This game can be very addicting. Compared to the first game there’s a graphical improvements as well as gameplay additions. Even though there’s more or less no story in it, the maps and the difficulty keep you going back for more. There’s also the curveball mechanic where you get random events popping up either good or bad. Rival or friendly enclaves that help you out depending on your status. And of course plague hearts, which have a zone of control that prevents you from either moving your base or setting up an outpost. Plague hearts also have protectors and once a plague heart awakes it will spawn multiple zombies and freak to its defense. So, you have to be prepared for a fight.
For me the difficulty is what makes this game fun and not repetitive. If you start on standard and move to dread and nightmare you might think you’re ready for lethal, but a lot of the times that won’t be the case. Lethal with the curveball system can be almost an impossible task. Freak zombies and tougher, especially blood ferals, screamers can wake up plague hearts, plague heart connect to each other which means if you kill one another one wakes up, and if it wakes up it will start sending out hordes and infestations. It can spiral out of control quickly.
I also liked the new base facilities. Though it kind of feels sameish. In fact, the first game had a mechanic that sometimes you had to go out and search for a specific item for the facility to be build, here there’s no such thing. You just wait until it’s completed. Also, I don’t know what the noise factor does, because I had it at 100% and nothing ever happened. Even on lethal. On the other hand morale can be tricky, especially if you have people that get mad easy.
Now I do wish there was more story in this. While the first game had characters with which you could relate to and you started being protective of, this game throws that out of the window and goes full sandbox mode. Every time you start a new game there will be new generated characters with new characteristic and traits. There are still missions here and there and an occasional radio message that gives you a little lore but that’s just background noise. The only map that does have some story elements is the Trumbull Valley one. But I would suggest playing Heartland first before starting that one.
Speaking of Heartland it’s one of the two adorns to the main sandbox game. The other one being Daybreak. Daybreak gets boring really fast. They took the siege system from the Lifeline DLC from the first game and made it even more boring. I was hoping that would have improved it but it’s even more restrictive than before. Not only do you start with just 2 AI helpers, they are both incompetent. In lifeline you could at least change up their weapons, here you can’t do anything but hope and pray that they spawn with somewhat decent weaponry. I wish this was more like a tower defense game where you could position the soldiers, upgrade them as each wave passes and then see what works and what doesn’t. But as it is, this mode isn’t worth it as it takes too long to beat it and the rewards and not that good.
Heartland on the other hand is the story addon. But it low key feels like a character collector at times. Because the story missions will have you go find a character, do their mission, then do another and then recruit them. Do this like 6-7 times until the final mission pops up. The people who you recruit don’t really progress the story all that much. They’re certainly not as interesting as the OG characters like Marcus, Ed or Maya… The gauntlet at the end can be hard, but if you beat the game on lethal it shouldn’t be a problem. Just come prepared with ammo and retreat when it’s depleted.
Overall, I would say it’s a great sequel and it has a lot more replayability that the first game. 4,5/5.
