Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition

Bigger doesn't always mean better.. + main character and voice acting (fits Death perfectly) + visuals. It looks cartoony but some of the areas are beautiful (especially first region) + combat and movement. Faster and more fluid than the first game + puzzles are ok - story. Way less interesting than the original (which had a great story and lore) - loot. Big step back. Instead of upgrading your weapons like in original here you have hundreds of pointless varietions of the same weapon - going open world was a mistake imo. World feels lifeless and besides an ocasional puzzle there is nothing to do at all Overall 7/10 its a good game. Nothing special however and inferior to the first game in almost every way (except combat and movement)

I loved playing this on the PS3. More so than Darksiders 1. I thought it would be great to be able to play this again and a remastered version at that. Unfortunately, remastering it for PC apparently also means introducing various bugs and getting a second class version of the game, at least on GOG. There are weird lighting glitches all over the place. Bounce light is there in one camera angle and disappears with just the slightest turn of the camera. It's very reproducible, so I'm not sure how it was missed. There is also some pretty bad shadow striping throughout the environments. Poor frame rates and stuttering that doesn't go away despite adjusting all the settings. Poor controller support means an Xbox 360/One controller has to be plugged in before the game is started and if you want to play the game on a Steamlink, a controller is out of the question entirely. There is also no support for a PS4 controller period. To top it all off, we don't get achievements for the game on GOG which I did not realize when I bought this game and would not have bought it had I noticed. Nice, higher resolution textures though.

Since other reviews already touch on technical issues, I want to focus on the gameplay. What I liked: The level design is consistently fine with a good amount of shortcuts. The music is pretty good throughout. The combat has its moments (I recently beat the ice king dude and enjoyed the fight a lot). Chests seem to guide you through dungeons, which is interesting if intentional. Animations are satisfying, especially the reaper ones. As for negatives... The controls are quite bad. If you're not dodging an unintended direction during combat, you're probably falling into lava because Death didn't want to use his death grip on that glowing ring. You also need to hold down the lock-on button, which is really cumbersome. Death is also plagued by automatic movement, which makes platforming a hassle more often than not. Camera is not great. I somehow never start boss fights facing the boss and always need to whip it around to face them, and even then it can be a bother. The loot system is cumbersome due to the amount of items you get, and how quickly they're made obsolete. Possessed items aren't as bad, but they're a bit too micromanage-y for me. The skills are meh. Everything seems weak and pointless besides unstoppable, which is just extreme damage mode for a few seconds - I'll gladly take that over summoning a few ghouls, or using a strangely weak AOE. You often get locked into your attack animations and can't dodge before being hit, so you're left playing more defensively instead of reading and reacting to enemy actions, which kills the pace of combat. There's also a lot of mob spam, which sadly includes boss fights. Boss fights are also more puzzle-like than I'd prefer. The healing system is not great. Your carry-on heals are limited, which is fine, but if you get unlucky with potion drops you'll need to find a merchant who sells them - and they often only have a few for sale, which is pointless since healing is balanced by the carry-on limit.

Starting the game was a bit slow. Learning mechanics and controls. Give it a few hours and it is great story and gameplay

You can argue a re-release on the PC wasn't really needed and most of the important changes could have been done with just a texture pack. Either way this is the only version of the game on sale now. Unfortunately it is very badly optimized, but that isn't the reason I'm saying don't buy it. 6 months ago Nordic released a patch for the game on gog, which sounds great unfortunately this means there are absolutely no controller prompts in the game now. I know what your thinking that doesn't sound like a reason not to buy it, however the game uses QTEs so basically without knowing what button to press the game is broken to the point it is unplayable. Why not just go back to the previous version where controller prompts work? well simply put it crashes too much. Note controller prompts work on the steam version, Nordic has been informed about 6 months ago by gog and still no official word on when or if they will fix this broken game.