Fast Hands and Hair-Trigger Dodges
Plug a controller in, push the stick forward, and Dylan responds before your thumb settles. The transition from Jesse's ranged service weapon in the first game to Dylan's raw brawling is immediate, throwing out rapid slashes and instant cancel dodges that feel great the second you touch them. There is no heavy startup lag on his basic string, and the recovery on his evasive dash is so generous that you can dart through incoming fire without getting stuck in locked animations.
That agility makes the early hours click. Dylan jumps, air-dashes, and drops back to street level with zero hitches in momentum, giving the combat an energetic beat that leans hard into hack and slash territory. English voice delivery and cleanly labeled menus keep all your ability upgrades clear right from the opening tutorial. If a melee game cannot get the basic dodge and strike rhythm right, it dies on arrival, but Remedy tuned Dylan's core movement to feel razor-sharp.
Gravity Gimmicks and Dirty Arenas
The problem starts once the arena fills up. Manhattan is fractured into warped zones where gravity folds sideways, forcing you to sprint along office walls while fighting off clusters of Hiss and spreading patches of the Mold. It looks cool on screen, but camera tracking falls apart when you try to juggle three airborne targets while walking on what used to be a ceiling.
Melee combat demands spatial awareness and clean sightlines. Here, smaller grunt enemies pelt you with off-screen projectiles while you are locked into chipping away at heavy mid-tier targets that refuse to flinch. Because there is no dedicated parry tool to deflect incoming hits, defense turns into endless panic-dodging across sideways streets until you finally thin out the firing line. The encounter spaces end up feeling chaotic for the wrong reasons.
Combo Fatigue and Spongy Health Pools
Dylan's core moveset is fun for ten hours, but it does not grow deep enough to carry a full-length campaign. You unlock gravity anomalies and extra telekinetic bursts to break shields, yet the core melee string never really expands into branching combo trees. You press the same buttons, watch the same swing arcs, and wait out the exact same target recoveries across dozens of encounters.
Boss encounters drag that limitation into the spotlight. You chase massive corrupted entities through crumbling skyscrapers, landing solid strikes that barely move their chunky health meters. It turns what should be high-speed duels into prolonged wars of attrition where you cycle the exact same two damage abilities, dodge backward, and wait for cooldowns. The visual flair stays high, but your hands are doing routine chores.
An Open City with Uneven Value
Dylan searching for Jesse gives the journey a clear direction, and the expanded Manhattan district map holds plenty of creepy FBC lore notes tucked behind gravity-torn alleys. Remedy sold a million copies in a flash, and sitting near the top of the Steam charts at forty-eight dollars makes complete sense given the visual spectacle on display. Exploring ruined city blocks while reality tears apart around you carries real atmosphere.
Strip away the crooked buildings and the fighting runs out of gas. You get snappy dodges and quick attack cancels, but the game wastes that speed on spongy bosses and mobs pelting you from blind spots. Movement feels great. The actual brawling just needed more work.
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Kinda bummed the review barely talks about Dylan's story arc. For forty-eight dollars I wanted more than gravity gimmicks and spongy health bars. The ending of the first game actually got to me, but this one just felt pretty hollow.
Kinda bummed the review barely talks about Dylan's story arc. For forty-eight dollars I wanted more than gravity gimmicks and spongy health bars. The ending of the first game actually got to me, but this one just felt pretty hollow.