After 11 years of waiting for this game to come to Steam, I can finally share my thoughts...Was it worth the wait? In short, no. No, it wasn't. But I still enjoyed my time tearing through zombies, nonetheless! The gameplay is a lot of fun with plenty of action and gore! I'm still not sure how I feel about having supernatural abilities in a Dead Island game, but it did make for some exciting and overpowered zombie slaying :)

As far as the story goes, I felt that it left much to be desired. For most of the game, the story just seemed okay — definitely different from the first game, but not bad. However, the end felt rushed and incomplete...it left a lot of loose ends, possibly setting things up for a future expansion or "Dead Island 3" (I really hope it isn't the latter). Personally, I found the ending to be very anticlimactic, which is a shame because it was fine up until that point.

There are also a few more side missions that only unlock after you complete the main story. I don't know why the devs decided to do this, as it just feels unnecessary and out of place — they should've been available before the final cutscene, which would've made a lot more sense, in my opinion.

If you're really just looking to kill some zombies and the story matters very little, you'll have fun with this!

seems ok., a lot seem to join and run off.. not waiting for a new player to look around..
i joined the steam deadisland2 group but so far no one.. so again a new game welll really recently new and not many to play with.. oof.
8/10 [less weapon drops losses like di1]

Having Dead Island and the mediocre sequel played back then made me (and the Epic exclusivity) utterly disinterested into the game. There is a huge shift in tone. Not only is the game more like Borderlands humour, it does not even have anything to do with the main game. Its called dead island and its set in LA?. But then I bought the game on a sale due to co-op games being a rare breed out there.

Gameplay
The main difference is the complete revamp of the leveling system. Your characters level up but generally your character gets stronger from picking up and unlocking skill cards that change your special attack, give you a block or dodge, add modifications to your block or dodge, or add various requirements to receive fury. With that you can have a special attack mode like the previous games, but this time its the same for every character.
I don’t really like the cards system. It feels like how they are streamlining many older RPG games. It works fine, but as soon as I had a card, I liked I rarely changed it around. This does not give me a meaningful choice.

On the other hand, the combat is vastly improved due to the available dodge and block, various hard and soft attacks make for different animations and combat flow. The biggest difference is the change of environmental attacks as there are multiple different enemies, some immune or resistant to types of damage. If they are immune you have to completely change the weapon type which otherwise made a really neat system almost annoying. As it was easier for me just to increase the force damage, which only the specials are resistant against, balancing this out a bit but not really.

If you plan in coop, beware. Most player have the problem that is absolutely lags. I dont know if its due to epic integration or whatnot. Frankly I dont have to try to look for fixes in a game that is already out for so long. Apparently limiting FPS might help but it did not help with my coop partner thus one player always glitching around and lagging as if they have 150+ ping.

The physics are interesting as it can create situations that you shoot a hydrant, this creates a water pool and snuffs out burning zombies whom take now much more damage via electric weapons. This was one of the unique things and redeeming factor of the game for me. I liked this unique aspect and the only game that pulled it off even better was divinity original sin.

Story
In all regards the story, compared to the first game is much better. The setting is not. Unless you prefer the city of LA, although the title is much misleading. The only connection is a single character from the first game, Sam B who is not recognizeable. He has a completely different personality. The whole game has. Instead of going more into the horror it goes into the direction of borderlands, but never as cringe as Borderlands 3. The ending is very sudden (around 16 hours doing all side quests), trying to lead up to DLC, therefore the worst kind of practice.

Sound
A highly diverse OST. Seriously, from pop music to synthwave tracks you have a lot. Sadly the other parts aren’t great. Voice acting of the protagonist and most of the main characters is totally decent, but the rest isn’t. Also there is a common bug that indoors the sound effects sound like someone having their mic open and using speakers. Bad

Graphics
Stunning. Not only the effects but also animations and artstyle. There are so many gore effects that look utterly amazing which truly mesmerized me. I usually dont really care about these facts unless something really stands out, which this game did.

Conclusion/TL;DR
Dead Island 2 name does not fit the game. Unlike riptide it clearly feels like a different game and offers many improvements, but equally as many systems are gone. No cars, no leveling system aside cards, throwing weapons being basically gone, not even playing on an island. If you like this type of coop game and already played through other ones this one isn’t bad. But its definitely not an overall improvement as the 2 in the name suggests. The awesome gore, still very fun combat with some improvements like dodging makes me recommend this game anyways due to the game still being fun but i would recommend to play the original or dying light first.