Fantastic gameplay-wise. While WD1 was pretty limited in how it utilized hacking and offen just diverged from a shitty stealth game into an alright TPS, Watch Dogs 2 is all about hacking, making you use all the drones and cameras you can find in order to execute your mission as efficiently as possible. You can still run&gun, but with little combat abilities and with how abundant heavy guys are throughout the levels, you're heavily discouraged from going in, guns blazing. And, again, it's not like combat is unviable. In fact, all the tools you use for hacking are crucial in a good offensive. I especially enjoyed, in the case of fucking up a stealth route, carpet-bombing swats of enemies with a flying drone, tazing others with a little car one, running around the battlefield and creating distractions. Unlike the first game, Watch Dogs 2 truly is about embodying a hacker that can be a soldier and pack a punch if neccesary, and not the other way around.

And besides that, another pleasant surprise was the story. Honestly! Characters like Wrench, Sitara and Josh are super endearing, and they do grow on you over the course of the game. Their relationships with Marcus (who is sympathetic and fun to play as) is believable and fun to watch. This cunt with glasses and a crew cut was super fun, and Dusan has a surprisingly low level of cringe to him, and actually manages to be a good villian.
I don't think the whole anti-system hacker theme was developed the best, though, as while Watch Dogs 2 is perfectly willing to describe and discuss the ways in which tech companies affect our lives in a bad way, it's not super interested in adressing the moral ambivilance of actions comitted by the good guys. Nevertheless, the story was, at the very least, entertaining, and I really hope that in a hypothetical Watch Dogs 3 we could return to a story more like this one, instead of whatever the fuck Legions was.









P.S.
I must say - I think a story in the setting of Legions but with actual characters would be great as well