Very decent sequel to the first game, a souls clone in terms of gameplay and how the game is played. I personally liked The Surge 2 more than The Surge 1 and i found it a lil bit more difficult, it's a good improvement.
It just feels better in every compartment, it looks better, it plays better, the boss fights and boss quality is also improved because The Surge 1 only had like 5 boss fights.
The Kraken dlc was alright for a 2 hours long dlc.
It took me about 30 hours to 100%.
I would recommend both The Surge's, don't skip on the first one.

Finally beat this. I stopped at Ezra Shields for a year, came back, and whooped his ass in one-try, and basically just cleaned house through the rest of the game.

This is my new favorite souls-like, I adore The Surge games cyberpunk presentation, and while the Surge 1 focused more on a sci-fi horror System Shock thing, The Surge 2 goes for what I can only describe as a 90's Anime OVA aesthetic. This includes the mediocre voice acting, which I think is a POSITIVE. Even though I said it was my favorite Souls-like, I do ultimately think that calling it a Souls-like is what has doomed some really underappreciated gems from getting their day in the sun. These games have similar verbs to Dark Souls but ask different things of you, and I know Souls fans struggle with anything that isn't I-frames and dodge rolling, but there are other ways to approach game design!

I want to write a more in-depth review later, but I enjoyed the hell out of this entire game. The boss fight with Delver was so good I messaged Deck13 on Twitter to tell them it was the best boss fight ever. The level design is just as complex and winding as The Surge 1's, and I found the story compelling if unfortunately undercooked. I think what is clearly a tight-budget has to do with that. Honestly, I would prefer static shots with no voice acting if I could get more world building, which Deck13 are really good at.

Deck13 are one of our most important developers, as I would DIE for more AA games like this that are incredibly ambitious while also being really solidly put together. The size and scope of a game that costs probably the fraction of a Dark Souls title is awe-inspiring and I really hope they continue to have success.

I'm puzzled why these games don't have difficulty modes though. I don't see any reason there can't be difficulty options, these games could be so much more well-liked if there was an easy or normal mode to cut your teeth on its mechanics. Ninja Gaiden Black has easy mode fellas we don't need to act like we're above it.

Also the directional parry rules, A+ work guys.

Maybe something's here, but I'll never know.

The Surge 2 lets you create your own husk of a protagonist and no matter what they're going to look fresh from a round of chemo. Poor KB+M controls for combat turned me off immediately and none of the opening weapons had any sort of weight to them. The directional parry is a nice concept that's executed poorly, in fact everything about this game felt like devs built it from bargain bin scraps.

Gave up pretty soon. Just rare for me to be this unhooked by a game's intro. I was bored and definitely not in the mood for a knockoff Soulslike. The coolest thing about this game (that I saw in my admittedly very brief stint) was being able to choose my character's backstory and being a criminal, but this of course meant nothing and changed zero, basically just headcanon for me to remember while I played.

Don't plan on coming back and I highly doubt I'm missing anything.

I got this game on a whim after hearing the first major boss theme and it's honestly well worth the time I put into it. The gameplay, while it took me a bit to get used to as this was my first souls-like game, eventually felt really smooth. Progression felt fairly natural throughout the game and the level design and difficult enemy placement would consistently encourage me to go along a path to the next objective.
The bosses were fun to fight for the most part, each having well telegraphed attacks that, if you didn't learn how to deal with them, would heavily punish you for your mistakes. The only one I would say wasn't great would be the Metal Armor fight.
The OST, while not mind-blowing, served well to enhance the atmosphere of each area and fight. A few themes do stand out, such as CIT and the Matriarch fight.
While it may be well out of my comfort zone in terms of gameplay, I had a lot of fun.

The Surge 2 fixes a lot that was wrong with the first one, namely the dark and confusing world design, now replaced with a far better signposted urban setting, and retains what made the original work: exploration is still rewarding and it's still fun to study enemies for armor and weapons you can chop off them and use, as well as playing upgrade Tetris with your booster chips. What took a dip is the performance, which as of December 2020 was poor across the board with frequent frame drops on a perfectly capable machine.

Good game that takes what made its predecessor stand out from other similar games and improves the setting. It also adds more bosses, which were lacking in number in the first game, and reduces the danger that trash mobs pose.

Overall it is a fairly enjoyable game that, due to the introduced parry mechanic, is way too easy for the genre.

I also really enjoyed the setting in the DLC.

So the surge 2 is pretty great actually.

I didn't really expect much from this game given that it's a 'soulslike' but I'm honestly pretty impressed by it after finishing. Really strong AA game that manages to be real unique in its aesthetic and gameplay. The story and lore isn't much to write home about, but I still found much of the world and characters to be pretty charming, even the middle-of-the-road, cheesy voice acting.

The combat, exploration, and weapon/build variety are the main strengths of the game and where I got the most enjoyment out of surge 2. Combat operates as the usual with the souls formula but relies less on evasion and more on directional parrying and blocking to break down enemy defenses and eventually dismember them in an impressively satisfying way. Though I wish the direction prompts weren't locked to a certain implant, I got so much fun in learning enemy patterns and delivering sick counters in both the regular enemy encounters and the bosses, the latter of which especially were surprisingly fun such as the fight against the Delver bosses. Combat kicked ass in the surge 2 and was very rewarding with the dismember system used against enemies.

Depending on what limbs are cut off, certain weapons, armor schematics or materials are dropped and this feeds into crafting new armor sets with certain bonuses and upgrading stats and equipment. Weapons and set variety is huge and I ended up swapping between so many across my time in the game that it's hard to pick a favorite; maybe the punching gloves, spears, and twin-rigs as weapon type favorites because of the cool combos that can be pulled off with a combination of horizontal and vertical attacks. New Game Plus will certainly make digging into the depth of these options just as satisfying and even more as it was the first time.

Exploration across the game's zones blew me away with the smart and deliberate level design of areas like Downtown Jericho City and the Underground. Many zones contain numerous beaten paths and hidden ones that usually result in scrap, weapons, gear, logs, and other valuable rewards that further encourage searching every corner of the map which thankfully isn't too large or too small, and felt pretty perfect in scale. Unlocking shortcuts such as previously locked doors, magnetic lifts, and zip lines felt so gratifying and made sure traversal across each map each time never got monotonous. The developers really outdid themselves with this aspect as I'd say it's as strong and addicting as the exploration and shortcuts found in the Dark Souls games.

Deck13 surprised me with the Surge 2 and I probably wouldn't have got this game if I didn't dig into their catalogue after becoming interested in their new game Atlas Fallen. They are definitely a studio I will keep my eye on now as this was a great AA game that lives up to the 'soulslike' name without any severe problems holding it back besides the narrative, characters, and world/lore. On my knees for the surge 3 from these folks when/if that does happen, and with even more budget put behind it because the surge 2 absolutely rules and this series deserves to get another follow-up.

The first Surge was an underrated gem in my opinion. A Soulslike with a unique industrial sci-fi setting revolving around a mechanic of dismembering enemies to gain those specific parts. It was dark, brutal and challenging and I enjoyed my time with it playing through several times and the DLC. Despite this I came to The Surge 2 a little late and I wish I hadn’t as it’s a highly enjoyable sequel that improves on the original game in many ways.

The story carries on after the end of the first though this time you play as an entirely new character on a Creo company plane that crash-lands into New Jericho city. You wake up in a prison infirmary to find the city has turned to hell and have to explore to find out what’s going on.

Exploration really is the core of this game. New Jericho is an interesting locale with a mixture of near future sci-fi elements and industrial buildings with old docks, power plants and areas seemingly already suffering from depression before your arrival. New Jericho is very different from the Creo facility in the first game, it’s not as dark or gritty with bright streets and wide areas. Exploring around rewards the played with short cuts to unlock, new items, weapons, upgrades and scrap (currency / experience) looking in every nook and cranny. It’s one of the aspects of the soulslike games I enjoy most and though many people don’t seem to like The surge series much I feel they do it very well.

While exploring there will be constant foes to fight from military police to nano machine infected scavengers. The combat is very deliberate, if you just hack in there is a good chance you will die as enemies can hit hard and will ambush you or fight in groups. Like Dark souls in which this takes influence from you have a stamina bar in The surge 2 that will dictate your actions. Dodging, attacking, blocking all use stamina, if you run out it leaves you extremely vulnerable, sometimes fatally. The biggest addition to the combat from the original game is a parry system called directional blocking in which while holding the generic block button you can tilt the right analogue stick in the direction the attack is coming from at the last second resulting in a parry you can riposte for large damage while they are staggered. This even works on most boss attacks though it takes several successes to stagger them and mistiming it can be a painful result. I really like this system as the entire game isn’t built around it, it’s an optional mechanic you can invest in or use here and there on certain enemies or attacks with your other arsenal.

Upgrading and equipping your character is also flexible. The Surge 2 uses the same dismember mechanic from the first game allowing you to cut limbs off enemies by targeting certain body parts allowing you to get certain crafting materials or new armour schematics to build. Armour sets have both part and full bonuses depending on how many pieces of the same set you have equipped and there are loads. The weapon selection is also huge from single hand, spear, hammers, staffs, dual rigs, gloves as well as a drone that can fire on weakened enemies or used to lure enemies from groups to take them down. With enough scrap you can level your character to equip chips with different abilities and you can respec at almost any time if you want to redistribute stats. I swapped many weapon types and armour sets before settling on a load out of punching gloves and two armour sets to hugely reduce stamina cost. It was great fun and overpowered by the end.

All that said the combat has issues. The enemy variety is really lacking, this goes for bosses as well in which only one is kind of interesting. Due to the nature of the combat and upgrade system most enemies are just humans with different gear and models. Some of the variety the first title had is kind of missing. The targeting system for body parts is also really finicky. Trying to target the body or legs at times seem to constantly target everything else. This caused me to die a couple of times as I wasn’t attacking trying to hit them.

I played this on PS5 and the game was an absolute lock at 60fps which I loved, it was super smooth (I've heard that’s not the case on the base PS4) I really like the visual design and found the graphics solid technically. Facial expressions and animations are super rough though when talking to characters. Whilst some of the characters are interesting and a big improvement of it’s predecessor the voice acting is still really all over the place. Shame really as the game I played after this an indie Metroidvania’s voice acting is absolutely sublime which only emphasized the mediocre performances / direction.

It took me about 60 hours to platinum in one and a half playthroughs including the short but fun Kraken DLC expansion. Overall I really do recommend it. It’s rough around the edges, doesn’t quite hit all it aims for but it’s an extremely fun game to explore and experiment with load-outs while brutally beheading enemies for parts. What more do you want?

Recommended.

+ Enjoyable to explore.
+ Directional blocking is a nice flexible addition.
+ Combat and dismemberment are still a unique idea.
+ Super smooth frame rate on PS5.

- Targeting body parts can be clunky.
- Enemy variety is a little lacking, including bosses.
- Voice acting is rough.

Really solid Souls-like--in fact, probably my favorite of these not made by FromSoftware. Its strength is its level design and enemy placement--the world is essentially four or five Dark Souls style levels where you unlock shortcuts from a single "bonfire," but they're all somewhat large. You rarely feel the danger of "am I going to find the next shortcut/bonfire" that Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne is really good at evoking; each piece along the way is manageable, and you can challenge yourself not to reset the level as you unlock the shortcut paths. Finding out how the levels fit together (and the various ways you can travel between the different levels) is always satisfying. There is some light Metroid elements as well--you unlock abilities as the game goes on that you can use to unlock more of the level. Besides the required segments of this stuff, going back to explore wasn't always rewarding: some techno-souls points, maybe a weapon or two, or an audio log. I blazed through the main quest without paying too much attention to the side stuff.

The health system sets it apart from other Souls-likes. You choose when to refill your own "flask" by burning "energy" which is a kind of mana bar that refills as you land hits on enemies, which means you can comfortably enter an encounter with zero flasks and come out of it with your flask charges topped off, so long as you're aggressive.

I played this game heavily relying on the directional parries, as opposed to dodging. The parry system can almost be spammed on certain enemy types, but it feels good to feel out the exact timing. The bosses are all pretty easy, especially when using parries, but they're all a lot of fun to fight. I ended up using a codename staff weapon and an angel set build, which essentially increases attack speed, energy gain, and stagger damage when using a "codename" weapon (weapons that begin with the word "codename"). There's some lore reason for that, but I didn't care about the story or world here whatsoever. It's all cool looking enough and can be very goofy. I'm not completely sure if I'm going to do the NG+ yet--if I do, it will purely be for the mechanical pleasure of it since I was never grabbed by the world or story. I'm more inclined to check out the first one.

A significant improvement on the first game. The devs at Deck13 seem to have finally learned their lesson about varying up their environments so the player doesn’t get bored or lost (the fatal flaw of both Lords of the Fallen and the first Surge). It’s not like the urban landscape is particularly riveting as a set piece, but at very least the environments are clearly delineated and differentiated from one another - I always had a good sense of where I was and where I needed to go next. Not exactly glowing praise, but it’s a step forward at least.

The mechanical changes from the original game also tend to be in this game’s favor. In the first game, it was easy to spam dismemberments and end up with a lot of unneeded vendor trash, but here slashing off limbs is tied to battery power, the same resource that you use to heal. So, the game creates an interesting choice - dismember the enemy for parts or hold on to the battery power for a potential future heal. Adding onto to the complexity of this system is the fact that you refill your battery power by attacking. This encourages aggression in a way that reminded me a little bit of Bloodborne’s rally system. Indeed, considering that this is also a much faster game than its predecessor, the shift from the stodginess of Dark Souls to the nimble ballet of Bloodborne is a rather apt analogy for the relationship between the original Surge and its sequel.

Except that Dark Souls and Bloodborne are packed to the gills with weird and evocative concepts and ineffable set pieces, while The Surge…well, it’s sci-fi gobbledygook in the worst way. Genuinely, I admire how the devs at Deck13 have clearly improved since they got into the Soulslike business with Lords of the Fallen. But the one thing that has never changed, whether in Lords of the Fallen, The Surge 1, or here, is that their narratives are so bereft of inspiration, their writing so bland, that my eyes glaze over as soon as the characters open their mouths. I really hope my experience changes with their future games, but I’m not hopeful. The narrative here centers around trying to find a little girl with nanite powers (yep, not joking) before a petulant, snot-nosed cult leader named Eli can steal the aforementioned powers for himself. Transhumanism, worship of technology, corporate malfeasance - all of your typical sci-fi cliches are incorporated here, if only half-heartedly.

I didn’t care one iota for the story, as you might have guessed, but I won’t deny that the actual act of playing this game is pretty damn fun. So, it’s empty calories. But what would life be without an indulgent little snack every once in awhile?

So I didn't review the first one but I did complete and quite enjoyed it. Lemme say that Surge 2 improves vastly over 1. I mean everything is honestly better. My favorite thing in this game are the directional parries and limb cutting (you do this to get your enemie's gear btw) Its just so incredibly satisfying. The pace of the combat in these games is comparable to Sekiro and Bloodborne. I know these titles have reputations either negatively or positively and for various reasons but I am more of the latter. If you enjoy souls-likes but with a different twist, definitely check it out.