Review #924: Darksiders II - Deathinitive Edition(Switch)

  No rest for the wicked...or the dead.

 Well, my feelings on Darksiders II - Deathinitive Edition are pretty much exactly the same as they were back when I first played the original release on PS3... but with a few caveats.

 In short, Darksiders is now an action RPG, there's loot, equipment, level ups, skillpoints the whole nine yards. You even get sidequests if you are interested... or if you care about them, because just like it was in the original release, there are no hints or marking leading you towards your side-quests, so good luck finding them.

 This time around I was able to better appreciate the puzzles in the game, the Split ability sounds super basic, since it basically splits Death in two, but they found some rather clever uses for this ability. They reused a few Portal puzzles from the first game, but they also increased the complexity of some of them, which was pretty neat.

 While I can dig the genre shift, I think this game's setting isn't as good as Darksider's one post apocalyptic one. You spend too long on the first two areas of the game, which are very mystical in appearance, full of green and white tones and... I found them kinda boring. You visit small pieces of the Angel and Demon worlds later on, but by then it's a little bit too late to add more variety. On the other hand, I like how they expanded on the world of Darksiders, and Death is a pretty cool character and seeing the lengths he'd go to save his brother was nothing short of endearing.

 This game includes all three DLC campaigns, they are slowly unlocked as you defeat major bosses, and you can play them from the main menu as their own, stand-alone, thingies. I won't lie, these campaigns are mediocre at best, featuring next to no story, but a small slew of puzzles as well as new enemies and environments. They add nothing to the game, but having the complete package is nice.

 And here's when it gets ugly... Darksiders 1 on the Switch was a brilliant port of a brilliant game, this port, however, feels pretty sloppy. There's no quality/performance toggle, which was a bit disappointing, and the framerate is locked at 30 with some dips... and the game, at least on handheld mode, can look downright blurry at times. And don't even let me get started on the few crashes I endured, as well as many soft-locks in the Earth chapter, but these were fixed by going back into the Switch's dashboard and continuing the game. There's also a very pervasive audio glitch, which makes most cutscenes play with the music and voice overs intact, but missing sounds, which is completely baffling.

 All in all, an acceptable port of a great game. It's a bit disappointing that this port wasn't as good as the one DS 1 got, but hey, the game is playable and it's still a really good one.

 8.0