The Surge is an underrated game that just didn’t click with the audience as much as other games of the genre. There has been a lot of criticism regarding the game’s difficulty and mechanics, and the developers have put in quite a lot of effort to make The Surge 2 a worthy successor Deck 13 and Focus Home Interactive are back at it again with another attempt with the franchise, and we are happy to report that they succeeded.
What The Surge 2 Gets Right
The original title released in 2017 and it did have solid gameplay elements, but it lacked a bit of personality. It felt like a slower-paced version of Dark Souls, and the game worlds just didn’t have enough to do in them. The narrative was all over the place, but one thing we could agree on is that the original title had promise. The Surge 2 [official link] is a big step up over its predecessor with a solid narrative and gameplay.
The Surge 2’s new game world is set in Jericho City, and the locale seems quite impressive. Everything feels structured instead of letting you figure out where you need to go. There are shortcuts to every location in the game in case you do not want to spend hours walking across the whole game world.
If you have played the previous title, you will instantly see how vibrant the game world is with its neon lighting. The game is extremely immersive, and the background audio sets the mood for the whole adventure. The Surge 2 brings back a lot of classic RPG mechanics and unlike generic open-world games with no substance, working towards levelling up your character does not feel like a chore. One of the best things about The Surge 2 that needs to be highlighted is the inclusion of a New Game+. You get to replay most areas in the game at a higher difficulty level if you are looking for a challenge.
Coming to the most important aspect of the game, the gameplay is a big step up in The Surge 2 over what we had in the previous title. Blocking has been drastically improved, and it takes quite a bit of skill to get perfect blocks off instead of just holding down a button. The energy system is a lot easier to manage. In the first title, we spent half the time looking at our energy bar and fights felt much slower than they should.
The gear system is a lot better now too as you can use any piece of gear instantly. You do not have to wait for your weapon skills to unlock to be able to use them. It makes the grind of working towards new gear a lot more fun that what we experienced in 2017. Overall, The Surge 2 is worth playing, and it is one of the better titles of 2019 so far. We can’t wait to try out all the new gear you can collect in New Game+ and max out all of our skills and take on the bad guys.
Our Score: 8/10
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