"The day you raised your scythe against us, I was born. And soon, I will be all. The Tree of Life has fallen to my darkness, from withered root to fruitless limb - and even Death himself will not escape it!"
--Absalom, Darksiders II
The first Darksiders introduces one of the most unique pseudo-Christian stories in apocalyptic fiction, with its use of the likely figurative "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" as living entities that enact the will of the Creator and the Charred Council, a being with three faces created by God to maintain a balance between the forces of Heaven and Hell. The first game provides the backdrop to the second: War, the first of the Horsemen (one of whom is actually female), arrived on Earth ahead of time without knowing the prerequisites had not actually been met, and he was confined to a sort of cosmic prison by the Council. Reacting to this framing of War, Death, the second of the Horsemen, seeks to establish his brother's innocence and undo the extinction of humanity brought about by the premature fights between angelic and demonic beings in the first game. Darksiders II expands on both the theological hierarchy and lore of the franchise while becoming more of an RPG than its predecessor. Even a handful of horribly constructed puzzles/sections that might call for a walkthrough do not overshadow its general excellence.
Production Values
The art style for this sequel has more of an almost cel-shaded look than the first game does, which is still right at home in the series aesthetic thanks to the events and characters still getting treated as serious parts of a grim world. Blurry background details do not infringe on how the game looks and runs in the immediate vicinity of Death. Animations in and outside of combat are mostly very smooth, highlighted when Death dodges enemy attacks without the frame rate ever suffering (at least in my recalled experience). The game did freeze up twice to the point that I had to restart it, an issue that is not a graphical problem as much as a technical one. Of course, this is a Switch port of a somewhat old game made for consoles two generations prior to the era of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, so the Switch is entirely capable of handling it even if the are some freezes here and there. The initial quality of the game upon its original release is preserved well, it would seem, with both the visuals and audio. Expanded RPG-like dialogue options give more opportunities for voice acting to an already cinematic franchise.
Gameplay
As with the first game, dungeons comparable to those in the Legend of Zelda franchise await players, complete with chests, bosses, dungeon maps, room keys, and sometimes new items. Death eventually has an array of distinctive weapons or tools, such as the Deathgrip that allows him to pull himself to certain objects from a distance and vice versa, that enable progression in the main story and the finding of optional chests scattered around the lands. Also like in the first game, a horse can be summoned in specific areas for Death to ride (after all, he is one of the Four Horsemen). The other aspects of the game are actually different than those of the first one.
For starters, enemies periodically drop new items or articles of clothing with differing levels of primary damage, defense, elemental bonuses like fire damage, and so on. This is a new development that makes Darksiders II more like a traditional third-person RPG than its predecessor was. Some of the mandatory or random equippables are much more useful than others, going so far as to restore missing health for every successful swing of the blade or raise the chance of execution kills. Additional combos can also be purchased directly from several merchant characters separate from loot drops even though they will buy unwanted items as well. This preserves the God of War-like elements of the first game to some extent.
Story
Some spoilers are below!
One of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse named Death, in the aftermath of some of the events in the first game where the Apocalypse happens before it was supposed to, wants to bring humankind back to life after its destruction so that his brother and fellow Horseman War can be absolved of his false accusations of prematurely bringing about the Apocalype. He holds to the idea of his brother's innocence even when others question it, descending to find the Tree of Life. Death encounters the Makers and a force called Corruption as he desperately tries to bring human life back to a world fought over by angelic and demonic forces. The Tree of Life brings him to the land of the dead and beyond, the journery leading him to the realization that all conscious beings besides God depend on the Well of Souls, and it is the Well that could help him restore humanity.
Intellectual Content
In addition to regular environmental puzzles, explorarion, and collectible hunting, Darksiders II features the return of the metaphysics of a universe loosely inspired by the Bible. The Nephilim are added alongside Corruption and the Makers. The Makers are a kind of blacksmith-oriented race that is said to have created the architecture of Heaven and Hell and even to have brought other worlds into creation. While the Nephilim are very briefly mentioned as the product of seeming human-angel sex early in Genesis (in the game they are a "cursed union of Angel and Demon), the Charred Council, the Makers, and the Corruption of the game are all extra-Biblical entities devised for the series. The deity of Darksiders and Lucifer are both largely background figures, with the Charred Council serving as a third party to maintain balance. So far, each game I have played ignores the fact that there is no such thing as too much righteousness, only the foolish assumption that an amoral thing is good or evil or vice versa. It is neither logically possible nor Biblical for good and evil, if they exist, to both need to be in existence or for their proponents to have equal influence, for it could never be good or beneficial in any way except one of petty selfishness to tolerate evil for the sake of balance.
Conclusion
Few game sequels add to the core mechanics and style of the first from a series as much as Darksiders II does. The original Darksiders was not an RPG, even if it had elements very reminiscent of the pseudo-RPG series Legend of Zelda. Darksiders II rennovates the gameplay to the point that it is a different style of game other than that they share a third-person camera, all as it expands upon the Nephilim, the significance of humanity, and the Tree of Life in a pseudo-Biblical way (no, it is not Biblically accurate, but like the film Noah, the Darksiders games are only meant to be somewhat inspired by Biblical theology). It is an ideal sequel for those who like experimentation within the same series and anyone who appreciates the complexity of THQ's loose adaption of parts of Revelation.
Content:
1. Violence: Depending on the enemy type being fought, there can be a lot of stylized blood that appears in short bursts during attacks.
2. Profanity: Very rarely, words like "damn" and "bastard" are used.
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