While I'm neutral on the game, I'd tend to not recommending it. The main reason why I can't recommend it is because of gameplay aspects mostly: The combat is a lot less freeform than in Dying Light 1 or the Dead Island games by snapping you onto targets and having more rigid animations which I suppose was made to make the combat more snappy, but instead makes it feel cumbersome or unresponsive and clunky at times; although the extended moveset such as vaulting over enemies to perform dropkicks, charging while blocking and being able to perform windmills and pounds with both weapon types is good even if the rigid animations doesn't service them. Parkour wise, there's a lot of mobility as well, and it didn't suffer as much as the combat, but the ability to perform wall runs in succession, to jump out of wall runs and use them more creatively is half locked away on multiple skills and half not possible anymore; the grappling hook was revamped from its overly useful form from DL1 and while still fun you can no longer just zipline yourself everywhere but you can also half exploit height gains from its current iteration and combine in with high-jumps, wall runs and the multiple other abilities added to the parkour moveset which while not ground-breaking do enhance the experience. Adding to this, there's a lot of UV light and boosters to go around and chases are less likely, only being started by ground bound howlers once spotted and then breaking very quickly while growing in scale not-quickly-enough. Even on hard mode I hardly ever saw a volatile at night, thus all making night time less of a danger. As an extra, some of your most useful gear, such as the glider and hook, are nightrunner tools which you obtain at key points in the story. What this means is that once you move onto New Game+ you'll lose those items until you reach said points again.

More on the background, the diving into light-RPG mechanics with armor stats, to keep it short, is the same way it is on every other 3A game that pretends to have more depth with it: Inconsequential even on hard difficulties, because while every so often I do enjoy seeing 10% more healing from items, I couldn't care less about such massive perks as 3% better stamina regen or 5% more damage against virals on Sunday night after eating beans. As long as your armor is at level you shouldn't have any issues, just slap on the first thing you see. Slightly more relevant, you can enhance your blueprints to craft more and better items which is actually a nice touch even if you can still get along with simply enhancing your crafted medkits and relying on your weapons and movement.

Story wise, it doesn't look bleak even if it's flawed, it manages to deliver on making your decisions reflect clearly on the story to a degree although suffering in a few spots. Negatives first: I'm nowhere close to being a writer of any sort, but even as such some of the dialogue feels written at a Marvel studio, as if written for a cartoon that tries to not sound too common but that instead of achieving a degree of engagement instead breaks feeling natural, sometimes even being cringy. Even if the original Dying Light's dialogue had a few funny lines every so often, most of it felt natural and spoken with proper tone. However, the big positive comes from critical decisions you take during the story properly reflecting onto the progress of the game, not only changing the fates of different characters, but also allowing different storylines and reflecting on the ending, and the best possible version is achieved by a decision you take early on, and that you may guess its effect once it comes back at you during the final mission. The caveat to this however, is that the first third of these decisions are rather unimportant to the grander story, and that the interesting stuff begins once you reach DL2's version of the Old Town. I can't speak for the objective quality of the overall story, but once things picked up in the later half it was intriguing to see what came next just as with Dying Light 1.

While I wouldn't rate Dying Light 2 as a "waste of time", it fails to be a proper sequel to Dying Light, messing with the tuning of the elements that already existed which greatly effects the feeling of good additions to it, including controls and UI as well. Techland did come through with their promises, offering a larger game and delivering a story genuinely affected by your decisions (mostly), but they flunked a couple steps on what the game's larger appeal was. It's easier to forgive a story of less quality if the gameplay carries the fun, but it's hard to properly enjoy a story if the gameplay that carries it feels cumbersome and sometimes unfun.

While I'm neutral on the game, I'd tend to not recommending it. The main reason why I can't recommend it is because of gameplay aspects mostly: The combat is a lot less freeform than in Dying Light 1 or the Dead Island games by snapping you onto targets and having more rigid animations which I suppose was made to make the combat more snappy, but instead makes it feel cumbersome or unresponsive and clunky at times; although the extended moveset such as vaulting over enemies to perform dropkicks, charging while blocking and being able to perform windmills and pounds with both weapon types is good even if the rigid animations doesn't service them. Parkour wise, there's a lot of mobility as well, and it didn't suffer as much as the combat, but the ability to perform wall runs in succession, to jump out of wall runs and use them more creatively is half locked away on multiple skills and half not possible anymore; the grappling hook was revamped from its overly useful form from DL1 and while still fun you can no longer just zipline yourself everywhere but you can also half exploit height gains from its current iteration and combine in with high-jumps, wall runs and the multiple other abilities added to the parkour moveset which while not ground-breaking do enhance the experience. Adding to this, there's a lot of UV light and boosters to go around and chases are less likely, only being started by ground bound howlers once spotted and then breaking very quickly while growing in scale not-quickly-enough. Even on hard mode I hardly ever saw a volatile at night, thus all making night time less of a danger. As an extra, some of your most useful gear, such as the glider and hook, are nightrunner tools which you obtain at key points in the story. What this means is that once you move onto New Game+ you'll lose those items until you reach said points again. More on the background, the diving into light-RPG mechanics with armor stats, to keep it short, is the same way it is on every other 3A game that pretends to have more depth with it: Inconsequential even on hard difficulties, because while every so often I do enjoy seeing 10% more healing from items, I couldn't care less about such massive perks as 3% better stamina regen or 5% more damage against virals on Sunday night after eating beans. As long as your armor is at level you shouldn't have any issues, just slap on the first thing you see. Slightly more relevant, you can enhance your blueprints to craft more and better items which is actually a nice touch even if you can still get along with simply enhancing your crafted medkits and relying on your weapons and movement. Story wise, it doesn't look bleak even if it's flawed, it manages to deliver on making your decisions reflect clearly on the story to a degree although suffering in a few spots. Negatives first: I'm nowhere close to being a writer of any sort, but even as such some of the dialogue feels written at a Marvel studio, as if written for a cartoon that tries to not sound too common but that instead of achieving a degree of engagement instead breaks feeling natural, sometimes even being cringy. Even if the original Dying Light's dialogue had a few funny lines every so often, most of it felt natural and spoken with proper tone. However, the big positive comes from critical decisions you take during the story properly reflecting onto the progress of the game, not only changing the fates of different characters, but also allowing different storylines and reflecting on the ending, and the best possible version is achieved by a decision you take early on, and that you may guess its effect once it comes back at you during the final mission. The caveat to this however, is that the first third of these decisions are rather unimportant to the grander story, and that the interesting stuff begins once you reach DL2's version of the Old Town. I can't speak for the objective quality of the overall story, but once things picked up in the later half it was intriguing to see what came next just as with Dying Light 1. While I wouldn't rate Dying Light 2 as a "waste of time", it fails to be a proper sequel to Dying Light, messing with the tuning of the elements that already existed which greatly effects the feeling of good additions to it, including controls and UI as well. Techland did come through with their promises, offering a larger game and delivering a story genuinely affected by your decisions (mostly), but they flunked a couple steps on what the game's larger appeal was. It's easier to forgive a story of less quality if the gameplay carries the fun, but it's hard to properly enjoy a story if the gameplay that carries it feels cumbersome and sometimes unfun.