Dying Light 2: Is it Worth Buying in 2024? An Honest Review!

It’s 2024, and if you’re looking at purchasing Dying Light 2: Stay Human, this review is all about the current state of the game. From the main storyline, sidequests, craftings, skills, events, and updates that bring new weapons, armor, skins, and even small and big improvements, Techland is keeping Dying Light 2 fans entertained with many new “goodies”.

Dying Light 2 Game Editions: Which one should I get?

For 59,99€, you can go on Steam and grab the Standard Edition of Dying Light 2: Stay Human, which only includes the base game and a few free DLC packs. Alternatively, you can pay as much as 79,99€ for the Deluxe Edition, which includes (besides the base game) the Bloody Ties DLC, the Legendary outfit, paraglider, renewable weapons, exclusive weapon charms, a digital soundtrack, an artbook, a comic, 2 wallpapers, and a physical steel book.

Last but not least, you can get the Ultimate Edition which costs 99,99€ and it includes the Story DLC 2, 2-hour night XP Booster, and crafting items. There’s also the Collectors Edition, and Content Creator Collectors Edition, but those are for the hardcore players out here.

You could get the Ultimate Edition if you’re looking at starting with everything. I didn’t, as I don’t particularly appreciate spending more money on games than I have to, and having a few more costumes, skins, or weapons won’t make any difference. But if you like what they offer, you may consider getting a more expensive version and have even more fun from the beginning, or upgrade from the Standard Edition if you’re happy with the game.

Dying Light 2 also got the Winter Tales and Firearms updates, which came with a holiday event, bundles, gifts, new content, and lighting/visual improvements. But is it worth buying it in 2024?

The Story of Dying Light 2: Stay Human

In Dying Light 2, you play as Aiden Caldwell, a wandering Pilgrim who delivers goods, brings news, helps, and connects the few remaining survivor settlements in barren lands devastated by the zombie virus. While having to beat all those zombies and do various quests that help the people of Villedor, your true goal is to find your sister, Mia. But everything’s different from the first installment, as Dying Light 2 takes you 20 years after the events of the original game, where the virus won, and humanity is slowly dying.

Unlike the opening scene that we saw during the original installment, where Crane was jumping over an airplane to enter Harran, Dying Light 2 starts with you, Aiden, running away to save your life from the zombies, while (similarly) jumping from an old and destroyed bridge. So yeah, both games start with jumping, so you know what you’re gonna experience just by watching the opening scene.

At first glance, the game’s graphics are magical, to say the least, with beautiful colors, a dark environment, and shadows that take your breath away. After finishing the opening scene, you quickly find yourself in a settlement torn by conflict. You’ll need to engage in creative and fast combat, roam the city, free-run across Villedor’s buildings and rooftops in search of loot in remote areas, and be very wary of the night.

With every sunset, monsters take control of the streets. Unlike the original game, in Dying Light 2, nights are extremely difficult and stealth mode is necessary at the beginning. Heck, Techland is even developing a Nightmare mode.

I won’t get into more details about the storyline of the game, as I avoid spoilers myself, but the most important thing that you need to know about Dying Light 2 is that it comes with different outcomes in the story, based on the decisions that you make as a player. Not only that, but the City itself is also changing, so every decision that you make can see you either living in a city with most people dead, or better protected, and with or without anarchy.

What I liked the most about Dying Light 2: Stay Human

There are many things to like about Dying Light 2: Stay Human, and I mean now that the game has finally stepped into a good phase where things run normally and the number of weird glitches is reduced a lot (in the main story, at least).

The parkour style and experience have also seen many big improvements over the years, and it’s now more playable and enjoyable than it was when it was first released. And thanks to Techland, the game keeps getting updates with new weapons, armor, skins, content, and events.

Here’s everything I liked (and hated) the most about Dying Light 2, coming as a new player from the original title with over 100 hours of gameplay.

Community Maps

In Dying Light 2, players have the opportunity to create and share their own custom maps (something that reminds me of when I used to create maps for Trackmania). The “Community Maps” is a collection of fan-made maps that continue to grow, all with their own styles, challenges, and stories. You can even download and play Dying Light’s original map.

You can find all the available maps at the Pilgrim Outpost, which is available when you log in on their official website. Every week, they present one map, ensuring you always have something fresh to play.

Having a range of available fan-made maps and stories makes the game so much bigger than it originally was, and you can even create your own using the developer tools that Techland has created for players to create custom maps. And yes, it’s totally free. The Map Editor that is included in the PC DLC allows creators to upload and share their custom maps with the entire Dying Light community – but still lacks features and options.

After finishing the original story, I immediately went ahead and downloaded a couple of fan-made maps, and they were pretty damn great, to say the least. Unfortunately, on the first community map I tried to play, named “The Intersection“, I got stuck at the beginning because I wasn’t able to pick up the locks to unlock the door and continue due to a bug, but other maps were mostly enjoyable and playable.

Community Ideas

Dying Light 2 players can suggest their own ideas for the game, some of which are getting picked by Techland and developed for future updates. Based on the company, the top 10 suggestions will frequently move on to the In Review stage, which players can easily access. After that, their developers are reviewing whether to move forward with the idea. There’s also an “Approved” section and a “In Development” section for players to get updated on any ideas getting ready to become part of the game.

Head over to Pilgrim Outpost, log in to your account, and check the Community Ideas page. There’s also a section with all the community ideas that have already made it into the game, which is pretty neat to see. You can vote for your favorite community ideas and suggest your own with a few clicks, a great way to take part in the game’s development and maybe see your idea becoming a reality.

New Game Plus (NG+)

But that’s not all, you can also enable the “New Game Plus” (NG+), which will reset the main storyline from the beginning, giving you access to more side missions and content, a chance to explore different choices, and even uncover hidden secrets, Easter eggs, or additional content that wasn’t accessible in your first playthrough.

After enabling the NG+, the game difficulty is also increased, with enemies and zombies being tougher and challenges more intense. NG+ allows you to make different choices and explore alternate story paths. Plus, you get to keep all your character’s level and skill points, some of your weapons, gear, and inventory items, and even all your blueprints and crafting recipes.

Reportedly, based on some users on Reddit, to avoid replaying the whole storyline from the beginning, you can keep a backup of your current game, and after starting the NG+, restore the whole story by pasting the backup files back to their original folder. But I haven’t tried that as I wanted to play the storyline again and make different decisions.

Skins, Crafts, and Skills

Who doesn’t love some great-looking skins for their characters? Skins seem to be the best way nowadays for game developers to increase their game’s income and provide players with more visual options. With Dying Ligh 2, while skins do come with their own stats, they’re usually not worth using, so instead players will only display them as skins but keep wearing their good armor. Unfortunately, there aren’t many available skins, but there are a few that look pretty good in my opinion.

As a new player, you also get a few 400 coins for free, which are enough to buy you a skin or a DLC pack, depending on what you’re after. Skins mostly cost around €5,00 if you’re interested in supporting the developers even more and having more fun using your player’s skin while playing multiplayer with other players.

Skills and Legendary Levels

Then you have skills, which you have to unlock during the main storyline, and by completing different challenges that gives you more XP. Some skills, like not getting hurt while jumping from higher heights, need to be activated with a press of a button, such as pressing E, V, Space, etc. Unlocking all your player’s skills isn’t that hard once you complete the main storyline, or even when you start the New Game Plus.

Legendary Levels are unlocked once you achieve Survivor Rank 9. Players can have a total of 250 Legend Levels. Once they reach level 50, players start to lose their experience points every time they die, and the higher the difficulty, the more points are lost. With all that in mind, players get awarded based on the points they have, where Bronze is for level 1 up until level 50, Silver (50 to 100 level), and Gold (100 to 200 level).

There are 10 Legend Upgrades, and each of them can be upgraded up to 25 times. Upon upgrading a Legend Upgrade 10 times, a Legend Level of 50 is required to unlock the next upgrade. As part of the Legend Levels, four new cosmetic outfits are added to the game. Legend Weapons can be obtained from Legend Chests, and new chests are unlocked once every level. Last but not least, after reaching level 50, you start earning silver chests for every level you get, which contain old and new weapons.

What I hated the most about Dying Light 2 Stay Human

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed playing the game, and even starting from the beginning to play the whole NG+ was fun and exciting, but it’s far from perfect. You see, while you can play a whole bunch of fan-made maps, get different story outcomes, and even play in a more intense mode after enabling the NG+, I kinda got tired of playing it.

Night missions are the worst (at a low level)

Night missions are also extremely difficult, and good luck trying to kill a Volatile. Those things are REALLY hard to kill, even after NG+ and even after purchasing a whole set of skins, weapons, and armor, I kept dying literally every time a Volatile saw me and started chasing me, and I had no chance of killing it, so running was the only option – and that with a bit of luck. You can also consider alternative paths and stealth approaches, but those won’t work every time.

So here’s the thing; You’ll need to upgrade your armour and skills as much as possible, and make sure that your damage resistance is at least 40% if you want to kill Volatiles and every other zombie with ease. You can check your character’s stats by opening the inventory and pressing the button Z. That means playing for hours without being able to kill Volatiles and other harder zombies, so finding “cheat” ideas such as killing them in front of the Bazzard where blue lights protect you is probably the easiest way to level up faster.

Dying Light’s extremely irritatingly challenges

Then again, what I hated the most were the challenges. Some of the challenges are extremely difficult to complete, even for fans like me who played over 100 hours. It took me 12 times and I still haven’t completed one of the challenges.

I mean, I do like having something difficult to complete, but if takes 12 times and I still haven’t figured out how to complete it, it’s getting me bored and mad, and I hate when I get mad from a game that I started playing so I could actually have some fun.

Simply put; I am almost 30 years old, and I don’t even have the time to get mad, let alone spend my few minutes of free time getting mad from a game. No, thank you! So I stopped doing challenges, even if a whole bunch of hardcore players would disagree with me.

Small annoying things in Dying Light 2

There are many little things that make Dying Light 2 a great game, but there are also some annoying ones that sometimes I wonder why they haven’t been fixed.

For example, one of the most annoying things in Dying Light 2 is Aiden constantly being grabbed by zombies. If you try to past a few zombies or jump higher using your skill, most of the time zombies will just grab you and you’ll be unable to finish your skill or get past them. It happens so often, that sometimes you don’t see the zombie even moving, but somehow they’re grabbing you (and yes, I can confirm that using the Photo Mode feature that is provided in the game).

Then there are those items that you just can’t pick up from the ground, the library, or whenever they are. It doesn’t happen as often as, let’s say, zombies, grabbing you like you know nothing about parkour – but there were many times I couldn’t take an item because it was bugged. The same issue also seems to exist in community maps, sometimes making the player unable to proceed.

Nothing compares to the start of the game

When the game’s dialog ends and you start playing Aiden for the first time, you find yourself in a beautiful place full of trees and leaves, with amazing lighting and an atmosphere that makes your whole body shiver. Once you go ahead you meet Strike, and a powerful connection between the two players starts the game with such an interesting first scene.

Speaking with Strike, looking for clues, and listening to their dialog instantly makes you wanna clear your whole day’s schedule – or maybe your whole week – and beat the whole main storyline. But that’s not the case after you enter the City, where everything’s different. The lighting is not the same, trees and leaves won’t much the same beautiful look with the terrain not being as densely overgrown as we see in the beginning.

Don’t expect to get a strong and interesting connection as you had in the beginning with Strike either, with other players you meet as you move ahead being less interesting. I do hope Techland is going to start making the graphics look more like the beginning of the game, but that’s just my personal preference.

Update (02/26/2024): Looks like Techland has provided some great improvements with the latest Firearms Update. There are many visual enhancements for all platforms, including last-gen consoles, and the company published a video example showing the differences before and after the latest improvements.

There are still many users reporting that the game still hasn’t received a proper HDR, and many new bugs have been introduced, such as while playing the Delta mission. And while I am not always into suits, I can’t help but agree with a commenter on X/Twitter that said, “But no fancy suits to look good in these super dope environments”, and I agree with him!

Everything you need to know about Dying Light 2 Co-Op Multiplayer Mode

Dying Light 2 was released on February 4, 2022, and almost two years later, it’s still full of bugs, glitches, and a Co-Op experience that is so bad, that it’s like spending your money for a game that it’s still in beta version. Yet, Techland hasn’t been addressing the real problems that their players are currently experiencing, including all the bugs around the visual effects.

Desync and Co-Op bugs

The biggest problem with Dying Light 2 Co-Op mode is Desync. If you’re not familiar with the term, simply put, desync is when your local game renders a player doing one thing, but the server has them doing another. For example, you’ll see a lot of weird bugs during Co-Op with other players, such as specific moves not being shown, zombies doing glitchy things, and stuff disappearing and reappearing.

Weird bugs such as broken bottles floating in the air, not being able to pick up specific items because they are stuck on the ground, and even zombies go crazy and start flying in the air, things can get pretty buggy while playing Dying Light 2. So yeah, Techland has a bit of work ahead if they want their players to have a better gameplay experience.

Unfortunately, while the game is somewhat playable, as I mentioned earlier, it feels more like a beta testing game rather than an actually stable game that you’ve purchased. New updates, challenges, content, or even community maps can’t save the Co-Op mode if it has so many glitches and bugs, and until desync is fixed, it’s just not worth playing with other players.

It’s not cross-platform

It’s 2024 and there are still lots of games that are not cross-platform, and that’s bad news. Cross-over games can connect players from different devices, including PC players playing with Xbox and PlayStation players in the same maps at the same time. That’s pretty neat because it loads all servers with activity and you can find online players and sessions more often.

Think about it; Dying Light 2 is a cross-platform game with no desync and glitches, having stable and smooth online gameplay. I’m not talking about just another zombie game but a whole digital world of opportunities and hundreds of available fan-made maps. Think about the number of new players it’s gonna get if it becomes a cross-over, open-world multiplayer zombie game that’s all about surviving with other players in the worst possible conditions.

There are no tutorials for Co-Op

I’ve never actually understood how the online gameplay is being played and what you have to do. I’ve never even understood most of the times how I ended up playing with other players while I was trying to complete the main storyline. I mean, what the heck am I supposed to do? Campaigns? Quests? Just have fun killing zombies? What is the purpose of the multiplayer and why no one online is explaining it a bit more?

I had to go and watch a whole bunch of videos on YouTube to finally understand how Co-Op was played, and I am amazed by this because Techland has a beautiful website, which should include tutorials and tips and tricks to help new players get started more easily.

How is Dying Light 2: Stay Human in comparison with the original game?

The original title was very different from what we see in Dying Light 2: Stay Human. Things have changed dramatically, from the graphics, zombies, and combat moves to killing zombies, playing online, and completing missions. There’s tons of new stuff, and you can even get your hands on the new – and pretty bad – grabbing hook or fly using a Paraglider, both of which you can upgrade in-game by visiting any Craftmaster NPC.

During the mission called “A Place To Call Home,” you’ll receive the Paraglider from Lawan. Lawan hands it to you and asks you to follow her across Villedor’s buildings. Unlike other Nightrunner tools, such as the Grappling Hook and UV Flashlight, you won’t need to equip the Paraglider in your inventory. Simply jump from a higher vantage point and press the Z key to activate it. You can also use air vents found on buildings or the ground. If you’re already gliding with the Paraglider, flying past air vents will push you higher into the air.

Unlike the original game, in Dying Light 2, you cannot own, drive, or upgrade a car. But you fly! You’re not playing Crane anymore, but Aiden Caldwell, and you’re not on Harran, but in a city called City. You’re now 20 years after what happened to the original title after all, and things are looking pretty different.

The City is also four times larger than the one in the first installment, so prepare for an expansive exploration and diverse environments within this beautiful urban landscape which keeps changing based on the decisions that you make.

Both titles give you the same feeling when you play but with a very different experience. I liked both a lot, but I liked the original Dying Light more than the second and newest title. Maybe it was the story, the landscape, the expansion that came after, or even playing during the night, but even if it was four times smaller than the second installment, the original title is still my top choice.

What I liked most with Dying Light 2 though was probably the parkour and all the different ways you could find to climb tall buildings. For example, there’s the VNC Tower, which is the tallest building in Dying Light 2, and you’ll have to climb to the roof if you want to see the challenges and “secrets” that it holds. The VNC Tower is a significant location in the game, and climbing it can provide valuable information, side quests, and encounters. You may also want to watch a few YouTube videos before spending your whole day finding a way to climb up there.

Nonetheless, both titles provide a fun experience, and if you liked the game from the trailers, you’re probably going to love the gameplay in both the original and second installment. Apart from the bugs that exist to this day, the campaign is worth buying the game for, but don’t expect to play more than 70 to 80 hours, and that’s completing everything the game has to offer.

Dying Light 2: Stay Human Review 2024 | Pros & Cons

Dying Light 2: Is it Worth Buying in 2024? An Honest Review!

With over 100 hours of gameplay, finishing the storyline two times, completing the NG+, and playing Co-Op with other players, here's everything you need to know about Dying Light 2: Stay Human in 2024.

Price: 59,99

Price Currency: EUR

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Game

Editor's Rating:
4.6

Pros

• The main story is pretty great and decisions impact the story and how the city looks.
• There are many side-quests that you can complete that add more time to your gameplay. Some of them are pretty enjoyable and fun.
• There are many available armor and weapon skins that are fun when playing online with other players.
• You can enable the New Game Plus (NG+) to play the game once again, get your rank up faster, discover more content, and enjoy the story by making different decisions.
• Techland is entertaining its players with new updates, events, weapons, gear, mystery boxes, and more.
• The parkour platforming is incredibly fun and fluid.
• The graphics are breathtaking.
• You can customize or craft weapons, upgrade your skills, and choose factions.

Cons

• Co-Op is full of bugs, and glitches, including desync issues.
• The story is bland and forgettable, as the characters are uninteresting and the choices are inconsequential.
• The game has [overall] some technical issues, such as bugs, glitches, and performance drops.

FAQs

Bonus: Dying Light 2 4K Wallpapers by TechWise Insider

You’ve made it this far, so I wanted to share a few beautiful pictures that I took using my ultrawide 4K screen and the Dying Light 2 screenshot tool that is provided inside the game. You can use those pictures as your desktop wallpaper.

Have you ever played Dying Light 2?

My personal experience with both Dying Light games gave me exactly what I needed; A good way to spend some of my free nights and enjoy a cold beer by playing a favorite game, having fun, killing zombies, and maybe trying to figure out how the online gameplay is being played. I increased a bit my headphone’s volume, and my 34-inch widescreen 4K is ready to work at its fullest using all 144Hz that it has to offer, and everything’s just perfect.

For the time being, I went back and installed the original Dying Light, which I intend to complete its whole story again from the beginning, just for the fun of it. After that, I may come back to the second installment and see if I can beat the challenge and move on with the game.

Did you have the chance to play any of the two titles? If so, what did you like and hate the most on both the Dying Light and Dying Light 2? I’d love to hear all about your experience and personal taste in gaming in the comments section at the end of this review.