All they had to do was make more ghostrunner, and they failed.
I wasn't too hyped for this one; I really liked 1 and had a fun time with it, but didn't really see a point in a sequel and the broken demo half confirmed my fears. The game, in my eyes, had to prove it's existence and it did not.
Starting off with the positives. The core swordplay and the dash/slow time ability is as fun as it was in the first game. The motorcycle(which, I will talk about soon) fundamentally did control pretty well, there were some bosses that were pretty good and I really liked the shadow ability and the push ability and that's about it for positives.
Where the fuck do I start? Maybe the level design. One more level decided to go for much more open-ended levels in this, with more enemies and more space. This idea fails at the concept stage: Why would a one hit kill type game work in a vast environment with enemies that are spaced out? Almost all levels that aren't the bike missions and the last two missions are dampened heavily just because of that. Adding on to the level design, almost all of the game is either a parkour level or a combat level, and the two barely mix which is an insanely weird design decision that is done for no understandable reason.
One of the worst parts of this game are the enemies. They introduce a new faction(I think? Wasn't interested in the lore at all) which led to more types of enemies that were for the most part straight dogwater. For example the chain enemy, who has two chains Iron Man 2 style that he hits you with. Cool idea for an enemy, but it is absolutely ruined because the chains themselves, which is what matters to your hitbox, is red, which is ALSO the color that it leads behind in a visual trail, meaning you can not distinguish what will hit you and what won't, which led to a lot of frustrating deaths trying to udnerstand what the fuck is up with this enemy. In general the enemy indication is abysmal in this game, another example of this being a boss which is a giant robot thing with 3 "Modes" with different attack patterns. Not to get into this too much, but every mode has some sort of thing where you can't know if he's going to attack or not before it's too late, and you're already dead. Enemy reactions are also sometimes bugged, where they would just freeze and do nothing or teleport to me and insta kill me.
In terms of gameplay this is such a downgrade from 1. I think a main theme I see in all of the gameplay is how much it's inspired by Doom Eternal. Like doom, it constantly introduces new ideas, new abilities, new enemy types etc. However what it fails to understand is that Eternal weaved all of these mechanics together to make the game greater as a whole, while this game not only throws away most of the ideas the level after they're introduced, but is not greater than the sum of it's parts. It's shallow, and a lot of these ideas are also boring. Who cares if I need to throw a thing at a wall before grappling to it? It's not like I'm under any pressure.
Leaning to the technical side, the game is a mess. I have a 2060, which is well above minumum specs and almost at recommended, but the game was struggling hitting 50 fps a lot of the time. The game also looks worse than 1. A lot of the lighting and art design is more bland, city levels aren't as differentiated as the first one. It is also BUGGY AS HELL. I encountered so many bugs, from visual to game breaking(mostly the latter). Bugs where an enemy would keep flickering, bugs where the entire level would just dissapear, pop in that wasn't just visual. The game is clearly a mess and needs some patching.
You might have noticed that I said "most of the time" quite a bit in this review, and that is because I was talking about two exceptions to the stuff I said. One is great and one is terrible: The sand mission and the last 2 missions. Starting off with the sand mission, the game puts you on a giant map with three different areas of interest that you need to do to finish. You have your motorcycle to get around although the game forces you to get off at times, even when you aren't doing one of the three missions. This part is dogshit. There is no reason for it to be open world; you literally just use the world as a place to get from one mission to another, there's no exploration or anything. The missions are also terribly designed with some of the worst puzzles in the entire game, where the game poses it as a puzzle but all you have to do is flip a switch, I am not exaggerating. Also, it drags on for way too long and is super unnecessary. On the other side of the coin are the two last(technically the two last before the last level which is just a final boss that is the worst boss in the game and is based on RNG for some reason) levels where it seems like different devs took over or something because practically most of my issues were fixed. They combined parkour and combat, the new ideas they introduced(most notably the wingsuit) were not only great on their own but smartly integrated with both combat and parkour, the puzzles were great although I solved one by breaking it accidently, the level design was unique and complimented the combat, it was great. I was considering bumping the score half a point higher just because of those last two levels but the final boss really soured it and honestly, I think it deserves this rating.
Do not play this game. The only reason I can see you would want to play it is if you REALLY, and I mean REALLY want more ghostrunner. The game is a downgrade from the first and such a bad experience. Really the only thing that could have made it even worse is if it overstayed it's welcome, which it didn't thankfully.
I wasn't too hyped for this one; I really liked 1 and had a fun time with it, but didn't really see a point in a sequel and the broken demo half confirmed my fears. The game, in my eyes, had to prove it's existence and it did not.
Starting off with the positives. The core swordplay and the dash/slow time ability is as fun as it was in the first game. The motorcycle(which, I will talk about soon) fundamentally did control pretty well, there were some bosses that were pretty good and I really liked the shadow ability and the push ability and that's about it for positives.
Where the fuck do I start? Maybe the level design. One more level decided to go for much more open-ended levels in this, with more enemies and more space. This idea fails at the concept stage: Why would a one hit kill type game work in a vast environment with enemies that are spaced out? Almost all levels that aren't the bike missions and the last two missions are dampened heavily just because of that. Adding on to the level design, almost all of the game is either a parkour level or a combat level, and the two barely mix which is an insanely weird design decision that is done for no understandable reason.
One of the worst parts of this game are the enemies. They introduce a new faction(I think? Wasn't interested in the lore at all) which led to more types of enemies that were for the most part straight dogwater. For example the chain enemy, who has two chains Iron Man 2 style that he hits you with. Cool idea for an enemy, but it is absolutely ruined because the chains themselves, which is what matters to your hitbox, is red, which is ALSO the color that it leads behind in a visual trail, meaning you can not distinguish what will hit you and what won't, which led to a lot of frustrating deaths trying to udnerstand what the fuck is up with this enemy. In general the enemy indication is abysmal in this game, another example of this being a boss which is a giant robot thing with 3 "Modes" with different attack patterns. Not to get into this too much, but every mode has some sort of thing where you can't know if he's going to attack or not before it's too late, and you're already dead. Enemy reactions are also sometimes bugged, where they would just freeze and do nothing or teleport to me and insta kill me.
In terms of gameplay this is such a downgrade from 1. I think a main theme I see in all of the gameplay is how much it's inspired by Doom Eternal. Like doom, it constantly introduces new ideas, new abilities, new enemy types etc. However what it fails to understand is that Eternal weaved all of these mechanics together to make the game greater as a whole, while this game not only throws away most of the ideas the level after they're introduced, but is not greater than the sum of it's parts. It's shallow, and a lot of these ideas are also boring. Who cares if I need to throw a thing at a wall before grappling to it? It's not like I'm under any pressure.
Leaning to the technical side, the game is a mess. I have a 2060, which is well above minumum specs and almost at recommended, but the game was struggling hitting 50 fps a lot of the time. The game also looks worse than 1. A lot of the lighting and art design is more bland, city levels aren't as differentiated as the first one. It is also BUGGY AS HELL. I encountered so many bugs, from visual to game breaking(mostly the latter). Bugs where an enemy would keep flickering, bugs where the entire level would just dissapear, pop in that wasn't just visual. The game is clearly a mess and needs some patching.
You might have noticed that I said "most of the time" quite a bit in this review, and that is because I was talking about two exceptions to the stuff I said. One is great and one is terrible: The sand mission and the last 2 missions. Starting off with the sand mission, the game puts you on a giant map with three different areas of interest that you need to do to finish. You have your motorcycle to get around although the game forces you to get off at times, even when you aren't doing one of the three missions. This part is dogshit. There is no reason for it to be open world; you literally just use the world as a place to get from one mission to another, there's no exploration or anything. The missions are also terribly designed with some of the worst puzzles in the entire game, where the game poses it as a puzzle but all you have to do is flip a switch, I am not exaggerating. Also, it drags on for way too long and is super unnecessary. On the other side of the coin are the two last(technically the two last before the last level which is just a final boss that is the worst boss in the game and is based on RNG for some reason) levels where it seems like different devs took over or something because practically most of my issues were fixed. They combined parkour and combat, the new ideas they introduced(most notably the wingsuit) were not only great on their own but smartly integrated with both combat and parkour, the puzzles were great although I solved one by breaking it accidently, the level design was unique and complimented the combat, it was great. I was considering bumping the score half a point higher just because of those last two levels but the final boss really soured it and honestly, I think it deserves this rating.
Do not play this game. The only reason I can see you would want to play it is if you REALLY, and I mean REALLY want more ghostrunner. The game is a downgrade from the first and such a bad experience. Really the only thing that could have made it even worse is if it overstayed it's welcome, which it didn't thankfully.
theadhdagenda_
6 months ago
i agree theres way too much here, im surprised no one else noticed how many ideas are tossed. i still had a way better time than you did though, i loved the bike level.