Howdy guys, after centuries of writing articles about DayZ, I can finally write a review about Dishonored 2 made by Arkane Studios - you can play as a cunning assassin who avoids his enemies, thus avoiding kills(and perhaps getting a good ending), or as a psychopathic, magic-wielding madman who has no empathy for the numerous people he slays.
Dishonored 2 sold around 2.5 million copies on all platforms(460,000 units in the first week), although to some these statistics might seem average, it did produce profit for its developers and plenty of fun for geeks like me. I’ll be judging Dishonored 2 by the following points:
- Story
- Gameplay
- Combat
- Mission System
- Graphics
- Price
- Development
Let’s begin with the story of Dishonored 2:
Delilah Copperspoon looks like an actual spoon.
The story takes place in 1853, 15 years after Corvo was framed as an assassin for the murder of Emily Kaldwin’s mother. Unfortunately, for Corvo and Emily, an unexpected visitor shows up at the anniversary of Jessamine Kaldwin’s assassination - the half-sister of Jessamine Kaldwin. Now, this is not some loving family reunion, the reason for her visit is to take over the throne of Emily Kaldwin.
As you can figure out, this is not going to end well for poor Corvo and Emily, one of ‘em depending on who you choose will get “stoned” and one of ‘em, will go on a brutal killing spree, it’s all up to you. This is only the beginning and I don’t want to spoil the rest of the game for you. But what do I think of this game’s plot? Well, to be honest, I am rarely interested in storylines of video games, but I have to say that it’s not too different from the first part of Dishonored - everything is happening quickly, you are betrayed, and this time you have to attempt to rescue Emily or Corvo - it just sounds like something that I’ve done before.
Emily has been the ruler for the past 15 years, bringing Dunwall towards prosperity and peace, and just in the span of what, 5 minutes, some random chick pops out of nowhere, pwns both Corvo and Emily, retakes her throne and everyone in Dunwall is like “lol ok” - it just seems weird, like the story writers quickly pooped out some random ideas for a storyline. As I was advancing in the storyline the less time I was paying attention to it - perhaps the characters are not as interesting as in the first part of Dishonored(Granny Rags, Lady Boyles, Slackjaw, Pendleton Twins, etc) - they just simply appeared more memorable to me. Or maybe like I said before, I’m a troglodyte who only fancies violence in video games and not much else!
The Gameplay:
Yikes!
Dishonored 2 is one of those games where you cut through your enemies like through butter. The gameplay offers plenty of hiding spots where you can set up ambushes or just sneak past enemies. And god almighty, the gore - it’s quite most satisfying to run up to someone and elegantly deprive them of their heads. You can do plenty of damage to a human body in Dishonored 2, dismemberment will be quite a constant occurrence, sometimes even slicing people in half or even feeding them to rats.
You get to play as Emily or Corvo, both are fun and unique in their own way, you get a long list of powers that you can adjust to your liking - they allow you to kill your opponents in many creative, sadistic ways. If you enjoyed Dishonored 1, you’ll surely love Dishonored 2 for its smoothness, gore, and creativity when it comes to slaughtering people. Although I consider side characters in this game to be a little less interesting than in its predecessor, it doesn’t stop me from exploring the gorgeous steampunky Victorian architecture of Dunwall - it looks so awesome!
The combat:
Sleep well.
Combat in Dishonored 2 is optional - you can finish this game as a pacifist, without killing anyone for the most part. But of course, who would find that fun, sneaking past folk when you can brutally decapitate them or slice them in half like a tomato.
Sneaking behind a target and pressing LMB will allow a quick execution, you could also be a bit more ballsy and confront them upfront - here you can just mash LMB and slice him to death, or do a pro gamer move and block your opponents strike with CTRL(default block button) and proceed to pull off an assassination animation - there are many of ‘em, and special characters get their special death animations!
It’s also worth mentioning that the combat feels smooth, your sword feels like you’re cutting through mayonnaise. To your advantage, you can also use tables, roofs, and niches to assassinate your enemies or get past them. And there are also the powers - there’s an enormous list of them, some of them were transferred from Dishonored 1 to Dishonored 2, some of them are new, my favorites being:
The good old Blink(I tried Far Reach, didn’t like it </3),
Domino(lets you link opponents together and kill them at the same time)
Possession(You can attach goddamn spring traps to rats and use them as mobile bombs!).
Animations and sounds are awesome - it’s always satisfying for me to hear a successful block of your sword, or triggering an animation that ends up gruesomely killing your enemy. 1 thing that kinda rustles my jimmies are the impact sounds of falling corpses from above. It just sounds like someone dropped a bag of potatoes. Anyways, that’s all for combat!
Mission System:
Your objective will be shown on your screen and the distance to it as well. You can also choose a mission to replay after finishing the game. It’s linear, with some random side quests appearing here and there. Pretty much yeah, not much has changed since the first part of Dishonored.
Graphics:
Deja vu, I’ve just been in this place before!
Graphics. A lot of people might disagree with me, they look average at best. They are lackluster and low-resolution textures are common, the characters also look like they were made from Play-Doh - a good redeemer here are the buildings that were clearly inspired from the Victorian era, both interior and exterior.
I personally didn’t have any issues running the game, but other players might have a different opinion about that, there were complaints of low/average frames per second and FPS lag spikes in certain areas of the map.
So in summary: graphics poo-poo. Style and art design is okie-dokie!
Developers of Dishonored 2:
Dishonored 2 was developed by Arkane Studios, released by Bethesda Softworks. I remember this game being buggy at the beginning of its release back in 2016, but does the game run smoothly now? Well, it was patched many times and now, as of 2021, I can tell you with full confidence that this game runs perfectly fine. I didn’t encounter any game-breaking bugs, only some odd ones where I noclipped through a wall and fell to my death, or when a decapitated head decided to skyrocket into the air and never come back. Good times.
The price of Dishonored 2:
Currently, there’s a summer sale going on Steam - currently, Dishonored 2 is around 13$. If you’re not a huge fan of PC, you can also get this game on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. I don’t know how the hell you can play this game on a console though, you’ll run out of buttons to mash!
This is not a pay-to-win video game, it doesn’t have a multiplayer and solely offers a single-player campaign with no in-game purchases. Although the idea of multiplayer being implemented in the next part of Dishonored sounds awesome and fun!
Summary:
I fell in love with Dishonored 2. Sure, this game didn’t sell extremely well, people were frustrated with bugs and poor optimization, perhaps even the storyline. But for god’s sake, this game’s Victorian-themed architecture and general art design, mixing it with its top-notch combat system and the huge array of powers, makes it one of the most unique and incredible games I have laid my hands upon. It has multiple endings, depending on the choices you make and the replayability of this game is simply off the charts. You could play this game 20 times, and not get bored.
Let’s finish this article with some bullet points and a final verdict.
Pros:
- Unique combat
- A long list of powers from the previous game and new ones
- Gorgeous Victorian-themed architecture and style
- Multiple paths to explore
- Decent stealth system
- Multiple endings
And the cons:
- Boring storyline
- Poor graphics
- Used to be a pretty bugged game before getting bombarded with patches
And that’s pretty much it. I can’t think of any other pros or cons and I’m left with nothing to give, but a final verdict:
8/10
-2 points for the Play-Doh graphics and the meh storyline. I wanted to give it a 7 for how the game used to be back in 2016, but let’s keep the past in the past. I just simply love this game too much. And yeah, I think that’s all for today, folks. I love you and I hope you enjoyed this review. Ciao!
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