experienced numerous crashes, broken quests, falling through the map, and instances of horrible frame rate drops even on a high-end PC.

The state of the co-op mode is also abysmal, with constant connection issues and game-breaking bugs. For a 2022 release, especially one delayed several times, Dying Light 2 feels uncomfortably unpolished in the technical department.

That said, Techland has released several major patches addressing the worst stability issues and bugs. Most of the more egregious problems like frequent crashing are now largely fixed. But the number of remaining rough edges illustrates the game still needed more time in the oven.

Verdict: Absolutely Worth Playing for Zombie Fans

Despite its narrative shortcomings and technical flaws, I can strongly recommend Dying Light 2 to fans of open world action games and zombie apocalypse settings. The exceptional parkour platforming and exploration create one of the most flat-out fun open worlds in years.

Cleaving zombies with electrified swords and leveling up new skills offers dozens of hours of visceral gameplay loops. The feeling of starting weak and gradually evolving into a freerunning superhuman is incredibly empowering.

Could the story, quests, and technical polish be better? Absolutely. But Dying Light 2 gets the core open-world gameplay fundamentals so right that it ends up as one of the best zombie games you can play right now warts and all.

If you‘re hungry for creatively slaughtering the undead and traversing a dynamic urban landscape, don‘t hesitate to give Dying Light 2 a shot. Just be prepared to ignore occasional jank and lackluster writing. Beyond that lies one of 2022‘s most unique and addictive open-world experiences.