Dusk Diver 2 Critic Reviews

Dusk Diver 2 isn’t a flawless game, nor the most original. However, it wears its heart on its sleeve and provides a lot of enjoyment if you’re willing to give it a chance. It feels like a homecoming in many respects, even if it’s a series you’re only just now experiencing for the first time. That’s rather special in a way. For action RPG fans looking for a colorfully fun time, Dusk Diver 2 might be worth a look.

Dusk Diver 2 delivers a much-improved sequel. Though its story takes some time to get going, its execution bears weight, especially in the second half of the game. With great exploration and combat, which allows you to take control of all your party members this time around, Dusk Diver 2 provides a steep challenge with plenty of content to sink your teeth into.

By expanding the roster of playable characters and the number of fighters that can be dragged on the front line, the guys at WANIN International have endowed Dusk Diver 2 with a pleasant strategic component completely absent in the first episode. However, instead of conceiving a new growth system reasoned and designed specifically for the team, the studio has kept the leveling system of the original, which allowed you to manually intervene on the parameters of the Yang Yumo alone. Being shared among the various members of the gang, the experience points accumulated through the clashes are not sufficient to simultaneously improve the fighters available to the player, who is often forced to focus on one or two heroes to cope with a balance of difficulty to be reviewed. at most, neglecting the remaining three. Compared to the progenitor, Dusk Diver 2 has in short made some appreciable steps forward, but the road to perfect the formula of the saga and express its full potential would still seem long.

If you’re a fan of the original Dusk Diver, there’s plenty here for you to enjoy. Better combat and more time to hang out with the delightful staff of the Tumaz Mart is sure to please, but it's a shame that both the story and many of the side quests are fairly forgettable. Overall, this is a fairly solid hack-and-slash adventure with some really creative dungeons to explore, but it does have a little bit too much busywork and not enough variety.

Dusk Diver 2 shows a notable improvement over the original by adding a second playable character to switch between in-battle at any point, but doesn’t improve the formula enough to be a must-have for anyone who didn’t love the original. The combat system has been beefed up, but variety is still in short-supply and the same environments being used throughout dungeons hurts things. The overworld exploration is the most pure fun the game offers up in its current form and it’s a shame some streamlining wasn’t done to dungeons to make them less laborious and more fun to complete.

One thing is clear, Dusk Diver 2 knows what it wants to be and does it pretty well. The hack and slash action combat is easy to learn and master, and side content is addictive to complete. Its anime inspiration lends to a vibrant world, great character design, and soundtrack fitting for any occasion. However, the most important parts of the game don’t pack enough of a punch. Combat doesn’t have enough variety, and the story meanders for too long before it gets interesting. What keeps the game moving is the many things for Yumo to do outside of battle, whether that be helping people or indulging in a nice meal. Dusk Diver 2 ultimately isn’t an indulgence, but something one might pick up when they want something comfortable and familiar.

Dusk Diver 2 has all the pieces to be an enjoyable JRPG but certain gameplay decisions make it more of a slog than it should be. The combat is fast paced but damage sponge enemies slow things down too much, whilst there are plenty of side quests but they nearly all boil down to simply running from one waypoint to another. It's not without its charm, if things were a little tighter it would be a real treat.

Dusk Diver 2 flies too close to the sun - and it isn't even aiming for the sun in it's own solar system. While the original game was a tight and exciting brawler, this sequel tries to pivot into a more methodical character-action style without the tools that make those games so rewarding. The result is a game with repetitive, sluggish combat dominating the entire experience. Fans might find crumbs of narrative intrigue to explore here, but newcomers have little reason to dive in.

Dusk Diver 2 offers the idea of cool systems and a fun combat system, but never really delivers on it, despite some wonderful waifus and husbandos.

The sense of shallowness is impossible to shake, and over the course of a reasonably long brawler/RPG gets tiring. Dusk Diver 2, much like its predecessor, has all the potential in the world, and most of its individual elements are really competently made. It just doesn’t come together in execution, and while I was willing to give the developers the benefit of the doubt the first time, I’m just not certain they have a good grasp of how they want to execute on their ambition with this series. I don’t know if a third would be a good idea at this stage.