This is not a good game. I really wish it was and have given it a shot, but I would much rather play the previous game(s) than play more of this. They took Dying Light and made it worse almost over all different parts of the game.
Base game difficulty scales with your level based on story progression. A basic zombie/viral will destroy you all the same at level 1 or 15. On new game plus, even your instagib face stepping won't one shot a basic zombie anymore. Bullet sponge enemies are extremely real.
Story wise, the story is contrived and doesn't seem to know if it wants to be whacky and silly or serious. The ''twists and turns'' in the game you can see coming from 10 miles away and Crane seems to forget the things he promises to those that betray him. Barely any of the NPCs are likeable, and unless you turn your brain off completely make it extremely obvious they could not care less for Kyle and are using him. Yet Kyle has zero agency or thoughts of himself and just goes along with whatever, even clear misdirections and the lack of player choice is staggering.
The ''gear'' and leveling system is extremely bland. There are no fun ''unique'' weapons in this game with special effects as they all have the same name and the same style. They are however, almost paradoxically also extremely difficult to know what some of the buffs the weapons give. One gives 75% kick damage. On the base kick? Drop kick? Charged kick? Who knows.
Armor is another one, the bonuses are extremely low if only using a part, and if you use the full set, your armor value is low. But how much does armor value matter? From testing, it seems to barely change your incoming damage. Bosses, elite enemies or volatiles that 2 shot you will 2 shot you regardless, and against a horde of virals, the difference in armor also does not make a difference.
1.5% dmg reduction from infected is negligible and doesn't feel worth using.
Vendors are just there for materials and later some ammo. Only once have I seen a vendor with a remotely useful weapon and even then it wasn't even clear what the weapon boosted (75% kick damage) and may have been broken. Their inventory is shockingly bad even further in the game.
Resources range from extremely common to barely existing and requiring a vendor, but soon in the game you will be rolling in so much cash that it doesn't matter and you can just ping between vendors to get the resouces you need.
Ammo is extremely scarce, and even once you get to the Human enemies, they will give you... a single slug for a shotgun, a single arrow, maybe 3 rifle bullets. Actually looting enemies for ammo is practically useless, and the ranged weapons themselves deal ridiculously low damage to bosses on the base game difficulty. Extreme bullet sponges while also making melee combat frustrating constantly tossing you over with shared abilities between a lot of the enemies and other bosses which are essentially just recolours.
The variety in enemies is extremely low and frankly disappointing to not see a improvement on this compared to the other games.
Night time is EXTREMELY punishing, to the point where it's borderline unplayable. In the original game, you could exist during nighttime maybe a little too easy once you got some unlocks, but this game pushes it to the extreme other end. Nighttime is torture, and there is no bonus worth existing during nighttime. Volatiles are extremely spongy for damage, and will move much faster than yourself and will get hits in even while running at max boosted speed, while parkouring. They will simply turbo mode to keep up with you at all times which seems to be the intended way. They are also extremely aware and will spot you from a mile away when they feel like it. Good luck finishing a chase, because there's very bad dead zone between safe areas where you will be too far to reach a safe zone.
New game plus had me holding out for hope that this would fix a lot of issues, but considering the bonuses are 3% extra damage per tier of unlock this barely moves the needle and does not feel like worthwhile talents. No fun or interactive talents such as swapping weapons increasing your damage, comboing regular kicks with melee attacks adding extra damage to enemies, hitting enemies having a chance for instant executions etc... there was so much potential for this system.
There are potentially game breaking bugs possible as well. Throughout my coop playthrough we had several points where enemies just fail to sync properly, despite not even having particularly high ping at the time.
Also issues with enemies phasing through the world on 'clear the zone of enemies' type missions, where enemies had phased into solid objects, or straight up through the floor. Human enemies being particularly bad with this as they dodge a lot of melee attacks, and these dodges seem to mesh really bad with terrain and objects. This could easily softlock your game.
Also pop-in of enemies while driving, several areas had enemies spawn in directly in front of the truck while driving while we both have good rigs.
The map resets the visible dark zones/convoys upon reloading, showing them all as undiscovered areas once more upon restarting the game. Why? We've been around similar areas multiple times only to ''discover'' the same dark zone or convoy.
Also a personal gripe - Activating beast mode or driving a car instantly or continuously spawning virals. Just why?
If you get this game, get it on a heavy discount or simply play the first game again.
