Darksiders 2: A Critique, Journey and Understanding

Darksiders - is passion in a bottle the result of freedom granted by the success of the first game the teamwork of Caring developers and their boundless creativity - it's one of my favorite games and certainly one of the most underrated games of the seventh generation well now I'm gonna try and give it a spotlight in this video I'll go through the game from beginning to end talking about everything from trivia to design to development and I'll try my best to make it as interesting and engaging as possible along the way for the benefit of the game the series the people who worked on it anyone curious and anyone wondering what it's all about after Darksiders 3 make sure you're comfortable and then we'll begin this game is set to be a journey from the very first in-game seen death riding through an unknown landscape dust flying ahead scouting the horizon we don't know why we're here death clearly does and that's something to keep in mind most fantasy settings wouldn't open with the daunting icy castle in arm's reach but we'll soon see that this is not most fantasy settings where no honourable human warrior we are the figure of mortality drawn by genius artist Joe Madureira this might be the most creative visualization of death I've ever seen forgoing the classic hooded skeleton we see a bare-chested cold-blooded Hulk wrapped in leather and armored in metal his body shaped in such a way to almost streamline him as if he were a wild animal his head covered in dark hair meant to represent the hood and his face hidden by this shiver inducing mask which by now is a gaming icon the eye sockets are actually inclined was the nose and there are cracks above the replicator frown giving him a serious angry expression at all times a brilliant way to a motor mask character death sauce despair is unlike Gruen in that he's available from the start this is vigil trying to characterize death as a horseman a site of war we did not get to see until very far in what debt has ahead of him is a remarkably effective tutorial and we start with combat here noir before Darksiders combat is not unlike the original god of wars your attacks are primarily rooted in combos where a series of busts and taps and pauses have required to access everyone death does not block or parry he's only got one defensive ability over the course of the entire game Joe mad said death does not wait for things to happen he causes them to happen which led to this more aggressive style of play even the dodgy rely on to avoid damage will mostly be used to transition into an attack of your own but for now we've only got two combos the flashy or one that requires a pause does about 20% more damage neither of them are specialized so you're only expected to consider timing unlike the first game Darksiders 2 has a loot system it's simply a matter of equipping gear with the best stats for your build but currently that just means strength and defense it's most enticing draw is visual variation and yeah we're just going from one tired old rag to another but we're only 5 minutes in and death can make anything from a torn up bit of leather to angelic armor look good that's the first of many compliments to vigils our team next on our list of all new mechanics is parkour and first we're taught to wall run but not every aspect of gameplay can be tutorial eyes so outwardly there's a frozen skeleton on our left and if you attack you'll open up a path that leads right to a chest a simple but highly effective way to get it in the players head that they'll be rewarded for exploring it's impressive how quickly in densely they managed to introduce you to every element of Darksiders it's also no surprise this level was rebuilt over five times during development as the art team came up with different ways of showing off all the fancy snow effects further parkour mechanics get piled on such as death's ability to climb columns of wood and jump off them you also get the return of climbing along vines which takes you straight into the first boss the mechanics of the ice giant are nothing interesting this seems more mentor tutorial eyes the lock-on targeting I think it's unfortunate how many people ended up ruining the game for themselves all because they got obsessed with it in group fights your awareness is greatly restricted making it harder to avoid damage and to pull off combos it seems clear to me that lock ons are only meant for 1/v ones like right here so I was confused when I saw people trying to do it so much in groups but I think it's an attitude that carries over from character action games not so much Zelda or even the first game you can't blame the player for not being used to other systems and you can't blame the game for not knowing what other games the player likes but it would have been nice to see more reinforcement that this is solely for 1v1 especially in the definitive edition by the end of this boss you've probably had a secondary weapon drop this is where the combat gets a lot more deep you have combos for each individual weapons sizes and secondary but also for mixing the two assuming you've got a heavy secondary the crossover combo still have the side components be quick to land and the secondary components be slow so you're using the weapons for the same function even with the crossover combos secondary weapons take longer to hit so you use it on enemies who are further back a much quicker and he used on closer enemies if the enemies already begun their attack you dodge that's the essence of Darksiders two's combat and it shouldn't be hard to get used to for anyone who's played the game with a big weapon and a small weapon before the crossovers reward longer combos by having the latest attacks be the strongest and make the changing from one weapon to another look and feel as good as possible the ferocity and precision of the animations the touches of slow-mo upon impact all characterize combat around Death himself aggressive fast precise confident something to Revere it feels fantastic I think having death as the main character would have got people interested even if this game was worse than its predecessor vigil were routinely asked why they went with war the first time so it was in the back of their minds that a sequel would involve death they described this as madness they had spent so long working on the way war would fail to play that for a sequel it would have made sense to build on what they had but they also wanted to have a character that would allow for a completely different play style if you watch any of the interviews on the game you mentoree the answer vigil provides too many of the questions is because it's called amusingly there seems to be some confusion about what number death is in Darksiders he sometimes referred to as the first horseman because he's the eldest and the leader but also as the second horseman because his game came after war yet in the Bible death is the fourth horseman well at least fury is consistently the third horseman because it's cool is probably also the explanation for this keeper of Secrets I need your help I helped you once before Osman look at me now you I know why you've come your brother the one called war he's been imprisoned by that hard Council and awaits their judgement for tuning the earth for mankind's extinction my secrets cannot prove his innocence horseman no but that can help me to erase the crime bring mankind back from extinction if its badness who better to show me the way should away exist you will find it here not yet that what you gave me you will take it back current your narrator the flesh why do you guard their souls open the portal you will not pass while I live so read this is the first time you hear death speak and the reveal that this madman you've been chasing is the same person who narrated the intro now we know what death did to his people that he didn't finish them off and that the crow father though the only one who can help hates death for what the amulets done to him hates him enough to pit him against his own brother death versus war a perfect way of showing deaths power and grabbing the attention of those who've played the previous game was individual attacks hit with enough force to send you flying backward a sequences of relentless until he comes down with a sword spike attack which gives you a window for damage the fight is by no means complex with walls one attack sequence and you're extremely limited methods of dealing damage but it doesn't have to be you can feel the power of every blow you're invested in the moment thanks to who it is and the music hammers home that sense of all this final cut away that has the brothers cross blades is a magnificent scene because we don't know who won and this early end we don't have any expectations [Music] [Music] the crow father dies and his secrets with him having woken up from your teleportation death phases elder I Dodd I dad's the leader of a group of dead men walking he tells death that this beautiful place he found yourself in is dying and corrupted that his people are on the brink and that the tree of life is soon to follow this doesn't concern death but I doubt explains how the path to the Tree of Life might be clear nonetheless I get the impression that as the leader his powerlessness against corruption makes him view death as an opportunity for redemption death might not have an interest yet but it seems corruption has an interest in him the corrupted constructs are the first basic enemy you've met who couldn't be stun locked into pieces it takes you off your power trip and lends credence to the deadliness of corruption this is also the point at which almost every player will make the most important decision of their playthrough there are two scale trees in Darksiders two Harbinger and necromancer strength versus magic melee versus ranged or more accurately very male versus slightly less male harbinger gives you access to the most aggressive attack in the game teleport slash there has you blast through your enemy and often then into a group necromancer those stays your hand the first ability is exhumed that raises ghouls from the ground to fight for you it's a distraction which means it's also a defense the choice you make care is dependent on what you'd like about death do you like sites or the idea of magically controlling mortality maybe you like both you're not locked off by choosing a path so some players will choose to go for a hybrid belt which is far more versatile with both minions and personal abilities every build in the game works there's as many advantages as there are disadvantages to choosing one will be following multiple playthroughs in this video but we'll be focusing on a Harbinger I personally prefer the more aggressive abilities and without sorted we can emerge into the Tri Stone the Tri Stone is what a hub for an adventure game should be simple to understand easy to navigate and beautiful enough to make the player want to protect it like Skyloft in Skyward Sword it has those aspects nailed and it constantly reminds you of your destination The Tree of Life towering in the sky it also does something for replayability that most games would never have thought of this is Thane the makers last warrior and he's available to fight at any time you want I always enjoy challenging myself to do it as soon as I arrive in the tri stone it's a fun little measure of someone's experience with the game feigns health doesn't level with you so only a couple dungeons in you'll be able to wipe the floor with him but it's actually scientifically proven that the leanness with which you beat Thane is directly proportional to the size of your physical or metaphorical deck alia valise and Miriah are the only ones left at the try stone they're most of the few left alive makers supposedly created the steps of heaven and the spires of hell yet here they are in stone huts working on a tiny anvil as their forges inaccessible it's a contrast that makes me feel sorry for them driven to bargaining they ask for your help restoring their Forge if you want there's glowing the path to the Tree of Life the makers Forge requires the fire of the mountain to awaken the stone and the stone father's tears to calm it but the cauldron and the drench fort are lost to corruption giving us our task help the maker's Thane warns death that if they were friends he'd never let him pass still salty huh but it's a great way of making us understand that door is to keep the makers safe from what lurks behind it I imagine this monster is a reference to the Lord of the Rings there are always eyes on you funnily enough you can skip the entire Forge lines by using a glitch to jump over it the more open realms in Darksiders 2 is a result of vigils pursuit of freeform exploration these areas provide that with their endless nooks literally and crannies they also amplify the sense of being a horseman going on this great journey it feels so much more like an adventure when you're riding through icy fjords and child passes on horseback the most feared and powerful being for miles but with increased scale also increases the sense of mystery we don't know the secrets of these lands that up to us to learn about through the story or exploration on earth we do a building is just a building to a normal player we don't question what secrets are held within I also imagine the art team wanted to draw something that wasn't a post-apocalyptic city jo mod was responsible for death and some of the characters but he took a directorial role for the rest including the environments it's incredible how well the team adapted Mad style but the difference between the art and the result in some cases is quite staggering the forged lands in these pictures look like a Nordic envisioning of old Bretton with the darker green on the grass and the permanent overcast it's amazing just how much darker clouds and whiter light would have changed the atmosphere of the forged lands it's also amazing how quick the game takes us out of an open landscape and into this claustrophobic pass home to the weeping crag and vulgrim returning from the first game vulgrim once again offers the rarest wares money can buy loot boxes before greedy publishers are exchanged for boatmen coins you can respect for 1000 gilt and you can buy a bone key if you completed chapter of the book of the dead the pages are scattered throughout the dungeons of the game one of which is right in front of us the weeping crag is the first onion you'll find in the game not the cauldron the grabbable edge being a clear sign that it leads to something more the crag itself is a densely built mini dungeon complete with the helping of chess the first example of the skeleton key mechanic a combat challenge and a little secret if you break all the boxes this I suppose is the equivalent of cutting grass in Zelda you'll be rewarded with potions collectibles and sometimes secrets if you can smash every destructible in a given area it's really addicting one of the best little details here is that if you find the secret the area you drop down to you as a slightly broken ledge that just about allows you sight of one of the game's first boatman coins players who get the secret which I think is most will have their curiosity rewarded with even more things to be curious about it's smarter still that the only way to get down is into this pool I believe the function of the weeping crack is to entice players to begin exploring the overworld for secret areas like it in Bane's would immediately after the lesson tries to become the exam there are multiple stone BOTS who can't access here and error is the require items such as the death grip exploration savvy players might find themselves put off when many of the things they come across are inaccessible while I appreciate that this encourages multiple runs through the forged lands if there was any time to double down on putting inaccessible puzzles in an area now when positive exploration should be encouraged was not it some might simply decide to leave it for later and later might never come I'd say the perfect violence here is having places with at least one accessible chests and others to come back for whenever you're able to access them which for the most part is struck as we ride on into the child pass let's just pretend to not see that lava texture holy hell Kahn is first met at the entrance to the cauldron it's been said the best bonds are forged in the most intense situations and if this fight went on for more than 30 seconds I think it would be a better example of that still deaths relationship with Kahn is one of the most memorable in the game he's the youngest of the makers and wanted to be a hero by restoring the fire himself but he wasn't able to make it any further into the cauldron death meets Kahn's apparent incompetence with clear bitterness at first see if you're headed in there you main doing something for me yes I mind aren't I doing enough already perhaps it seems to me you're doing right enough for yourself our benefit being a fortunate side-effect well if it ain't much trouble eh I left an old metal platter in there the image of two hammers sprayed in the center not much to look at but it was my journeyman piece last thing I ever forged dish you want me to bring you a dish this begins the lost-and-found site quest which was originally only available if you had the death rides DLC most people did and now it would be difficult to find a version of the game without it we accept and journey into the cauldron so what actually makes a good dungeon a good dungeon for the sake of variety will pace up the pillars of gameplay in this case combat traversal and puzzles in the same amount you go up against challenging encounters you should solve complex puzzles many dungeons will have all three in the same room but relying on that without having extremes will get boring here in the cauldrons first room there are two chests on the far end one open one embedded in corruption so clearly something can break it the shadow bomb to the right of the room can push this switch as the game tells you so it must be able to break the crystals to that's how some clever placement can teach you a mechanic that you'll use for the rest of the entire game the cauldron is the first time that the game forces the player to use the skeleton key mechanic it's no different from the way small Keys he used in the Legend of Zelda in that there's no real reason they need to exist the designers could have avoided locked doors by just putting whatever follows after the room you would have found the key in will come to see that the best dungeons regularly keep you engaged with goals finding a key to fit a door is one of them I also think the keys are a way of making dungeons feel more like places than linear sequences of rooms you could expect the cauldron where it not designed for a video game to have keys for doors in other rooms it reminds you that this is supposed to be a real area in the world and not just a railroad when you get a skeleton key it can be quite easy to get distracted and forget that you have it or where exactly you're supposed to put it but Darksiders 2 has an unmissable green symbol on your mini-map to remind you and that's on top of your personal clairvoyant spell dust on command he'll head in the correct direction you simply go as the crow in Zelda games not knowing where to go can be a frustration but I know many Zelda fans would be against having something like dust that's fair enough but I think dust serves the higher pace of Darksiders to perfectly well the skeleton key unlocks our first puzzle the parkour ledges are clearly shown but you don't have the reach to grab the first one there are symbols leading from the wall to the receptacle so it's clearly taught that the balls will affect your environment balls are like the cubes you'd see in other dungeon based games just better they're easy to control have a momentum system allowing you to judge how finally to push them they can be grabbed from any direction and you're able to forcefully push them forward large distances removing tedium from the bigger puzzles but puzzles are good because a they provide very effective respite from other forms of gameplay and B they make you interact with the world implying that this setting wasn't built solely for you and you are in something worthy of the title dungeon that's really the only thing that makes a dungeon more than just a level Darksiders to isn't very good at fulfilling reason B but puzzles are unquestionably some of the best content the game has to offer so what makes a good puzzle as the video goes on will answer that question in depth but for now let's look at the next one you'll use a shadow bomb to free a ball from corruption the first place you put this in will either be the closest receptacle or before the gate on the left side allowing you to access the second ball either way you need two balls in these two receptacles to open the gate but you've probably placed it in the closest one many puzzles trick the player by having supposedly easy parts that end up screwing them over in this case that'd be rolling the ball into this receptacle it's easy because we've done it before but when there ends up not helping or teaches us that something doesn't work it forces the player to reject this lesson and come up with something else designing a puzzle so players make false assumptions is a surefire way of getting them to think outside what they already know and that can be used to teach new mechanics or just make a good puzzle but that's not what Darksiders has done here how do you get the first ball back the game just tells you a shadow bomb will free the ball from its receptacle it's a shame after how well the game was able to show you how the bombs interact with corruption that they then resort to telling you with a picture in this instance mark brown spoke about false assumptions in his video and he also Illustrated some other things that make you dad puzzle including having every manipulable component be relevant and ensuring there's a clear goal like accessing this chest for example we no goal you end up aimlessly fumbling about with the components trying to figure out what you're supposed to be working towards puzzles should also know their position in the game and have their difficulty in relevant mechanics designed accordingly within a dungeon having puzzles that build off a central mechanic like the balls contributes to theming and allows for hard puzzles far in is everything you need to know has been taught by that same dungeon past the skeleton door we soon come across Kahn's platter I love that death says I found this for a reason as if he needs to convince himself of it the fast travel dungeon markers are also pitched here just before the boss the legitimacy of fast traveling out of a dungeon for supplies is debatable but I don't think it's difficult to have five health potions before a boss anyway fast travelling does not give you a guaranteed advantage in the boss fight unless you've already lost potions I also think it's fast travelling in any game is a bit of a hassle players will only be bothered to do it if they really want the extra potions in which case that's fine this isn't all that different from some ensigns a simple way to keep the difficulty on your own terms the boss in question is gone he's got one hell of an entrance but he's all bark just look at this arena look at him the first boss was more intimidating than this his main attack and the only one you need to worry about is a grindy punch that'll stun lock you into a considerable amount of damage the only way you'll get hit by this is greed he's also got an AoE explosion but I've not seen it on any of my playthroughs gone isn't relevant to anything we've done in the cauldron he only has one move which leads to doing the same things over and over and he's not visually impressive in the slightest as the first dungeon boss this was not a good impression to leave you get dark Avenger a very special legendary weapon for killing guard it's likely the best weapon you can get at this point but almost definitely overleveled I think it's a pretty smart introduction to the way weapons are leveled because after having seen the dark Avenger everyone's going to want to try and equip it with the cauldron cleared you turn the lever to raise the anchor on the lava flow I like that this is an active thing you do it's just kind of strange that you'd end up doing this entire dungeon when the platform we're on right now isn't all that elevated wouldn't death have just jumped this sets quite a precedent as we'll come to see following your triumphant exit you can return Karnes dish the contrast between the importance of our journey and the simplicity of finding a dish is very intentional as we make our way back to the Tri Stone the game again suggests you fast travel it clearly doesn't want you backtracking but I still find that fast travel is a compromise one that wasn't quite necessary here we went through bainsworth the crag and the charred past finding inaccessible areas so it would have made sense to have an item in the cauldron that changed that it's true that this is an early dungeon maybe you shouldn't pile so much on the player fine and have a loop round open up a route that leads to your next destination after you finish the cauldron I feel like the map should have been designed around the players route through it fast travel kills immersion and in this case it means if you didn't find everything on your first time through the areas leading up to the cauldron you're probably never going to having teleported back to the try stone we can inform earlier of our deed at the cauldron but she already knows yes by my hands once more meantime this belongs to my brother strife how came it here I cannot see but there are other a good Jimmy barter for now as well it's amazing how strife keeps losing his weapons Horsemen of the Apocalypse my ass if you're unfamiliar with Darksiders strife is like war and death one of the riders war and death of the only horseman who originated from the Bible Furion strife or vigils creations and you might like me wonder why I don't think it's all not complicated Darksiders is a video game series firstly if the horseman will be the protagonists how can you make the figures of hunger or disease compelling hero's death worked because there's nothing off-putting about killing the forces of evil with the sight how do you make disease intimidating or anything more than simply disgusting furthermore how do you make it into fun combat what's pestilence going to wield a used syringe it makes sense that strife would use pistols and you can certainly make firearms enjoyable compared to the quad barreled mercy strife lost on earth Redemption only has one barrel and where mercy had a fixed rate of fire redemption fires as fast as you can pull the trigger when your DPS is directly proportional to your effort it's satisfying to unload a cylinder into your target but having a gun isn't the power boost you'd expect Redemption is a situational weapon no unless you should be vastly stronger overall even just one dungeon in thane isn't so tough anymore if at any point you do get past him you'll access the biggest side quest in the game to hunt and kill the other Reapers beings who claim to be death you can also get a side quest from Miriah who Miriah she's the makers shaman who stands in this completely empty gazebo opposite alia the game doesn't even mention her existence until act 3 so you could be forgiven for not knowing she exists she offers a potent talisman if you can find three ingredients for her a promising premise Miriah will also give you the pauldron of the horsemen for talking to her witch back on the original version of the game she'd only do if you had a save game for Darksiders one things like this feel like a relic of the past now games simply don't bother anymore back into the stone father's veil we find Karn outside the path to the drench for death questions Kahn's inactivity it's odd how I often find you standing whether The Tree of Life horseman I'm trapped here just like you the fortunate few slip Duke before the T was lost like all Fame and who is all same he's just another maker that's a big hammer is all when he escaped I feared to follow and a good thing too and why is that well you might still be looking for the cold that if not for my courage and wit sure man this conversation highlights deaths impatience for laziness but also cons fear and it bridges a gap between the two games linking all Thane to the forged lands and corruption the path to the drench floor acts as a showcase for redemptions uses the first of which being its ability to activate shadow bombs from a distance allowing access to the shadow Gorge the stark change in color punctuates the higher degree of ruin along this path on it Redemption finds its second use a vast damage buff against small enemies such as these stingers one of its two situational combat utilities lastly we have stone bites in the fjord further ahead you will find black route a living construct who needs to be fed his people are on the brink of destruction but he sits here asking for food and he seems content enough with that this starts the stone bite quest collectables that sit hidden practically everywhere across the game you shoot them using Redemption and they will be drawn to you collect enough and you can feed black fruit for permanent stat boosts the other side quest you can progress here is getting one of the ingredients for the shamans talisman but it seems to mispredict where the players the first ingredient you get will be stalkers bone con says you can find these in the cauldron but this is a bad direction there's only one in the cauldron and you'll have already killed her unless he spoke to mirror before you went there there's also a stalker in the weeping crag and multiple in the Ford surely it would be better if kin told you where you can always find them worse you can't collect the other two ingredients without returning to carne each time the second ingredient is collected from stinger wasps which we just went past Cahn tells you to go to the drench fort to get them when there's about 20 less than a hundred meters away from him maybe this is intentional to show that cons a bit of a goofball but it doesn't seem that way when you consider that this quest forces you to talk to him every time you get an ingredient besides wouldn't someone as old as death be able to tell what mordant do is wouldn't he ask about all three ingredients at once instead of sequentially it's an awfully structured sidequest rapidly moving ahead we find something even stranger the fiord like Bane's bird in the charred past is filled with many secret areas to explore you can find vulgrim again a dead warden chests all over the place many of which require later items but the best of those is the chest in the lake a seemingly simple puzzle yet vigil have an outcropping on a sunken bridge that gives you the impression that you can make this jump you can't not without getting remarkably lucky another ridiculous way of getting up here is if you find this random summonable rock you can jump using the spare the real way is to shoot the bombs and then climb up this wall underwater this puzzles too full slides makes me feel like I'm being pranked either the troll factor is intentional or they made a series of hilariously coincidental mistakes regardless vigil should be proud of this back on track the drench water weights I think we can all agree that a good dungeon is themed appropriately for the setting but also differently enough from other dungeons in the recent past water lava so that's about right good dungeons will also vary their design the cauldron is fairly linear with branching paths the drench fort is a hub with three major offshoots and because of that the drench vault is far more open than the cauldron with the main room being the center point that you repeatedly return to and the way you Traverse there changing every time the first puzzle room is where the game takes the training wheels off it's one of my favorite puzzles in the game you require two balls in the center to open the Fargate the first ball is easy the second ball is stuck behind a corruption crystal and a gate of its own you can shut up on the crystal to free the ball and there's a platform in the center of the room on which you can open the gate but as soon as we step off it the gate closes so how are we going to move the ball if we're stuck up here the solution is pushing the ball right next to the gate then grabbing a shadow bomb and attaching it now you stand on the platform and use Redemption to blast the ball through I find this puzzle so immensely satisfying every time because the game has taught us everything we need to know it's up to us to use all those mechanics in tandem to find the solution from one of the first times but why do those things correlate to fun why are some puzzles fun and not others to understand that we first need to understand fun itself my favorite definition of fun which comes from Chris Vega is that fun is a result of causing success in an uncertain system accepting that then puzzles are among the simplest ways of creating fun you could view any state on a chess board as a puzzle you could view a combat encounter as a puzzle but they're not puzzles really even though similarly you have a system of uncertainty and the pleasure of fun comes from success the difference is what part of you causes success in chess success is caused by your intelligence but also a small degree of luck in the variability of your opponent in combat success is caused by your subconscious button skill more than conscious planning even though that does have its place in puzzles success is caused by your intelligence and that alone the ability to make connections and to learn in chess and in combat success comes from defeating your enemies both in the process of doing so and in the exact moment of victory in puzzles the point of succeeding is called the revelation the moment when you make the leap and realize what the solution is that's what feels good that's what designers are trying to inspire within you and why this drench for puzzle is fun to complete so a puzzle that lacks a revelation big or small a puzzle and that requires no thought might as well not have bothered for example a puzzle that only requires extensive trial and error has no revelation because when you find the solution you once successful luck was with the puzzles done the aqueducts are filled once more and you're able to use the water flow as a fast-track back to the hub room which is a detail I've always adored the water level allows access to the final path to karkinos karkinos is certainly more of a boss than ghani's some of the best bosses in this game take inspiration from Zelda in that the final boss of a dungeon is an exam on everything you've learned about your newly acquired item or whatever the relevant mechanic may be here the mastery of balls is tested and yes it's taken me a while to say that without laughing karkinos will continually attempt to charge at you which point you dodged out of the way and watch you crash into the wall but instead of using a damaged window the impact sets a ball from the roof free you need to run over before karkinos comes to its senses line up a shot and dash the ball into it which opens up a damage window the balls of car canosa's babies so there's the further consideration of trying to not get hit by them this is a fun mechanic rewarding the patience to make a precise shot over the recklessness that might be enticed by the time limit you also have to deal with a bunch of heat-seeking pubes which is surprisingly hard to avoid and that's all there is to it no extra phase No More mechanics I think karkinos could have done with some expansion because this short-lived fight tests only one mechanic why not have a second phase where the balls become unroll evolved requiring you to use shadow bombs and redemption instead of your hands or a wave of stingers during the troika dodge only game I generally find that the bosses don't go far enough to feel like they have boss level difficulty and I certainly think an extra phase would make the gut smoothy death blends off out of car canosa's innards a little more satisfying if that's possible now we're free to go and restore the flow of the stone father's tears but after having done so there is no way to simply leave the dungeon you have to fast travel it's a real failure of level design that they couldn't even resort to having a shortcut back to the entrance well Todd Howard can keep his fast travel I'd like to talk about death because we've unlocked the Reaper form though death is simply a reimagining of the Grim Reaper the hooded figure is still incorporated into his design with the Reaper form on top of the damage output you're practically invincible but it takes quite the while to charge up only site the tanks will do the trick unless you are a specific talisman that allows secondaries to work - why this is makes a little sense to me it's not a real incentive to use side server secondaries because about long it takes to charge are using it on bosses is also extremely risky because many have invincibility states and damage windows only lasts for so long it's guaranteed to work in group fights but few of those would ever present danger enough to warrant its use I definitely think this should have been integrated better a shorter charge up time has a chance of making you overpowered so I'm thinking it should have been a reward for good play fill some kind of skill meter and you get a chance to use the Reaper for 10 seconds something like that it would encourage skillful play and mix-up compact regularly as it stands reap is only worth using when you're hopelessly outmatched and that only happens very late-game returning to the try stone we can see that the stone father's tears in the fire of the mountain flow throughout once more the makers Forge is finally open and some of the NPCs have moved within having the try stone react to your actions is incredibly morning as it reminds you that what you've done really has helped these people elder I diet reveals that the path to the tree of life can only be cleared with the help of the Guardian but to reach the foundry we need the help of a warden who we can activate with the makers key the constructs are awakened by a key I constructs do not have a soul like you are I not until that soul is given this key unlocks the stone and prepares it for the urban flow of a makers lifeforce in fact it will bring to life most any construct you'll find in the realm what makes you think I have a soul isn't that what troubles you on that note you can also talk to alia to learn more about Valis it turns out his lack of enthusiasm and silence is rooted in his mourning for the loss of a hammer he can and olya was traversing a dungeon to reawaken the shattered Forge but Khan was leading the way and willing to do anything to prove himself they barely escaped alive that's where Khan's well to help you comes from his feelings of uselessness and I suppose guilt you get a side quest go and retrieve the hammer splinter bone returning into violence brings promise of a reward of even greater power and proof the death respects these people at least enough to not be insulted by a task so insignificant the shattered Forge is one of the game's smallest dungeons but for its size it's certainly impressive it unlike the bigger dungeons in the game challenges your traversal much more than puzzle solving or combat it's not obvious what you have to do in many areas that's entertaining enough and I don't think it matters if a dungeon as small as this only makes use of two of the three gameplay pillars the reward for bringing splinter bone back to Valis is all you're selling higher level loot and that might seem like a disappointment that's because it is weapons are very expensive it's far smarter to buy things to do with them and for that you need to talk to thane thane offers some air combos a ground pound and special moves you can use when lock-on targeting but most importantly he sells new side combos and the dodge attacks the dodge attacks are something you can't live without that's why harvesters revenge is so cheap being able to immediately deal a huge amount of damage out of a Dodge gives death a vastly higher DPS potential if it remains as aggressive as he can the new side combos allow you to optimize your damage depending on the group composition and spacing of what you're fighting for single target you used slam for large groups use the hula hoop thing and for much smaller groups or pairs use the wheel of fortune but then not without fault you can cancel nearly every attack in the entire game with a dodge but you can not cancel them with a different attack in one of the crossovers death sends his side's flying forward they come out quickly but they're very slow to return so if another enemy makes a move you need to dodge ending the combo prematurely as pointed out by turbo button in his video some action games like Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising have a dodge offset mechanic that allows with a bit of button skill for you to retain your position in the combos button sequence even after a dodge that's not here and if you're playing aggressive it can make the final hit in the combo a rare sight the final hit being where most of the damages despite the fact that the game by nature of its mechanics has instilled aggression into the player to use these flashy combos well you need to position yourself a little farther back within the group I think it's fairly easy to judge a situation such that you get the full combo and have most of the attacks land my problem is to do this reliably one or sometimes two of these attacks might need to be started knowing they're not going to learn that's just not very satisfying this is where the Dodge offset would have helped so much to make the combat as aggressive as it can be having spent our money wisely we're gonna set out for the lost temple we need to head through Bane's wood again but this time our path takes us through the Newark and I've got to admit I'm slightly disappointed that there's no dungeon called the cranny within the Newark you're introduced to the first controllable construct and they--there she's inaccessible at this point and you can't go back the way you came but there is another door which leads to the exit locked and a puzzle this is a really cool use of the ball mechanic the first step is to bring down the ball second steps to arrange the platform such that you can shoot the ball from one to the other without it falling off then raising the second platform and using the ball to unlock the door this is far more challenging than most of the puzzles seen previously in the game and I think that's great players without the death grip will be stuck down here in what looks like hell with a giant demon bat flying around they're gonna want to get out quickly and this puzzle is a fun way of prolonging their fear I also love that you can even hear both their flying around while doing the puzzle thankfully there is reward beyond escape in the form of a chest so it's a worthwhile detour after the Nook you encounter your first death - there's nothing to suggest that the pages of the Dead would allow you to access these so despite how alluring the entrance is it doesn't make you want to go after the Book of the Dead until you look up what these doors actually are to no surprise we find Khan once again at the entrance to the Lost Temple if you accepted it you can turn in part two of his Lost and Found quest which leads to part three death by now is clearly willing to help but puts on a reluctant facade for the first time he refers to Khan by his real name in his presence that's significant I've been highlighting references to death soul and his kindness for a reason the point of showing that death respects the makers and is willing to help them wherever he can is to build on the same point that the entire game is trying to make death is not necessarily bad the being and the concept death can be a pathway a beginning destruction can cause creation and death can bring life this is contextualized in his character by guilt he may be as the elder said a lord of destruction but he is also a being of balance and with the guilt of those he slaughtered it comes the willingness to help the lost temple returns to the cauldrons design Linea branching paths no hub I think this makes a lot more sense when the theme is lost were immediately introduced to the construct sentinels the mechanic is that they'll raise constructs from the ground if they use their laser for too long you need to shoot them whenever their shield goes down the general criteria for a successful new enemy type at least in the game of the world is engrossing as this is a looking cool having cool animations are called design and be encouraging you to use different tactics in combat be more aggressive Don Jacinto direction use a different combo why the Sentinels fail is b-because trying to target the Sentinel when it's with any other enemy is inconsistent and therefore frustrating with the central thankfully put down we start using the lost temples key mechanic the constructs these services bolts weapons bridges and crystal clear is the first puzzle room serves as an extremely drawn-out introduction to that it's boring ly easy the next combat encounter sure isn't with the skeleton door unlocked we find ourselves once again up against the Sentinels except this time we have to fight like eight of them and I hope you like God because he comes back three times in one encounter what fighting the first boss again is one thing but three times over feels by someone misplaced a zero given the theme of the dungeon I think now would be a good time to talk about direction how many games have you played where you want to go in every direction just not the correct one because that would be inefficient exploration I'm always scared of going too far just in case it's the right way and I can never go back here you just stand in a crossroad ask dust for help and do the opposite of whatever he suggests but why does death have dust instead of a watcher like warren fury well eh it would break the law because the counsel are unaware of deaths journey but from a character standpoint deaths already sarcastic enough and too much personality would spoil the idea of being the lone wolf which death very much is especially in the book war was stoic and only spoke when necessary that meant there was a contrast with the watcher and contrast is where some of the best pairings and stories come from if you ever watched our be in the chief that's a perfect example so unless deaths watcher was going to be comedy relief I don't think you could have replicated that contrasting personality death treats dust with the expectation that he'll be useful but he still cares for its well-being the things you'll hear death say to it throughout the game really only implied the first and I think they could have done more with it people like pets just look at sipping Artorias I particularly like the wikis theory that dusts name is a reference to the phrase ashes to ashes dust to dust because the game's theme is with Death Comes life so from dust life is born and back to dust it will return another interesting tidbit for anyone who didn't play on release is that the colour of dust in the game is dependent on the version definitive dust always glows purple but originally it glowed green and you could use a DLC to change it moving on from that The Lost Temple finally rids itself of how easy its puzzles are to construct separated by height and an elevator a Hall that cannot be traversed without another board and four possible places to put the construct in Claire manipulable components Eclair goal and multiple obstacles that require a good deal of forward thinking the solution is not important but this is a good puzzle which is a first to the Lost Temple on that note visually the Lost Temple is indistinct from most other stone carve and ruins in the forge lands it has no theme like water or fire except Beauty the Lost Temple is lost and Nature has reclaimed it this is the only dungeon that will take you outside its walls as you progress giving you an unrestricted view of a high treeline far above a lake though I love the contrast of ruination of nature I still feel like the dungeon could have done a lot more to make it feel different we're still using the same architecture possibly up to six dungeons in well almost the same this gladiator like arena is a visual highlight it is clearly where we're going to fight the boss the construct Hulk living up to his size the Hulk is invulnerable until stunned you can do that with volatile shadow bombs and their shook free from the ceiling every time the Hulk slams problem is if he slams once more all those bombs will explode prematurely so it's a race to grab them and throw them at the Hulk but there doesn't seem to be much of a consistency to where the bombs fall this fight is very much like Clark eNOS in that something drops from the ceiling to make the boss vulnerable with the difference being that here you have less time to grab them and you have more resistance to deal with in the form of smaller constructs it's a solid fight but only a small expansion on karkinos and once again not a real test of the dungeon the core mechanic of the lost temple was the constructs but here we are still throwing things I honestly wouldn't be surprised if many of the bosses were designed without even knowing what dungeon they'd be in and that theory is supported by what we'll find much later on for the first time after the boss we aren't restoring any flow to the try stone we're bringing someone back to life the warden you awaken refuses to tell me what the lost temple was but he agrees to help you he has seen the corruption in his dreams while he is flesh once more you're offered a ride over to the foundry shall we the warden explains that because the Guardian was built to destroy it has much in common with corruption which is some less than subtle foreshadowing he drops you off before the tri stone to make your peace with the makers and of course to finish some side quests you'll have all three ingredients for Mira at this point and the her soul is met with a befitting reward the Grimm talisman is the first a few legendary talismans it grants a massive increase in Reaper energy gain which if you convince yourself not to be conservative with the Reaper form can be powerful you'll also have a conversation with eidart he didn't want to question a horseman before but since then there's little distrust between the two he asks my death seeks the Tree of Life it's to find absolution for war but I dad tells us something we never knew before the tree of life isn't where journey's end it's a gateway a system of routes that link every realm in the universe it's where journeys begin death doesn't reply to this which seems quite abrupt given the fact that he clearly didn't know this before the warden waits for us on the other side of the maker's Forge [Music] [Music] no point either you heard the warden it's not safe to go alone you need my help yeah Kahn's coming along for this one you're continually growing bond with him wasn't just thematic this is more than an NPC companion it's someone you like in death does too they've got a big task ahead of them the foundry is the first of the large dungeons and the extra time they spent on this is apparent immediately a parkour challenge that requires you to hold on to a line of iron's then jump off in just the right time a link back to the stone father's tears and the fire of the mountain a foreshadowing of the Guardians weapon and Khan is actually incorporated in a meaningful way he'll hold doors open for you allowing passage for both you and balls there's only so far they can ever go with this thought because Khan is AI not under your command if he was he might have had more complex puzzles it's a missed opportunity for certain with the first door propped open we find ourselves in the hub room where the Guardian is suspended lifelessly we need three heart stones to finish it all of which are scattered throughout the dungeon so let's go Khan's second major function is his ability to throw you over certain obstacles in the foundry but where and when he'll offer to do so is arbitrary you end up waddling over every suspicious ledge like a muppet just in case how are you supposed to know that Khan would chuck you up to this random ledge when he won't in the hub room with a clear shot but Khan is not the only new mechanic in the foundry the other is the death grip the second of deaths personal tools a Marten incredible room it's hidden him believe it or not the death grip was originally named the ghost hand yeah they actually considered ghost hand I think that not making it into the game is proof of God enough the death grip is this games envisioning of the hookshot except for the most part you don't really have to aim it it'll walk on two hooks automatically which allows you to chain sequences of jumps you'll be automatically switched to the death grip if you're ever near a hook and you've got a different duel equipped like Redemption but only when this prompt shows up sounds good but this prompt is an [ __ ] half the time it's telling the truth the other half the time it just won't work it's probably a matter of the prompt not fading out quick enough so you think it'll lock you on when it won't but it's particularly annoying that this made it into the definitive addition you can pretty much immediately use the death grip to grab a seat for parasites and a page of the Dead which is one of many clever ways the foundry smoothly tutorial eise's the death grip even before you get it in the room leading up to the skeleton key there's a chest that's clearly inaccessible somehow this shows off the extremely high range of the jumps you can now make there's a secret in the room leading up to the death grip and even a seat verges before that which shows off the interactions with shadow bombs explorative players will naturally come to understand how the death grip will be used in this dungeon but the puzzles you'll encounter further enter to realize that just as well the difference is through it happening organically right here in the foundry players understand that it will allow them to backtrack and find areas once inaccessible such as those in the futile veins would with the death grip in turn we can go off to find the first hearthstone it's deep within the foundries debt surrounded by magma the way you get to it is once again by using card but this time you can death grip onto him which is about as complex as the relationship between the grip and can get this is also the only time you ever use it which makes very little sense to me can't helps you carry the first hearthstone back to the Guardian but the magma follows you up this is a good pace razor but as we'll see it serves more of a function than that even more than clearing the path to the next hearthstone the second hearthstone room is the largest puzzle room in the entire game and also among the most creative you've got a supply line to your right a massive waterwheel a climber bull service to your left and a skeleton door right ahead getting the skeleton key is just a matter of using the construct simple hut but the game wants us to have the construct in mind the skeleton door reveals we need a ball to progress the construct won't fit in now the only other thing we can do is scale this huge wall and at the top fight and jump our way to the distant lever that activates the waterwheel the wheel starts the supply line and reveals that the crusher can destroy stone what I like most about this is that it incorporates the foundry is a setting in the puzzle like the drench fault you're manipulating the environment in a large-scale way to progress rather than just using a simple item or blowing up some corruption what I don't like is that there is no way to know that the waterwheel should be spinning or that it would affect the supply line you don't reactivate it because it's smart you reactivate it because there's nothing else to do in the room if we knew we needed the supply line going beforehand then there'd be a thought process that takes you to the wheel either way you go there next but making the player feel smart is the goal whether it's by illusion or not now comes the hard part knowing that the crusher can crush stone you've got to make the link that you could crush the construct to get its ball seems obvious now but the game has never expected you to make such a giant leap it'll weigh subtly or overtly tutorial eise's every puzzle mechanic before there ever used in tandem with others on top of that is it fair to expect that players would think puzzle objects which are otherwise necessary for the game to work can be destroyed so I can see why some people would rarely struggle here this also provides an opportunity to address a presentation issue with puzzles many of deaths problem solving abilities don't make any sense without a big helping of suspension of disbelief why is it only constructs and carne and specifically shaped hooks that the death grip will work on why will can't throw you over some gaps but not others you have to do this entire puzzle to get what 10 feet off the ground why wouldn't can't just throw you why wouldn't you just use the death grip why wouldn't death just jump and scale these easily climbable rocks I mean I could climb this limitations are clearly needed for good puzzles so I'm not saying that you should be able to jump up there I'm saying jumping up there shouldn't be feasible limitations should be contextualized the ball gets us our hearts tone and wear this in Kahn's grip only one remains the water we raised from reactivating the wheel has cooled the lava smoothing over the path something else I've noticed about carne is that he does a hell of a lot of talking in the foundry and death doesn't interactions between these two as some of the most enjoyable moments in the game so I don't know why they wrote about four lines for death in here the third hearthstone does not look like the others and there is no puzzle required to free it [Music] there's something wrong with this one the corrupted custodian is an effective fight because it turns what has been your silent ally for hours now against you it's cool to be on the receiving end of those slams and punches I'm not sure if this is intentional or not but you can actually use the death grip on this bot to put you above the hitboxes of most of his attacks for the few enemies in the game that allow of Asian fire height being able to use air attacks to continue to damage the boss even while they're attacking is a really cool way of rewarding skill with the custodian taken care of The Guardian awaits that feels like the end of a journey but not just because we know what comes next the best dungeons feel like mini journeys in and of themselves like adventures were the beginning a middle and an end the best dungeons have pacing was the beginning of the foundry you're slowly introduced to the Guardian you're beginning to get your bearings in the room around you mostly everything is slow paced up until we find the death grip the death grip is the middle and the pace begins to raise if you find the first hearthstone and the lava chases you want the elevator shaft surrounding the Guardians feet things are getting worse the third heart stone is corrupted and it forces you to fight and kill your own construct this is the same hearthstone you're just about to put in The Guardian [Music] and then everything goes to hell as he run through the foundry on your way to the guardian you'll see the room that contained the giant hammer with its roof caved in and the hammer gone the music takes a deaf a tone as you first see the destruction on the face of the tri stone you can actually get ballasts to talk here if you got a splinter bone and talk to a lien ow he says good luck I'm sure I don't need to say that the Guardian fight is one hell of a climax and through it the foundry tells a complete story a beginning middle and end this makes it feel like a journey which is a quality few dungeons even in this genre can match I think the Guardian is the highlight of the entire game for many people and it's plain to see why personally I would have liked this more where it never spoiled by the trailers the game is [ __ ] fighting monsters at most 3 or 4 times your size and now here you are alone fighting one at 3 or 400 times your size the music is strangely under dramatic here but it's worth it given how unbelievably good it is from what yes but kid says about the soundtrack he was going off what he saw of the game and it seems like this was no rough process there was hesitation as he made the school more and more experimental but vigils consistent support for the party was on encouraged him to go as far as he could with it and that's why the Guardian is such an incredibly unique track as for the fight itself you need to exploit the shadow bombs that sprouted along the Guardians arm they'll be in Redemption range whenever attempts to slam you so you just need to avoid being hit despairs charges are the only way to move quick enough to do so but you're limited to a maximum of 6 you need to be careful when and where you use them because you don't want to run out when the Guardians about to attack if you successfully dodged the slam opens up a window to detonate the bombs giving you a shot on the hearthstone you need to scale the crippled arm yourself using the death grip then manually attack the hearthstone until you destroy it on the second repetition with only one arm left the Guardian starts firing mammoth shadow bombs that hunt you through the field you have to shoot it with Redemption enough to prime a blast but that's only gonna work if you're close enough leading to one hell of a jousting match with the bomb activated he'll charge itself up and make a swift beeline for your position you've just got to put the Guardian between yourself and it these mechanics are terrific to repetitions prevents it from getting annoying and being chased by a giant shadow bomb is an extremely intense experience this was also a fantastic way of finally incorporating death's traversal into a boss fight with a second heart stone The Guardian collapses and death deals the final blow but all is not lost my dad approaches the dead stone and it helps to bring the Guardian back to life yet of the past of the Tree of Life was to be cleared I have no choice but to bring him back how many times would you have me kill him but now the Guardian will be like a newborn free of corruption at eidart sacrifice to be a maker is his purpose there is no escaping it get to the tree like I dodged the Guardian sacrifices itself declare a path to the tree which is a perfect conclusion for the makers they've been given hope an eye dart was able to be the leader his people need it in his final moments well now we know the reason that the stone father's veil was so empty and expansive it's a boss arena and a pretty damn cool one at that despite me adoring this it's still a compromise it's easily among the most jarring things about the overworld that there would be this gargantuan unused space in the middle when all the offshoots are brimming with content it seems like Mis potential to me we know how this exact space looked when death fought the Guardian in the CGI trailer the terrain wasn't flat and not entirely grassy there were also frequent patches of trees not just at the sides I imagine these were removed to make riding despair easier but I still think they could have been more than a massive lon another issue I have with the structure of the forge lands is that the Guardian sacrificing itself declare a path to the tree heavily implies that you should be going to the tree which is odd because after the foundry the forged lands now has multiple areas that were once inaccessible open for exploration one entirely new dungeon two bosses and a wealth of chests and collectibles will return for them later for now it's time to honor I'd I'd sacrifice and find the Tree of Life it's a short but beautiful ride the track you hear at the Tree of Life mate first listen sound like the corruption melody but it's not it's an alternate version with this serene natural sounding section one minute in you might never hear it because you're unlikely to spend more than one minute at the tree an unfortunate oversight once their death find some kind of gate images of life and death fetch tin to the metal but corruption pours out of the crevices and drags death in a figure asks him what he's doing here and death States his well but it soon becomes clear that the figure is a Nephilim as it questions my death would rather resurrect humanity than the Nephilim that he slaughtered this was Absalom now corruption itself what defines a saw some call it the spark within that fights the darkness that burns for life itself but one of death who became the Reaper and the day's slaughtered the Netherlands the Aeons have not answered the question was it worth it right now that was an option and cracked engine Slayer [Music] death awakens not at the tree of life but at the tree of death in a gray barren Ashland and at the feet of a strange-looking creature who calls itself austere goth austere goth is the last of his kind his people were slaughtered long ago and forgotten by even those who did the slaughtering given the death had to ask I assume that austere goth is referring to the Nephilim he explains that the Tree of Life was never a way to resurrect humanity it's the start of a journey and deaths destination would be at the Well of Souls death believes that he was betrayed but this isn't so the tree is wise and brought death here because this was where he needs to be free of life free of death portals to other worlds I know none of this how is it I have remained so blind lies much was kept from the Nephilim and from before why because power must be tempered with ignorance if the Nephilim were the true nature of the tree all would have perished I forsook the Nephilim became a warrior for the balance even killed my own people I protect these worlds you and the tree it's still I remain in the dark forsaken yes forgotten no the Nephilim live on in you so the trees were hidden from the Nephilim to preserve the balance and even after the horsemen slaughtered them nothing was revealed the riders might have forsaken the Nephilim but they are still Nephilim I don't believe that this tree of life system was thought of before Darkseid is to the explanation for deaths ignorant seems to me like a way of covering it up so it made sense in the context of the wider Darksiders universe and I think it's pretty good it makes sense and the council would clearly right against instruction there they are the souls of the Nephilim still alive in death and now death seeks the Lord of bones the only one who can show him the way to the Well of Souls between him and death is the new overworld the kingdom of the Dead [Music] [Music] what I never would have guessed is that Darksiders 2 would be able to make the kingdom of the Dead 2 just as exquisite to behold as the forge learns their vicious and dry but never wrong what I mean by that is there's very little here that denotes that this is a place of evil just a place of death I think they had the word afterlife in mind this is meant to be a purgatory it's otherworldly nurse is sold by the cast iron bridges connecting floating rock formations carved statues embedded into jagged towers of stone and in the distance planes marked by the spines of something Leviathan on the right of the bell you'll come across all of this which is important for the visuals and also the level design much of the kingdom is wide open plains of ash connected by these large bridges caves dungeons and ruins littering the sides it's a significant distinction from the forge lands that's what this ride is about distinction in the breach were offered a microcosm of the puzzles were to solve here there's a bridge that can only be cross if the switch is activated from a distance use the shadow bomb in Redemption then but there's no sight lines we can have multiple bombs out at a time though so we create a network of bombs leading to the switch you fire Redemption the explosion crosses from one bomb to the other the switch is pushed and the bridge can be crossed finally at the Serpent's pink were surrounded by nothing with no view of anything beneath it feels like the tallest place for miles and the end of a journey well at least this journey it especially surprises me that yes the kid composed a track specifically for this tiny area that you're in for about 30 seconds death ringing this Bell isn't exactly subtle but I still like the silent characterization death was told to ring the bell instead he Cleaves it apart he's not been betrayed but he's just found out that his sin caused corruption and that his journey is very far from over I think the eternal throne is in some ways supposed to look like a ghost ship by its boat like appearance and the Leviathans that drive it not only looking like some kind of sea monster but being named after the Leviathan from the Hebrew Bible - when it comes to visuals this is the kind of thing that will make Darksiders - still one of the best looking games even when graphics are photorealistic this is art come to life [Music] you can ask anyone who's played the game to describe death in one word and past cold sarcastic or deadly will probably be badass that's partly thanks to the game's more cinematic moments the executions are something that you don't control that you initiate so these brutal maneuvers feel both like something you caused and also like something death is done on larger enemies this becomes more one-sided as death has a full-on animated battle often in his Reaper form you get no control but you get to watch the brutal execution of this massive beast you've been battling for minutes and even past the executions watching death slash apart the bell and ride down the Leviathans is one of the highlights of the game for me it's simply such about our spectacle I can't decide whether I'd enjoy having control of the section more because the most satisfying moments in game player when you pull off a difficult maneuver to great effect siege players will attest yet because we don't have control of death because he did this of his own accord unexpectedly it puts you in awe of the character you can't feel reverence or admiration for a character when the player did the deed specifically in moments such as riding up the Leviathans having control of death would have only been a better decision if they made it more than simply riding despair in a straight line if they could have come up with a deeper player controlled set piece than I certainly would have liked to see it but it would have come at sacrifice I'd also like to point out the in-game the music only kicks in on the second jump which is another example of this game's a weird soundtrack programming back on track I'm very glad that they didn't just transition into a cutscene for this you've got to scale the eternal throne yourself and see the kingdom from the perspective of the Leviathans unless you're on crack this is the highest you're going to be playing this game the concept are for the eternal throne is some of the most enticing you can find it certainly cements the ghostship vibe and I think what we got feels like it lives up to the Arts you can see the Leviathans polar throne through the kingdom as you scale the outside of the ship it's a good illusion but if you look into the distance you can tell that we're not actually moving but the eternal Thrones not all for show it's also the most challenging parkour we've had so far another example of how the game is trying to distinguish itself from the forged lands pendulum swing towards and away from each other you've got to time jumps from one to the next which I've died on more times than I care to admit all of this climbing under the eternal throne combined with the ride up to it makes meeting the dead court extremely I'm acting like we've earned this audience on the deck were introduced to Draven and the Chancellor Draven only shows up here but his character is extremely interesting remember dark Avenger that belonged to Draven we know he's a human soul trapped in the kingdom of the Dead and just by looking at him you can tell he's not one of the many new human arrivals after the apocalypse so how long has he been trapped here why a bitter old warrior like this is much like death which is why I think death offers to free Draven from his treatment he declines and will come to see why the politics in the kingdom of the Dead is portrayed as brutal and ancient you can learn from multiple sources that the Lord of Bones usurped the previous king of a dead Argyll and banished him you can even find the weapons he used to do so in the city the Chancellor obeys the Lord but clearly has his own motivations he's reluctant unless anyone at all have audience and you can theorize that he's been running the show in the Lord slumber Draven is the Lord's blade master and also his slave apparently he was given the chance to live again if he defeated the champion of the gilded arena he did but the Lord of bones betrayed and enslaved him now he's just waiting for revenge and finally the Lord of bones is we don't know the Chancellor won't let us disturb the Lord's burden and what is your use as a doorstop there is but one way to draw him from this slumber the gilded arena defeat the Irenaeus champion and return here with its skull His Majesty will grant you an audience where is this arena I think it's clear that the Chancellor intends the gilded arena as a way of getting rid of you you can also question the Chancellor about the Lord of bones tell me about the king of the Dead his reign is eternal his word is wrong and his time is in value I am sure that he made only speak with those that you must rarely see him chance maybe you can say what's already dead the champion of the gilded arena then I'm glad that we're being messed around how else would we see this the gilded arena is a fairly horrific concept those who seek absolution from death can face the arena's champion but most died in have their souls consumed it's only human skeletons littering the arena not maker or demon again possibly due to the huge influx in dead humans after the apocalypse the statues here are all sentient and individual they speak in the same strained whisper you make when you've lost your voice extremely reminiscent of the Death Eaters from Harry Potter another cool detail is that every statue in the gilded arena will turn to face the door you need to go to next it's a fairly confusing area at first glance but in reality it's similar to the drench fort we need to collect three animus stones to summon the champion of the arena and there at the end of three branching paths among the most remarkable things about the gilded arena is its backing track a beautifully calm piano piece - of yes / kids leading inspirations for Darksiders - would Joe Mads art style and the idea of playing as death yet being a force for good that comes through clear as day in the final product it seems strange the vicious corrupted places would have serene beautiful tracks in the background but that is the theme from Death Comes life death is not necessarily bad destructured and brings creation playing as death and going to the worlds of the Dead is what yes / found most interesting about the story so the idea of journeying to the afterlife became very important to much of the composition including into eternity which interestingly is the drench force theme I think the quieter more serene tracks in Darksiders to work so well in the dungeons because they're so amis farik they highlight the world and never have any distracting elements which makes them perfect for solving puzzles the first puzzle room in the gilded arena introduces lanterns which will be a recurring puzzle element in the kingdom they're heavy enough to weigh down pressure pads you can use the death grip on them and you can use them on Reaper statues to create beams of energy the first room introduces all three by making you use them to open the way to the first animus stone it didn't even need one text box cauldron the Animus stone room is infested with scarabs which I'd say is appropriate for a place that looks like a crypt these are considered small enemies which means redemption is by far the best way of taking them out slightly irritating if you have the death grip equipped these little buggers can do a lot of damage so melee is impractical it's only going to be used if you're too lazy to switch to redemption speaking of which you can actually insta kill them and any other small enemy by pressing the execution button which is particularly satisfying if you get death - laughs as he does it as you come to leave the first animus stone room you'll see a red edging on the wall a color inconsistent from anything else you've seen thus far if you go ahead and look around the corner that same red spells out a series of letters and you'll receive part of the sole arbiters scroll this is supposedly used to escape the sole arbiters maze I think it's fairly clear that the red marking indicates directions nearby in the second puzzle room you can find another etching but this time it marks an item to pick up the sacred scroll contains three letters and that's because this is the directions to the secrets of the maze not to the exit the sole arbiters scroll then becomes another major collectible from this point forward and given the promise of a maze you're going to want to make sure you collect them the especially digesta qwave hiding the scrolls is a blood-soaked cherry on top onto the second end of a stone the puzzle preceding it is fantastic you have to activate doors in a sequence that allows you to get through to another Lantern which you can place on a pressure pad and death grip to the other side it's a long puzzle which means linking the lantern at the far end of the corridors to the very start extremely satisfying but the reason I'm highlighting it here is because it's the start of many great puzzles alike as for the third animus stone you don't really have to do any work to get it the revolving doors a cool idea but that's not a puzzle they do introduce another enemy though this time the Scarab Hulk what's special about this one is that it can block your attacks by closing its shell bouncing your side's right off it'll do this if you're attacking from the front but it can't interrupt its own attacks which creates a cool dynamic you dodge its strong slam attack and then go from behind or you attack when it does all you have to do is bait a flyer of progression get out of range and use that as a window to smash its face in not only is the scarab great to look at but it also inspires a very different way of fighting which provides a good case study in what new enemy types should be following our victory we can summon the arena's champion it isn't some gladiator as you'd expect it's a golden skull attached to a spine nasha will burrow under the ground and attempt to hit you that way a certain points he pops up for a second or two giving you the chance to death grip him given the purple glow is fairly obvious you need to use the death grip but the timing window is so incredibly tight that many players might be fooled once you pull him out three times he reassembles as a whole body like the ice giant but he uses his head as hammer and impressively creepy moves at once you do enough damage he'll extend his head forcing a death grip pull if you don't get him in unto four or so seconds he gains a chunk of his health back so there's no screwing about this means you need to get the last hits of damage on his front because only then do you have enough time to grab the head which is an effective way of making the fight more difficult pulling his head off makes natural start to spring up from the ground under your feet until he reforms and the cycle begins again eventually death grows impatient guess you could say he got boned for defeating the champion of the arena you rewarded the chaos fangs or at least you are on the definitive edition the Chaos bang sites were originally a marsh to Darkseid as one hence the chaos eaters soul design you'd get them by having a dark side a safe file on your console this was changed as of the definitive edition probably because you can't detect an original dark Sider save file on a ps4 or Xbox one and because the first game was remastered after the second back on the eternal throne nothing's changed but I'd like to check out the lower deck this time it's a surprisingly cozy place for you to cathartic ly smash some boxes and to check your email you've also had a tome in the forge lines but it only becomes important around now back when THQ was a thing the tome would be much more than a way for the game to give you crucible invitations and legendary weapons you didn't have inventory space for you used to be able to send your friends gear through the messaging system if your friend was struggling you could easily send a call possessed weapon their way there was no trading which might have been a missed opportunity but I have to appreciate the idea nonetheless with regards to crucible invitations you'll receive one every time you complete a realm eternal glory awaits you it says and that you can reach the crucible by fast travel through the map interface I've never seen such a spectacularly hilarious way of ruining the immersion before I didn't realize that everyone could just whip out a map interface and press X to instantly teleport to their destination in the Darksiders universe who wrote this rapidly moving on you can finally have your audience with the Lord of bones you make your request but the Lord seeks to bargain dead Lord's and wake them from their slumber this will bend them to you will return the Lord's to me that they might share my burden so there we have it another three-part mission on our quest to get some information why would death not simply take the information from the Lord you have yet to teach me how to reach the well I grow tired of these diversions if you want answers why don't you take them on this path you do not serve the balance and for that you are denied your rightful power until you haven't you are beneath me you'll forgive me Lord if I don't bow that's a fair excuse but it's annoying nonetheless what we have ahead of us is considered by many to be the worst part of the game each dead lord is in their own dungeon so it's three back to back just like the cauldron leading up to the lost temple in the forge lands but there's many differences between here and there and they'll reveal themselves as we go through for now one of those differences is that the first is by far the best the Pharisee is Toombs first puzzle is quite the introduction it's long been said that the kingdom of the Dead would no longer hold your hand with puzzle mechanics and this is another major application of that you've got a gate that opens when you stand on this pad but you can't get past it before it slams shut what you do have is a bomb and some crystals to blow up with it that reveals a loose statue there's a sound effect the statue does move slightly and it's definitely got handles so I think its relevance is clear enough you can move it around and it's fairly obvious that you need to prop open the gate but even with the - we've not got enough time here's the solution following how it works with the balls we move the statue into place grab a bomb stand on the pad throw the bomb at the statue detonate it and watch it slide under the gate now you're free to go so few elements such a tiny space yet a brilliant introductory puzzle challenging you to use previously acquired knowledge with what we can deduce from the environment we go on to see the Pharisees tomb revolves around an elevator by striking crystals you can choose from one of four floors there's nothing on floor three or four apart from some chests at least for now and at floor two the Pharisee will appear breaking the elevator and sending you smashing down to floor one where we'll find our second puzzle you need to get across to the far chest but there's no way of climbing over there's a skeleton cage - death grip from but it's not enough your only other option is to press a switch which shows the cage being raised and another shadow bomb being lowered still there is no way to cross but if you grab the bomb from the other side plant it on the switch walk over to the start and detonate the bomb there's a small window of time where both death grip hooks are close enough together to cross this is a perfect example of what a good puzzle should be many puzzles have cool ways of solving them but are betrayed by the lack of a barrier it shouldn't be obvious what the solution is and many good puzzles will have you manipulate certain components such that the solution becomes clearer in this death grip puzzle we know we're going to have two death grip across both of the hooks to reach the chest that's our goal but we don't know how manipulating the lever reveals that there is a period in which both hooks are very close to one another if for example the hooks were infinitely looping up and down it would be obvious what the solution was there'd be no revelation and then there'd be no fun you can notice many systems in the game that could have been great puzzles if they had a barrier between your first glance and realizing solution for example the pendulums under the eternal throne maybe these don't move when you first arrived in need to find a way of introducing a wind current or hitting them to get them swinging barriers are the only thing that separates a system from a puzzle I'd like to get back on track but we're not being allowed to leave the first non skeletal enemy in the kingdom is the Wraith seemingly well endowed but with a rotten contorted face they're equipped with an aggresive spin and a dash forward which is more than the average skeleton unlike that it's wise to keep your distance and to make sure everyone in a group is in view because you need to dodge the dash attack immediately an effective break up in the current combat flow then and its really worth highlighting the execution the first new enemy in the Pharisees tomb is immediately followed by the second completely new enemy type in the kingdom this giant undead Knight his shield is unbreakable but he's open after he attacks once again another cool looking enemy with a fair move set that makes you play in a completely different way it's weird that the Pharisees tomb suddenly piles on all these great new enemies but it's actually setting an impressive precedent for the rest of the game in reality it was the forged lands that was lacking in comparison the rest of the pharisees tomb has you traversing the elevator shaft in an effort to get to floor 2 where we will finally face the pharisee a-- the pharisee ax is the first boss in the game that I call genuinely difficult on his own he's not too bad the attacks are telegraphed and easily avoided but at multiple points in the battle he'll call upon hordes of skeletons to help him out now you have to fight well over 10 skeletons some armored some with bows and the pharisee with his very short pauses between attacks it's disappointing that the boss has to rely on countless ads to be difficult but I think the leaping challenge is an enjoyable change death forces the parasya to submit and that puts the first of the Dead Lords under your command interdiction allows the pharisee to pass through a gate and flip a switch allowing you to access the other half of the kingdom the spine is a looming place not only because of the city of the Dead but also because of the corruption that has taken it and everything else in sight the dead lawns retreat from the Lord of bones might not have been so unwise after all on that note it's time for an upgrade Draven provides the rest of the participant axe in the game if you've already bought the combos then nothing excessively flashy remains it's the depth that's boosted by these later game moves in the air you can now become a beyblade which can deal massive damage if you're willing to sacrifice everything else you can do in the air because it always grounds you after the heavy weapons dodge attack you can press it again for a follow up and if you hold down the secondary attack button you can time your charge perfectly for an extra chunk of damage each of these increase the skill ceiling in their own way by having trade-offs timing rewards and more of a reason to go into the air it seems perfectly appropriate that these moves would build off and increase the depth of our current Arsenal at this point in the game you'll have had access to the evade counter for quite a while which is a flashy damage reward for dodging as late as possible this is also a great way of increasing the skill ceiling but it only works if your lock-on targeting which seems like a bad decision to me most of the fights in the game are groups so you're not even going to be able to use it half the time that's some big miss potential though I'm glad for its inclusion nonetheless I'll tell you an inclusion I'm not glad time for the judicata stoom interdiction is the next of dets personal tools in the game it could allow for far more complex puzzles than the death-grip ever did you require a summoning pod to raise the dead lords at which point you can have them turn to stone on pressure pads also providing a death grip point and have them flow through gates allowing access to switches and levers so there's a huge amount you can do with it the first room of the judicata stoom gets us off to a good start you need to move the pillar in between the two platforms and then have the pharisee asset on the far part raising the platform's and creating stepping stones that's pretty creative the game continues its streak of introducing new enemies with the ledge something reminiscent of deaths Reaper form it carries a barrel from which it will scatter a liquid on the floor that raises a group of ghostly skeletons the Lich isn't particularly aggressive which means you have to be you've got a smash through the skeletons and do as much damage to the Lich as possible before it scatters again you don't want to get surrounded either again like the other two enemies the Lich looks good and encourages different strategies compared to the wraiths and the Knights and that's as good as the Judah caters to him guess the structure is a copying of the gilded arena hug room with three branches at the end of the branches lies an item to collect and at the hub something that will receive them in this case those items are lost souls they wait judgment and they will receive it before the judicata comes with you you can imagine how horrible it would be to have your soul trapped in the judicata stew I mean if you're being tormented you want it to be somewhere cool on the way to collect the first soul the puzzle isn't a puzzle it's a time wasting exercise we have to go through one of these doors but to do that the Reaper miss China light into the receptacle above it the way you get the Reapers Lantern is by using interdiction to sit on two pads in sequence which takes an irritating amount of time then grabbing the lantern and returning it what was the point in that there wasn't a puzzle solve there is literally only one pad to activate at each point see what I mean about barriers if there's only one thing to do then I didn't use my brain to solve it there is no revelation and therefore there's no fun welcome to interdiction now let's free this soul when you return the souls the judicata will judge them but he doesn't say anything interesting he just tells them to see their lives as they truly lived a missed opportunity annoying - because he'll repeat those lines for every soul and oddly every soul manifests in the same form a man with a suit and tie odd is still on the wait at the second soul you get a boss fight almost immediately the torment is a giant type enemy with smash attacks they were doing really well of differentiating enemies that were much bigger than death but this is an exception the Tormentor certainly looks the part but his attacks are predictable for an enemy of his type and on his own he's a complete pushover because he can just circle him harbingers will teleport through him necromancer's will simply distract he's got the visuals down but fails otherwise further up the path we can see a stone bite a particularly interesting stone bite and that's because you could easily shoot it from here jump over the gate shoot through them but no the bullets will bounce off thinner even above the gates surely this was a problem highlighted in QA it's like they're dangling a carrot in front of you specifically to show off bad design can this dungeon get anything right the following puzzles are mediocre and the lead-up to the final soul room has a fantastic three things wrong with it first a pool of water that has no reason to be there other than to hold the world's most hidden boatman coined second a page of the Dead just sitting out here behind this fence you'd need to be blind to miss this one third after collecting the last soul the game lets you leave as if there was any doubt whatsoever that this gate was going to close just before it's like this was designed in five minutes the boss seems designed into the final boss of the judicata stoom is awful the bony dude or whatever his name is has no mechanics his only attack is to summon other skeletons he retaliates by death gripping up to him but there's no prompt so most players will resort to shooting him with Redemption which means fine aim mode which means low awareness which means shorts being absorbed by other skeletons in the way after you finally get rid of him all of a sudden a bone giant appears and it's just a nice giant reskin three bad bosses in one dungeon what is going on the judicata stoom is the worst dungeon in the game and possibly the series it's got the exact same all designers the gilded arena only two dungeons later it has no interesting visual theme at all it has not a single remotely challenging puzzle it puts collectibles in obvious places and her surprises that aren't surprises it has three bosses all of which are bad and finally the judicata only has three lines two of which he repeats three times it's an embarrassment and I honestly believe since this is the lowest point in the game for many people that Darksiders 2 would have been a better product had it not shipped with this dungeon the final Dead Lord Basilius breaks the sequence he seeks you out instead of the other way around showing up after you take the Judah Gator he taunts and reminds you of your place as a rider with no power at his back death speaks of his victory at the gilded arena but according to Basilius that is just a game there are other trials meant to punish he directs you back to the gilded arena to seek something called the psycho Marin straight away this is a more intriguing setup than just another - you're being challenged but that's not going to distract us yet the ambition of Darksiders 2 is largely down to the attitude of vigil games at the time they were as they say dumb and crazy but in a good way according to Joe Madureira the idea of throwing in all these new game elements the loot the traversal was accommodated by th queues blessing they liked where the series was going they were continuing to provide the money to make it and it was that freedom that facilitated the ambition the dungeons in the forged lands and the kingdom of the Dead are categorized as LD large dungeon m.d. medium dungeon and st side dungeon it's fairly easy to see which is which the LD is always the main attraction in the area so the foundry or the city of the Dead the MDS would be the cauldron the drench for the Lost Temple and of course the three dead court dungeons in the kingdom and the s T's are things like the weeping crack or the breach stuff that you just happen upon or maybe need to visit in a sidequest some of these s DS have pretty good puzzles I thought the scarp was really well fleshed out but it's hard to consider the breach as a dungeon you could argue that this is going for quantity over quality but I'd rebuke that there are five dungeons in Darksiders one if we include the ashe lines all of which I would consider L DS there are three l DS in Darksiders 2 so we've dropped 2l DS in favor of 13 MDS and s DS overall it's simply an increase in scale not a reduction in quality but somewhat in vigil had second thoughts about the expansive realms thinking that if they'd reduce the length of the game and really focused on the quality of what they had then dark side is too of innovative game it's only here with the three dungeons we're going through now that I agree if there's ever a complaint you'll hear about this game online is that the pacing here is terrible it's just go to three dungeons some of which even rely on yet another collect three routine and this is true this part of the game can be cripplingly boring it's long and has absolutely nothing to break it up if they were going for back-to-back dungeons now would have been the time to really bury things change around the settings the puzzle items the dungeon design philosophies apart from some interesting theming in the psycho Mehran and the elevator in the piracy is tomb this does not happen but you might have thought that this is similar to the forged lands in the same way we had multiple dungeons back-to-back so why wasn't it such a problem there three reasons overwhelm structure the nature of the forge lands and context every one of those dungeons was at the end of a long path to get to the cauldron you went past the weeping crag maybe through it then Bane's wood then the charred pass all of which were stacked with collectibles and chests and enemies it was the same deal for the drench fort and to get to the Lost Temple you had to go through the Nook so there was pacing and a wealth of freeform exploration in between each dungeon while the kingdom of the Dead is packed with things to find and do just like the Forge lands your paths to each dungeon rarely takes you past or shows anything there are two I repeat two dungeons in the kingdom of the Dead that are just down some random staircase that's not enticing the judicata stoom is just hanging out on the right as you head into the spine the psycho Mehran is as we'll see at the gilded arena an area we've already been to there's never anything substantial between you and the next dungeon and so there's no pacing the kingdom's content should have been far better organized on to point to the forged lands are simply more varied than the kingdom there's a lifeless cold ravine and a volcanic charred pass some parts are open and expansive some are closed off in the kingdom of the Dead it's a series of appropriately barren Ashland's connected by bridges of bone or steel it's spectacular but similar so the location of each dungeon is unmemorable and the designers don't have anything to go off for the theming of the dungeon there's no lava or water it's just ash the kingdom is beautiful no doubt but there could have been a few areas that were more about souls or bones or leviathans or something else appropriate for the setting and the final reason is context in the Forge lands you went through the cauldron and the drench fought to restore the makers Forge because you wanted to help the makers and because you needed a makers keen you go to the lost temple to use that key on a construct to helps you over to the foundry the foundry is needed to gain access to the Guardian the only thing that will free the path to the Tree of Life everything has a reason to be a good reason for you to be invested the kingdom of the Dead lacks this quality you're getting the Kings servants not because they're needed for your quest but because the Lord of bones is a dick and he's bargaining with you you're being messed around by him and the Chancellor it's difficult to be invested even for one dungeon let alone three back-to-back and the element of wanting to help is gone too the only likeable person in the entire kingdom is Draven and there's nothing you can do to help him anyway time then to finish these dungeons off at the gilded arena the voice leaves you no doubt the psycho Marin will consume you down to your very soul I have a few despair now that is how you get me excited to play your dungeon the psycho Mehran is not screwing around immediately setting itself as a trial multiple undead stalkers and prowlers attack at the same time by this level a necromancer will have their health carved by a single blow from a stalker and that's on normal difficulty alone is an unexpected way to theme your dungeon but it's nice to have something tangible on top of the visuals it's a shame that doesn't carry over into the puzzles the first puzzle room contains the game's first sequence puzzle you have to press the switches in the order two three one wrong orders will get you mobbed by skeletons firstly why did we need the dead Lords for this why wasn't the gate just removed in death made to press the switches you can't press two switches at the same time even with two dead lon so it's not that either secondly I truly have no clue as how you're supposed to figure out two three one trial and error is an awful way of designing puzzles because more often than not success is caused by luck speaking of awful I might be crazy but in a later combat trial a bone giant will appear with the exact same animation as the ice giant from the veil and the exact same backing track too huh anyway now it's time for the boss no seriously there's nothing else of no the reason I refer to so few puzzles in the psycho marathon is because there aren't any I just can't consider interdictions use a puzzle mechanic we know why puzzles are fun fun comes from having your intelligence creates a successful outcome intelligence is required to find the correct state of every manipulable component including yourself that overcomes the barriers and allows you to reach your goal intelligence is required to make that leap if there's no leap required there's no intelligence required enter interdiction we're immediately off to a bad start to make anything happen you have to wait ages for the dead Lords to get their asses in gear that's an intrinsic failure but the puzzles that incorporate interdiction are incredibly shallow with only a couple pads or a switch at most the dead Lords are never used in tandem with other tools like redemption or the shadow bombs or platforms you're never expected to make leaps there are few if any barriers between first glance and realizing the solution which is always some sequence of having the dead Lords stand on a pad or flip a switch and that's all the more a shame when you can set up what could have been at the start of development vigil are playing around with the concept of speed boots and a gravity reversal mechanic with Maude's fury loci from the Darksiders discord was actually able to realize this in game although it seems the gravity reversal was primarily intended for combat just imagine the puzzles we could have heard with these cut concepts sadly interdiction makes both this dungeon and the judicata stoom mediocre and that's being generous but the final boss is easily the best of the three you're not just fighting Basilius you're up against echidna as well the spider of is lick that fain knew his death this is two birds with one stone the first phase of the fight is a 1v1 Basilius has a smash and a long-range - similar to the raids it feels like a duel because of what seems like evenly matched attacks but it's slightly let down by how far apart his dashes will put you from one another it can start a cycle of endless dodging and never being able to hit the second phase puts a Kidner in the fight she can charge at you and swipe without claws as long as you circular it's very easy to avoid her attacks but the real fight starts with phase 3 Basilius will begin routinely swapping out with the Kidner forcing you to constantly adapt it's a badass-looking fight just far too easy for the boss of the psycho mare on the first encounter was harder than the boss with a kidness split open and her head removed from her shoulders Basilius is bullied by death until he too submits we've got the king's court we've fulfilled our task now we go to the Lord of bones my king what would you have us do what is this I don't like being toyed with they failed me but you have earned my gratitude I will send you to one in my kingdom who knows the way to the Well of Souls but first there are demons that you must face I've already faced and killed many not like this there is great power bound in that Panamint but your shame stays it's unlocking I regret nothing oh and I can see beyond your flesh to where the true battle rages death awakens with the soul splitter a gift from the Lord of bones the Chancellor appears only to aggravate death he wants you of the being that seeks you but he sees no fun and simply telling you who that is here's the problem what awaits us is the second strongest dungeon in the game with easily some of the best puzzles the soul splitter is an awesome tool however we don't know this the information the player has been given is that even after being forced to wade through three dungeons to get some simple directions you're going to have to go through yet another dungeon to find someone else you might have some simple directions I wouldn't blame you if you quit here it could honestly feel like the games taking the piss out of you especially given the state of the previous two dungeons I think the points been made let's put that and the gates to the City of the Dead behind us visually the City of the Dead sets itself apart with its generally much larger playable spaces and green glowing worms who fly overhead a little further in you see a vista of the city and it looks like a city there are spires all manners of buildings that resemble early European architecture kind of like World's End from Dark Souls where cities and structures in the land itself goes to die perhaps that was the idea behind the city or maybe souls just like to have a place to roam freely the beautiful serene tracks from the gilded arena return but that might not be such a good thing given the size of the soundtrack it's amazing how much it repeats the exact same one there's only a list of about three backing tracks for every dungeon in the kingdom of the Dead it would have been nice if they buried this up a bit by far most of your play time will be spent listening to these few dungeon tracks yes but composed a lot for this game but some tracks see use maybe only two or three times when others are heard for hours I think there might have been a bit of inefficiency in the production pipeline nevertheless the main attraction of the city of the Dead is the soul splitter and the puzzles it brings the thing players might first overlook about the soul splitter is the importance of where you activate it the Reaper statue also serves as the weight so you can have up to three pads weighed down as long as you activate it in the right spot this is exactly what the first puzzle shows our lesson well taught and one that we're going to need to know the city of the Dead does have a hub room but it's used in a very creative way just like the foundry the boss door is right in front of us how are we going to energize it the correct way takes you to the first major puzzle but interestingly it comes well after you've walked through another puzzle room a Reaper with no lantern a door that needs energy to open odd huh we'll the first puzzle room is something special you've got a gate and a lever let go of the lever the gate drops and you don't have enough time to make it past Sol Sol splitter right no because you have to split on this side meaning you can only ever get half a soul through the gate but that is enough to grab a corruption bomb and use it on this far switch which releases a movable platform here's the good part there is now a way of getting across you split on top of the platform then you open the gate and the other half of your soul pushes the Reaper through then you simply reform on the other side the leap here is realizing that you can split on top of the platform and that will allow you to move it but it also highlights another issue some players might struggle with knowing that you can climb up on the platform sure it has handles but the player is rarely expected to climb up anything that isn't clearly a Ledge this is the balance you've got a strike when expecting people to make leaps we know that all manipulable components should be clear and so if previous design choices lead some players astray then the revelation might come with that how the hell was I meant to know that rather than uh-oh the second puzzle shows us how it's done it challenges your understanding of the range mechanic and teaches it in the same room at the center of the room is a bridge that will rotate if you pull and hold this lever on the right we want to access the left so logic says salt split rotate the bridge have the other half jump down and go on across but you can't make it to where you want to go because halves of depth can only stray so far from the reaper statue we only need a little more range the solution is simple you soul split on the bridge the lever death still has enough range to turn it and the other death can go far enough on the left to succeed this works because you can split anywhere and there's no indications or previous lessons that suggest where it should be it's up to you to figure out that you should try to appropriately divide up the range and having got that it's a lesson learned for every other puzzle for our success we get a lantern and with that the reasons for the game showcasing doors that need energy and Reapers with no Lantern becomes clear bringing the reward from the second puzzle to areas we saw before the first is satisfying the designers didn't need the players next destination to be somewhere they'd casually passed by earlier but it is and that's because it feels interconnected but why is interconnected level design satisfying interconnectedness in Alex Carlson's words is the sense of satisfaction you get from achieving familiarity after experiencing the alien as you travel more and more you expect to get further away from home so when you see it reconnect coming familiar it's both comforting and enlightening at the same time all of that makes sense to me it's about creating unexpected links that result in a sense of safety it's very instinctual and through experiencing that these virtual worlds are made to feel more real it's beneficial then in more ways than one and that leads on to another point about what makes a good dungeon essentially the best dungeons keep you engaged with goals so you feel like your progress is logical and part of solving a larger problem instead of simply following the path the design is intended for you you won't do something just because it's the only way to go and it can be a huge variety of things that satisfy here restoring individual aqueducts getting a skeleton key collecting heart stones you could even have that lantern because the game had shown us that we needed one in the Pharisees tomb we know we need to get to the pharisee ER but that's an extremely broad goal why are we screwing about in an elevator why are we climbing around the shaft we're doing this because it's the only way to go much like the waterwheel we later realize that we're doing it to find something that will prop up the elevator so we can get in to floor 2 but we needed to know that was our goal before not after moving forward there's a third an equally great puzzle he might end up learning to throw shadow bombs from one depth to another or you might solve it with some clever reaper placement but the city of the Dead is not just puzzles following this the game has you scramble up a shaft to escape death by skewering it's done this before but this is particularly good because it forces you to drop down nearer to the spikes to progress after that you'll find yourself on the ramparts of the city it's a chaotic jumble of ancient buildings overshadowed by the scale of the tree of death this section is a three-part combat gauntlet that introduces the abominations tree-like masses surrounded by a continually damaging miasma you can't do melee damage without taking some yourself so you've got to spend as little time near them as possible or spam lifesteal which is crows for necros and teleport slash for harbingers in groups then their area of denial enemies unless you're focusing on damaging them you stay well away an effective new enemy type but the battles that follow demonstrate something else Darksiders - looks good that's undebatable but in combat there can be so many visual elements that it makes it hard to see what's going on you've got damage numbers slow down elemental VFX Force VFX and all the flashy attack animations from you and your enemies personally I don't mind but combat awareness isn't something you should sacrifice for visuals there's no simple fix for this then I see when tend on making things look worse in smaller groups r1v ones as well but I think having some manner of system that would tone down VFX and reduce damage numbers when there's a large enough amount of enemies on the screen would have done the trick it should be noted that you can turn damage numbers off in the options though having survived the gauntlet were introduced to a new collectible of all the collectables in the game the Nomad gnomes are by far the rarest they're difficult to find and very few only four but if you do manage to get them all you get a particularly fun pair of legendary sights seems like a lot of effort to go to for some sights but this is more of a completionist collectible the name is unsurprisingly a reference to Joe mad so it seems to me like a way of vigil personally challenging secret unders you can tell vigil but funny guys real funny this is one of my favorite locations in the game and it's plain to see why with our skeleton key we access the final puzzle in the city two switches on the floor the open two gates either side of a platform opening both allows half a death to access a third plate that opens the final door to the exit but you need something weighing it down while the full death goes to the exit and we can't even get the full depth there in the first place yet we split and put one death on the plate that opens the closest gate we then use the other death to grab the platform and push it out of the gated room now we simply Sol split on the platform and have one death push while the other stands on the plates you push the Reaper through to the other side use the platform to weigh the final plate down and job done the leap pair isn't coming up with some new and interesting way of using mechanics it's simply being able to think far ahead enough to figure out the right sequence of inputs and that's no worse a design philosophy as we'll come to see the saga of puzzles inspired by the gilded arena second we'll go on to make some of the best in the game and for the ultimate example of interconnectivity when you push the switch on this huge beam platform it begins to descend down all the way through the city of the Dead finally ending up in the very first hub room the energy beam hits the place above the boss door releasing the gate now this is a boss arena the wailing hosts clearly has parallels to Cthulhu in appearance alone but there's more than just that Cthulhu city R'lyeh is also a city of the Dead and that's really as far as the connection goes the wailing host isn't unlike other huge looming beasts in video games it relies on sweeps and smashes to get the job done the smashes are avoidable with timing and because the sweep doesn't cover the entire depth of the platform you simply need to be on the correct half to avoid it the fire Faye's is a matter of lining these attack patterns and quickly exploiting the rest period primarily with harvesters revenge or a heavy smash attack at two points in the fight the host sinks down and raises an army of soul skeletons an opportunity for anyone with life or wrath steal but a problem when the host comes back the mob makes his attacks harder to dodge and your attacks harder to land as combos are interrupted that encourages controlling the skeletons which means trading short-term damage on the boss for long time not being hassled fun intense decisions given the hosts strength this is one of the fights where you really want those 5 potions when you finally get the prompt death doesn't fail to impress this is easily one of his most memorable executions finally you can meet the one who knows the way to the Well of Souls and who else would it be but the crow father well anyone really the makers can't enter the kingdom of the Dead they're too old the crow father is significantly older yet Harry is impossible he explains to you that the key to the well is divided in two and the only the tree knows where to take you next the conversation then suddenly jumps from a cutscene to an in-game conversation and it seems as if a line was lost instead of questioning the crow father death surprisingly asks absalom lives why does he bring that up all of a sudden and why did this need to be an in-game conversation we only have one option to ask how to restore humanity supposedly killing the whaling host would have been enough in other times but now a dark power draws from the well and only the souls of the Nephilim can restore those of humanity death must sacrifice his own kin to save humankind that's an important moment but it's trapped in this broken conversation and why would killing the whaling host resurrect humanity in past times this is resurrection we're talking about as if the lack of the whaling host would have made every human immortal Darksiders law is clear for the most part but this conversation is contradictory my guess is the dark side is too wasn't developed sequentially the City of the Dead clearly has a huge amount of effort put into it yet this conversation right after is completely broken the threads that link the realms seem to have been an afterthought just ponder this the tree of life isn't where you need to be to resurrect humanity you need the well of souls to get to the well of souls you need to speak to the Lord of bones to do that you have to ride through the kingdom of the Dead to traverse the breech ring the ballot serpents pink scale the eternal throne then because the Chancellor is a dick you have to fight the champion of the arena but to do that you have to get three animus stones then you finally get to talk to the Lord of bones but he won't tell you either one of souls is until you bring him the dead court so then you have to go through three entire dungeons to get the dead core the Lord of bones just kills them and then tells you that he doesn't even know where the wall of souls is but he knows someone who does so then you have to go all the way through the city of the Dead to find that the guy who knows is the crow father and that the well of souls is at the tree the tree we started at it's like a comedy cartoon even though the kingdom of the Dead has some fantastic content it feels completely pointless narrative ly we did all of that for two bits of information too sentences go-to-guy in city while a tree just imagine how much more engaging the kingdom would have been while your actions given appropriate context Darksiders two's development was efficient they made this in two-and-a-half years so that's Clara's day but it feels to me like some parts of the narrative had the budget of a triple-a game and others were made in five minutes with fifty P in a packer chewing gum this is one of them after the City of the Dead it's doubtful we're gonna want to quit the game that was a masterful dungeon the biggest filter is going to be getting from the judicata stoom to here and so the last direction we're ever gonna look is back the kingdom's weaker dungeons and pacing fail it you'll have far less motivation to look around if all you want is to move on but we're not gonna let anything go to waste now the death is stronger than ever it's time to tie up some loose ends at the top of the breach you might have noticed an inaccessible reaper statue across the bridge they'll be a ruin with a small traversal section followed by some chests and another reefa statue shooting at nothing if you twist it around and have it faced the breach it'll hit a plate and open what was locked with the first Reaper statue you can point it right back at the ruin lowering the gaint guarding a high end chest even if it drops nothing much you get four chests total just for doing this it's a brilliant into dungeon puzzle the next attraction is in the mall tucked away underground there we find a tower called the Sentinels gaze the puzzle hair is worthy of the city of the Dead there's one bomb and multiple corruption crystals throughout the tower the trick is to have one death climb the tower and another repeatedly throw bombs up to the first who can then clear out the corruption at the top you'll find a chest and something else behind it a curious pit suspiciously positioned and unlike anything we've seen before well obviously we should jump in welcome to bone ribbon the kingdoms major side dungeon bone ribbons set apart by its beauty everywhere in this game is gorgeous but the lighting and cave like structures are really something furthering its Kay Venus bone Riven is a very linear dungeon taking you from combat encounter to puzzle in what seems like a cycle until the end combats always good but the puzzles are a bit too on the easy side the core mechanic is slowly raising gates meaning you do have enough time to get past when you come off the pads but only if it's been raised far enough off the ground interesting enough the first time but the second third and fourth don't really expand on it the final encounter incorporates bone ribbons unique bug spawn is they spawn the box yeah I know might not seem like much but this encounter you're up against multiple scarabs in a room full of spores you've got to divide up attention do you want to risk bursting the Hulk's down or do you want the long-term safety without the spawn is on the whole a good dungeon next up is the lair of the deposed King a hidden tomb in the Leviathans gorge it houses a lesson II of decrepit buildings and even keeps the kingdom's death two minutes deaths but it's real function is to guard our ghoul the king before the Lord of Bones mentioned by Draven and the Chancellor our ghoul lies behind an army of his I see skeletons and he is a huge challenge even well after most players have completed the kingdom on apocalyptic this fight requires a finely tuned build just to survive a single hit I don't have a problem with this because making someone who was supposedly as strong as Argyll actually strong in-game a forces you to respect his character more and B gives you more reason to come back later both healthy if you remember back to near the start of the game we accepted a quest that would have a skill every being the thought itself death our goal was one of them so was a kid now all we've got left is BAE Thea and gore would now would be a good time to cross the last names off the list gore would is tucked deep within the weeping crag and there's not much to say because he goes down at about 15 seconds you do fight him again in the crucible but the same can't be said for bait there they fear is a spectacular boss fight you didn't need me to tell you that just look at it mechanically she relies on lasting continuous fire damage so being under level here is a huge issue but equally and just like Gore would being over leveled takes the boss down before you know it the reward looks the part and the execution animation is worth the entire ordeal but not knowing when to come tackle these bosses at all not even a hint is going to result in a very small proportion of the player base fighting the bosses intended these are optional hidden bosses who you hunt in the context of proving you are the real reaper they should be a challenge not either insanely easy or insanely hard Argyll I can forgive because of who he is but it's a serious problem when applied to everyone else it's a real shame that not even the definitive edition introduces scaling I was recently reminded just how much enemy health changes the game's combat for the better or the worse as I played God of War in God of War on Hard difficulty enemies early on seem to have an incredibly large amount of health so I'd eventually just find the quickest way of dealing damage to them and repeatedly perform the same attacks over and over it got boring anyway on the flipside both ear and gore would go down in a fly you want enemy health to match the amount of time that the enemy can force you to think Darksiders to generally hits this nail on the head smaller enemies can be slaughtered after pulling off a couple of badass attacks but larger enemies take enough time to kill such that they get to show off everything they can do this is mainly because larger enemies rarely show up in groups unlike the smaller enemies who as a group will allow them to use a variety of attacks despite how quickly you can kill the individuals you also have to account for the learning period because the player can be made to think for longer if they've never fought it before so new enemies are often introduced with far more health than usual with loose ends tied up it's time to go to the tree of death and put the kingdom of the Dead behind us the tree takes us to a place called lost light one of heavens outposts beyond the gates of the White City the crow father explains to death that the angel key was hidden here instead of the White City to hide it from the schemes of the Angels well has power over all life it does though I suspect that is more to your question the one rider asked it before never knew of the well why was it kept from us for fear of what you may have done with that knowledge the Nephilim could not be allowed to ravage creation any longer they needed to stay dead then well can bring them back and so we get to the voting yes the well is the font of our life angel demon mankind even Nephilim but from their blades they wrought chaos and from that was born corruption you were right to destroy them and it seems much like the true nature of the tree the well was hidden to keep it from the schemes of the fall we see again that death is torn between his own people and his quest to resurrect humanity but first we need to get into the well and the angel key isn't going to find itself lost light is beautiful in the sense we like to understand it golden skies cliffs orange leaves on trees calm water flow but in its technical sense it's no more beautiful than anywhere else we visited that's a testament to Joe Maddon his art team the ride up to the crystal spire is similar to the kingdom's equivalent in that it showcases the beauty of the realm and different in the where one teased everything the realm has to offer another does not it's not hard to guess which is which what lost liked has to offer aside from the crystal spire and the dungeon that lies behind it is nothing a beautiful environment then only for the sake of having one there is an attempt to keep things interesting with the teas for a new enemy type and a couple of chests mostly successful but it's not exactly covering for the absence of anything else personally I'm not greatly let down by the lack of side content in the realm bitterness - it is rooted in the fact that it's not as large and expansive as the kingdom or the forged lands and for a realm as beautiful as heaven think of everything they could have done missed potential is what hurts for some people but if that potential was realized it would have come with a sacrifice of pacing we've gone from the beautiful almost familiar Forge lands to the vicious dry kingdom of the dead and now to an outpost of heaven itself everything is increasing in its grandeur and its unfamiliarity we've also gone from large expansive realms with loads of side content to a far denser content structure despite the pointlessness of the kingdom the act by act progression is pacing itself fairly well act 3 needs to get the wheel spinning and that's exactly what happens I think most people who've played through loss light would agree that the dungeon and the boss fights were fantastic sure it would have been awesome if they fully fleshed it out but realistically given the time and resources at vigils disposal you'd sacrifice pacing and the quality of what we do get but before we get into that and ambush waits from a horde of corrupted angels heaven or not there is no refuge from corruption here blind a player coming through will be lost light as a brain it's heavenly but immediately being attacked by these angels shows that even in the purest of places corruption is taking hold Nathaniel shows up halfway through the fight to assist he explains that if it's a key death once the Archon is the person to talk to the archons job is to parent to the darkness and to record everything he sees in the ivory Citadel a grand archive taken now by corruption let's go meet him and try not to get distracted by this good god there is literally no better phrase for this but where is the Tree of Life it should be kind of hard to miss and wait a minute if the tree connects every realm in the dark side is universe then why does lost light and have one I mean this is just a pretty bunch of floating rocks it's an outpost for heaven not a full-on realm impossible we did get distracted back on track the Archon doesn't sidestep the point he knows why you're here then you will give me the key I have guarded the key for centuries it is mine and I will not part with it lightly not now corruption spreads in our city in our hearts only I remain pure a beacon against the darkness helpless to push it back we are not all helpless akka perhaps not after the seals were broken and hell's legions loosed upon the earth many divine relics were lost one the rod of our affair could help reverse what has happened here I dare not retrieve the rod myself the gates to the White City are closed to any angel who visits earth but you are no angel acquire the rod and I will clear a path into my Citadel there you will find the key to the Tree of Life as for what you will find on earth after you face it even you may curse the name of war leaving so soon odd that the Archon says key to the Tree of Life he means the well of souls right if you continue to talk to the Archon he reveals that the pull he stares into is the only path he knows to earth it once had a tree of life but the child counsel burned it to the ground to prevent the angels or demons meddling with humans the Archon is technically breaking the rules by even having a portal but not everyone who pays the council before we head to earth we can talk to Nathanael he gives you a side quest the lost soul which much to death displeasure brings you to the chancellor the soul Nathaniel requested is not in the kingdom of the Dead but the Chancellor knows who it belongs to now he'll give you the name if you become his hitman the sole arbiter an enemy of the Lord of bones has something the Chancellor wants kill him get it back and death will receive a reward a good set up and an excuse to go through the sole arbiters maze I have to assume that given the amount of work that went into the maze they didn't want anyone to forget about it and as such this is just a reminder the Chancellor's quarry is a separate side quest his information isn't necessary Nathaniel directs you to Miriah for more information Maria knows of the soul but it's not an angel anymore it's a dragon now a demon an angel has joined their ranks and if you've played the first game you'll know who but like the Chancellor Maria has something else she tells you of one of her creations gone an experiment to create constructs without the soul of a maker it went wrong and it's up to you to kill it I think it's clear what the lost soul is about now it's a cool narrative context to go find the late-game side missions if you hadn't already we'll deal with them later bringing your findings to Nathaniel Angus him greatly as he confirms that the angel you sought is now the destroyer who rules over what remains of Earth maybe we'll meet him [Music] yeoreum what are the hell Carter on earth Jannis Earth's introduction is a love letter to Darksiders one back in the post-apocalyptic bone land fighting alongside Uriel and the hell guard this is before her interactions with war so she only restrains herself from attacking you because you saved her life she's a lost purposeless warrior why are they hell guards still on earth lost Uriel in case you haven't noticed where else would we go all of creations are what happened here but the hell guard marched before the seals were broken White City is closed to us we can never go home she tells you to follow the trail of corpses left by her brethren and presents you with a gun urals torment is bittersweet because despite her melancholy we already know her role in what's to come for us we're here to find the rod of our fell there's just the remains of the human race between us and it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you the road is almost whole and there's only one piece left to find if you played the first game the entire earth segment may feel particularly in or stanwyck the reason there's so many more realms in Darkseid is - compared to the earth of Darksiders one is partly down to the restrictions of building post-apocalyptic environments how much can you do with derelict buildings how well there's literally anywhere else on earth lend itself to Darksiders gameplay so it's good that they cut down on Earth for the second game but what we got has never looked better because it's never looked to us rain streaking down the sides of buildings the rubble that fills windows the pulsating glimmer from streetlights that still struggle on even now the feeling here is not just because of what we see but also because if its place in our journey we've gone from the beauty of lost light to the haunting graveyard of Earth from a place of dreams and wonders to a place familiar to us all contrast is good for keeping the player engaged and the sudden change keeps us guessing it's right at home in act 3 there is some hot air to clear about earth you are not forced to use the guns you can use your usual equipment it is also not an hour-long shooting gallery there's two weapon types which both change your play style significantly there are four enemies specifically for Earth which must all be tackled in their own way there are also chests a side quest to help Uriel and other such secrets earth is obviously intended to mix up the gameplay and to that end vigil decided to emulate left4dead they nailed it the swarm present a serious threat and being overwhelmed is tense as a result it's true that you do not have to use the guns but it's also true that you're putting yourself at a disadvantage by doing so you want distance between you and the swarm all zombies attack extremely fast so when they group up you'll be torn to shreds if you're careless the tension works into the narrative by turning a previously aggressive playstyle on its head you're forced to view your enemy is a threat and take the situation seriously earth isn't just a wasteland it's ground zero for the apocalypse and you understand that from both a gameplay and a visual aspect I think the Knauss is a highlight these seem to take their inspirations for more of the walls in both appearance and sound the Norse doesn't have much in the way of attacks but it does put out hordes of stingers redemptions a bit out of its debt and the gore Hammer you're probably using is ineffective thankfully the game leaves an angel machine gun in the area which deals with the Horde and the boss itself thanks to its shotgun blast the intimidation factor is the nossas biggest strengths and clinically it serves to show you the benefits and disadvantages of each weapon as for the weapons the recoil feels about right but aiming sensitivity is undoubtedly too high and the camera uncomfortably close to death yet I still think the guns worked well because they've clearly been designed specifically to fight these enemies the angel machine gun has a barrage of bullets for the stragglers a wide shot gun like explosion for the more grouped enemies and a ground blast for when they come too close but it's not rock-paper-scissors optimizing the time to use each one creates a learning curve the gore hammer isn't so diverse but equally as fun grenades are sown and detonated with a tap there's a missed enough for comfortably fighting individual enemies but you can do just as much damage by lining the floor as a trap I like the third-person shooting mechanics in this game what I don't like is that they aren't as good as the normal combat earth is an hour long so you're spending all that time using weapons that are generally less fun to use than what you had previously the normal Darksiders 2 gameplay part is traversal puzzles and combat everywhere you go there's a mix of those three pillars but on earth there is only combat that's the exact opposite of variation I understand people's frustration with this level even though I still like it it would have been far better had it been designed like a normal dungeon just with guns instead of melee with the third and final piece the rod of our fell is made whole death returns the rod to the Archon who cleanses the path to the ivory Citadel but you're no angel you need wings seek out describe most ancient he still wanders the ruins he can help you end your quest yeah the Hippogriff mounts returned from the first game but the following section is only a sightseeing tour you don't get to fight anything although after earth more shooting might not have been a good idea the ivory citadel is the first dungeon after the City of the Dead and it's also an LD so you can expect quality in the very first room you'll met with a black pool and a door blocked by corruption there's nowhere to go but up there's a lever and turning it low as an artifact just like the one we saw before down at the pool the light is shared from one to another and the corruption is burned away an empowered artifact then can be used to clear corruption and that is one of the core mechanics of the Citadel a benefit of having dense content in the realms that followed the kingdom is that you get the exact opposite effect with the music use it feels like every track is new the citadel's piece is similar to those for the other dungeons in that it's remarkably relaxing its focusing and a massive Melisa Kaplan provided backing vocals for quite a few tracks in the score but this is where her angelic voice is most noticeable she also helped kid out on Assassin's Creed 1 & 2 the first new enemy you'll fight is the vengeful spirit it isn't capable of much except strong-arming you into equipping Redemption that means you'll want a total of 4 items for this dungeon redemption soul splitter death-grip and the upcoming voidwalker you don't need the rip equip to use it but it's less reliable if it's not on controller this presents a problem because you're gonna want at the very least one wrath ability on your quickselect but that still only leaves three slots you should have been able to program far more here having items on the d-pad with left bumper for example the vengeful spirits litter the walkways of the entire dungeon but thankfully you can instantly execute them because they're considered small enemies if you remember that redemptions not needed further up we come into the ivory Citadel's harp like the drench bought and every LD before it also like the drench fort you're trying to manipulate flow but instead of introducing water you're trying to cleanse it and clear the path to this door but unlike the drench fort and every other dungeon for that matter the ivory Citadel doesn't really have puzzle rooms they're more puzzle areas a network of them with gates parkour corruption in these blue glowing plates some puzzle games have a much heavier burden than Darksiders the design so the puzzles are just a logical part of the dungeon or the world where it would make sense for the contraption to work in the way it does when puzzles have this quality they're more immersive retro actively because you don't have to flex your suspense of disbelief to get past it an example of this is in the foundry where much of what you're doing makes sense of course it's logical the opening a sluice gate would reactivate this waterwheel and then drive the supply line it makes sense that it wasn't turning beforehand but why would there be this insane network of portals and platforms in a library any lore or dialogue could have helped us here instead of leaving it up to speculation but that's far from a big deal the first puzzle has a simple setup there's two paths the first pad opens the way to the second part and the second part opens up this trapdoor but when you're split the trapdoor doesn't help you it just leads to the second part again and is full death you can't access that area so the solution is splitting on the trapdoor opening it and then reforming beneath a good example of how the leap you're expected to make doesn't always have to be about connecting puzzle mechanics you can use the world itself why wouldn't the Reaper statue be affected by gravity moving up from there you can death-grip a shadow bomb and clear the paths as usual but that's the last time you'll do something so basic a head waits a new tool the void Walker at first glance is just a rip off portal gun but as we'll come to see it's so much more than that with this new tool navigating the interconnected puzzle area becomes straightforward which is in itself a tutorial past a further trapdoor the void Walker starts to come into its own if you hold the fire button you'll get a charged portal which raises the speed with which you or an object exits unlike what you'd expect the game first shows off the vertical application chuck a portal down somewhere easy charge an upwards facing portal and take off right into the second new enemy the aphids are much more like it they attack with quick flurries similar to the kingdoms raids but if you give them time to breathe they'll empower a stronger flurry attack three swipes with extra range that makes them far more dangerous than the raids and encourages a far more aggressive play style from you you've got to get them out of the way quickly you might do it in style the execution for these ones is really something but let's not get in a twist about that the portals in the second puzzle area are simple but one of the paths is blocked and an artifact stands before it following how it worked at the start you can deduce that you need to use portals to bring a charged artifact to a dead one so what lies behind the corruption yeah it's a puzzle no prizes for guessing but this one especially exciting at the bottom level there's two plates only one you can enter and you clearly need to fly a long way to get out the other end so the top one should be charged but there's a gate can't progress here then going further up you stop before a trapdoor and to wait levers if you look down you can see the room we were just in activating both weight levers lowers the gate and opens the trapdoor but death can't make it through in time the statue can statue above the trapdoor each death sits on a lever and watch as the statue falls through the portal and shoots past the gate this puzzle is masterful two elements we're familiar with on their own combined to create a problem we have to apply knowledge of both to overcome above we're met with this gorgeous Vista and another artifact above another corrupted pool we know how to charge them but hell this gorgeous Vista is here for a reason it gives you a clear angle down to the same artifact we use to get in and through that the first thing we did in this area connects cleanly to the last that even now never fails to put a grin on my face and so the first of the three water flows have been restored I gotta say though I wish we could swim through the aqueduct like in the drench fall past the second door from the harbin into the third puzzle area we're faced with the skeleton lot and one way to go you could argue that this next puzzle is the best in the dungeon and you could argue that it's the worst you want to get past this Golden Gate but in your way are these two doors each lever controls a door it's pretty clear that since we need both deaths to lower the two doors we're not going to be able to jump across nothing we can do with the statue either we're gonna need to have a portal on the right door have it raised have the left or lowered and step through a portal over here to shoot us over the gap the challenge is how we're going to set that up with the right door lowered you can personally put a portal on the Left door and then another portal over here the trick is at this point to release the levers unless all the doors slide back up you shoot another portal through this portal to hit the right door then just replace the one here set up the shot and fly on through smart but is this puzzle fair it tests your forward thinking ability more than anything else and it's mostly what I was referencing back in the city of the Dead there are just so many relevant States created by the doors the portals the plates the deaths the statue but the game doesn't need to teach you how to think ahead what I tell you about you is that you can shoot a portal through another portal it's irrelevant whether or not the void Walker could do it in the first a vast number of players won't have seen that and they will probably be thinking with portals you couldn't shoot a portal through another portal in Portal Darksiders 2 sets this up in such a way that we can clearly see a plate on the other end perhaps intended as a lesson but I don't know if it's enough I can't know but I do think that if you're going to take inspiration from another game you should be very careful but no false assumptions are being made based on that game's rules I think the rule of thumb for puzzles that have you discover a new way to manipulate a component is that if this new way makes sense logically for example gravity then it's your own intelligence being tested if however there was no way to know you could manipulate it in that way it's not fair moving on with that puzzle done we once again burn the corruption away leaving only one flow remaining similarly to how the puzzles combine the soul splitter and the void Walker there's a traversal section here that combines it with a death grip you swing into a charged portal to get across a huge gap further along it's shown that you can wall run into portals it's a shame they don't take this any further because this is the peak of the game's traversal right after that we finally get some much-needed payback throughout the entire Citadel you're taunted by this irritating spindly looking angel thing even so moments after you arrive in lost light this is the payoff the sycophants live up to their hype they teleport so quickly that it's hard to get to hit in generally you can expect them to appear somewhere behind you so it's possible though not reliable to predict where they'll appear and attack accordingly this is no trouble for necromancer's because the summons whilst unlock them doing small increments of damage very quickly much like how they damage you you can't just tank their hits and hyper armor through them they'll stun lock you too so if you can't get a hit in less than a second after they appear you're better off dodging it's the quickest engagement you can get in the entire game the uncertainty and fun of predicting where they're going to appear makes them not only an effective new enemy type but also a highlight of the dungeon speaking of highlights the final puzzle area presents itself like all the others we know the drill now there's a charged artifact we've got to get it somewhere further down the line this area revolves around it revolves around it does seriously the levers turn the doors and so on splitter is pretty obvious here there's a platform you can use to get the Reaper through like in the city in the first revolving room there's a dead artifact and some corruption for it to burn solutions simple use the charged one at the starts link it to the plate the corruptions hiding no but you shouldn't be wrong we can see that there's a clear shot on the plate I think it should have been made more obvious that this was inaccessible the real solution though more than makes up for it there's a second revolving room and a second lever a plate to your left and an accessible plate that looks inside the room and when you turn the door a plate right in front of you this like before is a test of forward planning the assumption is probably that you need to get in there so how we put a portal on the plate in front of us release the lever so that it rotates around then put another portal on the plate to our left now we have a shot on the far plate shooter charged one over there pull the lever and we can get in but there's nothing here this is a false assumption used to get you to think about something you've missed what have we missed well the reason we're doing this is to charge the artifacts and now we have a portal openly facing an artifact okay then we go all the way back to the start to connect the two rooms charge the artifact then release the lever connecting that to the one that burns away the corruption using revolving doors to creatively expand on a previous puzzle mechanic using a false assumption effectively and connecting the start at the beginning in this chain reaction of revelations makes this easily the best puzzle in the game I know I've been talking for ages about the citadel's puzzles but it's got example after example of what a good puzzle should be I hope it was worth it with the pull cleanse the weight of the angel key is clear but before it seems one last corrupted angel stands in your way Jumeirah thus prime unlike every other boss in the game Jumeirah is boss fight' revolves around a tool I'll give you three guesses which one so then there should be a portal looking at Jumeirah and a portal behind you all you have to do is get him to shoot himself I originally thought that the camera would be a problem here but it's not you can use the portal to look directly at Jumeirah just dodge whenever he fires off an attack in Phase two backed off arrives and he gains a smash attack that can't be avoided by simply jumping you've got to teleport yourself which is a really cool creative solution and one that you have to think on the spot it's unlikely anyone could come up with it let alone enact it the first time so if that kills you you could say it's unfair but that's also unlikely and if you fold twice it's not the game's fault at the final phase the slam reveals another plate underneath the Gemara what's interesting is that there are two logical ways of using this but there's only one that will work first is to have a portal on the floor and a portal next to you so the projectiles go up his ass but if you examine the attack it's a sweep of the ground so it makes more sense to have a portal up high and try to get him to sweet over the floor portal you have to pick from two logical solutions in the middle of a battle and that's more than most elder bosses have ever done [Music] where is it please I'll tell you everything was careless even the most noble among us abandoned his senses and took of his sword it happened to the arc on the other it was that damned pool they're useless forbidden for a reason what of a vision he saw within rent his mine the corruption spread from him he made the city a slaughterhouse or professing his own purity venturi the Archon fled the crystal spire I know you have it the archon is easily one of the best moments in the franchise and I'd put a good chunk of that up to stains of heresy that you hear in the background it's the combination of the clang of metal strikes the war drums and the angelic chanting that make it such a spectacular theme I like the rock cover from Road scythe even more than the original but alongside that you have this arena like platform and stone carved bases watching it feels like a jewel of gods let's win it the Archon will blast corrupted stone at you in a series of three when he stops you've got a window and that window is enforced if you get greedy you'll be hit by an explosive AoE there's little if any warning so it's a consistent damage dealer until you're used to it what's especially cool is that while the Archon is attacking you can return the favor with air attacks you can get yourself a pumped of rocks which allows skilled players to greatly optimize damage after the first phase the Archon will fly far above death's reach where he'll repeat his attack flurries but also charge a slam that gives you an opportunity death-grip up and smash him out of the sky it takes quite a few blows to get him down but you can stay in the air for a long while if you learn your combos the Sun Dicon allows for an execution but it's only enough to slice off his wings grounded and weak the Archon relies even more on his usual blasts of corruption before you can exploit the archons weakness too much she sprouts corrupted wings of rotten cartilage with these he'll teleport to the edges of the arena and fly straight at you whenever he stops is your window to attack which means you want to dodge as late as possible if not you waste your time traveling it's intense but it's not enough I think slicing the rock in half was a little bit cheesy but undoubtedly worth it that scene never fails to put a smile on my face but this does highlight another example of the soundtracks odd integration upon killing some bosses the soundtrack just suddenly changes from the boss theme to war against death a problem most notable here after you kill the Archon it's just a cut off - there's not even a transition and just before in the cutscene leading up to the arc on the music is quiet and barely even present seems like mods could really revamp the game soundtrack programming but I'm not counting on it with the angel key we got what we came for but there's a little more to talk about at the ivory Citadel firstly you can continue your conversation with the Jumeirah he tells you that most of the damage done here was at the hands of the Archon himself he fought off tens of corrupted angels even though he was the one who spread it it's interesting that Jumeirah seems to be the only character we know who recovers from corruption this is probably because he redirect his own angelic attack so they hit him instead of you more interestingly the weapon you got for defeating Jumeirah is called mortis if you played the original version you might not remember it then you'd have to buy this as DLC for $0.99 so what makes it so special at first glance it's no different from the other legendary weapons good stats cool design mildly interesting perk but most of the time completely outclassed by an upgraded possessed weapon this is all true but mortis in the Darksiders universe is a lot more important it's a grand abomination which with an F limbs weapons of mass destruction they use these to slaughter entire worlds on their conquest so they're extremely significant only death knows their secrets but here in war had to work together to stop them from falling into the wrong hands in the Darksiders book the abomination vault by re mammal which I highly recommend to many Darksiders fans it's no masterpiece but if you love the universe it's worth your time mortis now is considered to be half dead originally it was capable of absorbing a blow from pretty much anything you could imagine and redirecting the energy as something profane that would hunt down and kill someone anyone who the attacker held there a pretty horrific concept on the snow what happens in the game but I appreciate its inclusion for the context after Chimaera's boss fight the incredible puzzles enemies visuals and music I have a simple conclusion the ivory Citadel is the best dungeon in the game and the series and if you count the Archon as part of the dungeon maybe the genre because I'm struggling to find anything from the of Zelda that tops it the ivory Citadel is in my opinion when Darksiders became a jack of all trades and a master of all of them as well bit hyperbolic but you know what I mean the crow father directs you to the final realm define the demon key but there is not that wave at shadow it has a lot to live up to shadows edges hellish no doubt but not in the sense that it's volcanic and populated by evil legions in the sense that it's dead there is nothing here but destruction be it the demonic spikes the embedded corruption or the black hole known as the abyss that glares down at everything beneath a theme that emulates emptiness directionless and echoed whispers haunts the background it's a brilliantly realized atmosphere austere goth waits outside the entrance to the stone this realm was the home of Samael the blood friends he would never let his realm fall this far yet here it is corrupted and dead the fate of every world we visited austere goth says there is no fighting something that only seeks to erase creation rumours spread of Sam miles absence and of Lilith's rule death knows that name and he isn't surprised in honor of the abyss you can find the abyssal breastplate in the fourth and final death - if you've been collecting all the pages of the Dead and continue to do so throughout the blackstone the abyssal armor is a long-term goal with each piece providing massive stat boosts the promise of the abyssal set is a major incentive to compete in the crucible and to collect the pages of the Dead thankfully they made sure that the abyssal armor would level with the player so it's a permanently useful set to have with its only weakness being its lack of elemental resistance at the end of our path lies the black stone not to be confused with the black throne from dark side as one dark side is three isn't out at the time of making this video so I'm hoping they'll have another dungeon named similarly the black gnome the black bone wait the first room in the black stone leads to something that seems like a hellish imagining of what we saw in the ivory Citadel a hall connected by plates but green not blue the void Walker is useless and there's nothing we can do but go back climb the stairs and seek audience with Lilith or at least beckon her out of hiding queen of demons mother of Lies lava betrayer temptress and traitor creations most exquisite lie that's what Lilith has described us as the Bride of Lucifer she's easily among the most powerful beings in the Darksiders universe and now that Lucifer's rule is threatened she's moved on to Samael Lilith refers to you as a son at title death refuses but it's true Lilith created the Nephilim from angels and demons and from Absalom the rest performed why did you not cast the amulet into the abyss as the council ordered why bear their souls if not to one day undo your sin my see this corruption was born and Absalom it rises from him like a black tide a new mother must help me stop it where is this even key in Samael keeping but he is gone now and the key has vanished lilith alters your void walker so that it might affect time as well as space if that's not got you excited for the puzzles to come what will so why would Lilith want so desperately for you to restore the Nephilim if she made them why can't she do it again at first lilith learned the power to craft life from the makers after discovering what she had done the child council took her knowledge away to restore the balance but they didn't take everything Lilith being the one who transformed Nathaniel's lost soul from an angel to the destroyer himself if you listen it's she who speaks the line serve in heaven or rule in hell you can question Lilith further about why some miles gone and where exactly the key will be she says she doesn't know Samael secrets but that there is a power struggle among the demons now that the apocalypse has started it's curious that the altered void Walker we get is called the phase Walker some believe that this is a reference to Borderlands Lilith stability was phase walk so it's probably not a coincidence let's see it in action the phase Walker does not need a connection simply placing it on a green plate will open a portal to the past that destroyed platform we saw earlier is now our trap the Lords champion appropriately has a chain that he'll used to swipe you towards it its attacks are extremely quick dangerous and have a surprisingly high range making it alone stronger than most of the remnants of lost light it becomes more of a struggle when the game decides you need to fight three of them and a group of lesser demons - I still love it when games do this it's a way of reinforcing a sense of danger and respect in the player when there is such a large contrast between a basic fight in a new area compared with a later fight in an old area it's a way of telling you we're not messing around anymore which leads us smoothly onto the first puzzle this is where the phase Walker sees the best use it can easily be overwhelming at first glance but for the latest puzzles in the game I think feeling out of your depth is about right all over the room our time plates and space plates in the present we can see the chests that no doubt contains the skeleton key for a door over there but it's embedded and there's no artifacts to be found scouting out the past reveals three things the corruption was once young enough for a shadow bomb to destroy it there's a shadow bomb at the right of the room and you're about to get your ass kicked a reskin of the Lich's the malevolence are not these demons summon a portal that literally rains Hellfire the only practical way to escape is to run underneath straight towards them high health and very dangerous plus the shockingly agile base demons even the few separate enemies in this room can be a challenge in the present you can death grip portal into the room above but there's nothing there in the past it's inaccessible until you weigh down this pad clearly we need to split with 1 death above and having access to a bomb and the other death below the solution comes into view we chuck the bomb through the portal into the hands of the other death who can then clear the corruption before it ever has a chance to block the chest in the present now that is what I call a time-travel puzzle an excellent example of good complex puzzle design past the skeleton door it's confirmed that the black stone has an especially disjointed design unlike most other dungeons there is a hub room that you'll navigate across very linearly as he progress and on each branch only one skill is tested the first leads to a lengthy traversal section and the second a puzzle room the third branch of the hub leads naught is clearly a throne a statue of Samael towers over it but it crumbles and falls into the clutches of the abyss the charred Council says only one Horseman even to the Past know this visit is in fact no not a soul a hand over the key it could be our little secret what's always so chilling about this scene is that Samael knows in an instant exactly who was entered is caught and why it's been implied since the first game that saw miles power is omniscience the ability to know everything from a perfect you'll find me strong enough Sam I have yes whoever overcome many obstacles to stand here before me but sometimes Samael honors the archon he is easily one of the best in the franchise for the most part Samael relies on rapid teleportations and quick devastating attacks the challenge is dodging well enough so that you can get a hit in before he teleports away like a scarier version of the sycophant the intensity is what makes this fight you need to be redirecting constantly desperation will result in the slow 3rd dodge which leaves you a sitting duck so perfect pacing and timing is key everytime you get enough damage in and that's not much Samael reappears in his throne and fires balls of well fire at you this exists more to mix it up it's genuinely difficult to be hit by these which is a shame at 1/3 Health's a mile reforms the bridge and invites you to attack him in his final phase his attacks are stronger and instead of firing balls he summons burning runes these appear quickly so quickly that after dodging off one you might end up going straight into another the timing is tight defeating Samael reveals his true motive this wasn't a battle over the key this was a battle over whether you're strong enough to complete your task the fight ends with only a scratch on his face but it's enough as it seems Samael drops the key before you and that's that Samael might have been awesome the new enemies might have been cool and the puzzle might have been great but there was one puzzle there was one traversal section the black stone is over before you know it the ivory Citadel was massive it had two bosses in a full section on earth before it shadows edge had nothing you could complete the entire realm in an hour given the standard set and the potential of the phase Walker it's disappointingly short this is not what fast pace should look like The Crow father explains the past the gates to the well there is no returning deaths not giving up now so the crow father warns him of something else that lies behind those doors corruption seed it shows a champion this is interesting because until now we had assumed that corruption was created in Absalom now it's implied that he is simply corruptions champion will come to see which is true later but why does death act surprised he saw Absalom at the gates to the well before going to the kingdom so nothing the CRO father says here should be a surprise to him death asks whether the CRO father is testing him the tree the keys the well every direction death has had so far is from the CRO father he responds that death tests himself for what he's done okay seriously now is someone having a laugh why does the CRO father keep coming out with random meaningless contradictory garbage how was death testing himself Samael was testing him you could argue that the tree was testing him but death has been shown only to want this said and done this is right before the well of souls the narrative can't be making mistakes now I get the impression that this is another example of the threads being underdeveloped the only wise thing to do is take anything written in these weird profile the realm linking conversations with a grain of salt before we go any further I'd like to reflect on shadows edge I adore shadows edge it's an after image what was once great now dead clinging on to the edge before plummeting into the abyss this looks like something at the end of the universe which is why it shouldn't have been used here this was a grand wild spanning adventure but shadows edges lifelessness fails to hype up the ending Samael was only testing you so at this point you feel less powerful than ever and add that on to yet another bad conversation with the crow farmer the ending if you decide to start it now is betrayed not ruined by any means but it would have felt so much better they even just tried with the conversation while not a perfect solution by any means I also think the game would have been bettered if lost light and shadows edge were switched so that incredible Archon conspiracy plot could have elevated the ending still it's at least good that the crow father emphasizes that this is a point of no return because that gives us a chance to wrap up our loose ends we're going out on a good note after the blackstone you have the soul splitter death grip and phase Walker although only the void part of the phase Walker has ever used outside at the black stone the forge lens and kingdom now have vastly more accessible puzzles and chess thanks to our new fountain tools so if you want to there's loads more stuff to go and find this also feels like a way of going back and making peace with the realms we visited before entering the Well of Souls on the way we can help the makers one last time Maria's side quest is to stop gone who's made his home in the scar the scar could have been a full dungeon I'm baffled as to how the sky ended up as a side dungeon and the judicata stoom existed at all this place is here for you to hunt and kill gone and it's themed appropriately you repeatedly face going throughout the dungeon and he'll run break the ground underneath you or both since the scar is in the forge lands it doesn't incorporate any voidwalker or soul splitter puzzles but it does expand on previous mechanics the constructs for example there's now a section where you have to run across a chain bridge with lava flowing down on top or even basic traversal there's a series of three pillars that sink into the lava as you climb from one to the other and into combat an arena where lava pours onto the floor forcing you to position yourself correctly and encouraging you to try and use it to your advantage the scar is also one of the most impressively interconnected dungeons with the bridge that you'll see in the first room being lowered by a construct you got from one at the last that leads you right to gone who at first glance is hilariously every skinned gun swapped out an entire letter huh but in reality there's a lot more to it like God God has an AoE explosion but unlike gone-gone actually uses it meaning you can only get a few hits in at a time he also has the ability to repeatedly smash the ground summoning pillars of fire underfoot so Mitchell did a good job differentiating him for killing gone you only get a skill point in some XP but the scar was entertaining enough the other side quest worth doing is the Chancellor's quarry that takes you into the sole arbiters maze the sole arbiters maze is a lot like the crucible in that it's hidden optional and holds some of the greatest opportunities for loot as he progressed through the kingdom all the letters you've seen etched into the walls will be directions for the maze the normal Scrolls will lead you farther into the maze and the sacred Scrolls get you to a secret that being a chest really the biggest problem of the maze is that it isn't much of a maze it's a series of combat arenas with portals in the walls we had a combat challenge the crucible why couldn't this be for puzzles or traversal probably because it's easier to develop a combat challenge but then maze maybe isn't the right word I also don't think that the directions were all that successful because while you could collect them all if you don't and you probably won't you'll be screwed unless you look them up online so why wouldn't you and there's further incentive for that thanks to how slow the scroll speed is I'm gonna take the sole arbiters maze as an opportunity to talk about combat at this point in the game combat seems to tire and by god if you've not been buying those new moves the only thing you're gonna have to vary your combat encounters is the frequent introduction of new enemy types it can feel repetitive and that can contribute to boredom which can be fatal if you run out of steam in the kingdom of the Dead why does this happen here but not in other games alike it's simple the amount of things you can do is small Darksiders two's combat is not shallow but it's also not all that deep even though it could be the game doesn't encourage you to use all your abilities enough either because there are no enemies that would make some of them appropriate because your abilities are simply useless or both even with all the combos in the game unlocked there's still not many and the game lacks mechanics that would significantly raise the skill ceiling such as the Dodge offset there comes a point to which the only real improvements you're making to your play is stat based rather than skill based this is also where the items would have stood to really improve the experience the death grip can do juggles on the smaller enemies but the soul splitter and void Walker are useless and the redemption is too low DPS so is also useless and is worth stressing that they didn't have to be you could also call this problem symptomatic of how aggressive the game wants to be apart from one obscure charge attack and one of the necromancers abilities there are no defensive moves in the game so there's no parry or any such block timing mechanic despair is only once used to take on something even remotely threatening and the unique special abilities on legendary weapons are always underpowered and so couldn't allow for more skillful play even if they did present skillful ways of dealing damage such as the time charge attack I still think the combat looks and feels mesmerizing after having learned most of the game's combos I never really do get bored but I know that a highest skill ceiling could have put the game up there with the all-time greats if you manage to make it all the way through the sole arbiters maze you'll be able to fight the sole arbiter himself who fancies himself as a poet apparently he's got a smash and an AoE so nothing we haven't seen before he also hides behind his shield after certain damage intervals forcing you to mop up hordes of Arts this would have gone down better if we hadn't just spent hours fighting at the execution is cooler and so is the reward I mean not just the legendary weapon but also this conversation with the Chancellor and it over and the reward is yours no I think this crown will be of more use to me than to you but but your reward unless you wish to take it by force I thought now that is how I wanted that relationship to conclude there is no quest that takes you to the crucible but it's absolutely worth checking out nonetheless not only does it contain every enemy type in the game not just those from the kingdom of the Dead but it also feels as it should this is what I call an arena the catch about the crucible is that if you die you get no rewards all the major rewards are given at intervals of 25 those being pieces of the abyssal set some special talismans and a big-ass hammer that you get for completing all 100 waves in one go but you only unlock wave seventy-five to a hundred on new game+ so that along with a higher level cap and a large pool of extra gear is a great incentive to do a New Game+ playthrough the reason we even have the crucible is from direct response to the requests of fans it's intended to be the place to practice learn new techniques and throw down the biggest combos you can dream up I didn't see any of that you practice combos at the practice boards not where you risk losing 30 minutes of progress over dying ones but it certainly does work as a place to see how far you can push the combat and how far you can push yourself the reason I love the idea of the crucible so much is because it's truly challenging it's an endgame goal a constant reminder that there is a trial higher and a reason to improve if it didn't exist there would be no point in mastering the system beyond the skill required to beat the hardest boss with it there is there's an aspiration to get better through your mechanical skill and through the optimization of your build the most difficult encounters in the game will solidify your builds play style the most because of lifesteal hard fights will force hard and just to attack as much as they can to regain health because of how quickly they die necromancer's will need to retreat and use their minions as they pick the best times to hit and run in some ways necromancer allows you to be more aggressive than Harbinger as attacks that would usually end your combo by forcing a dodge are now directed at your minions allowing you the chance to continue attacking but usually and especially in the crucible it's better to play safe if you manage to get all the way past wave 100 in one sitting the crucible doesn't just end you're taken to the end and at the top you'll find the master of the crucible wicked que he's a bit of an in-game joke specifically to amuse the British part of vigil games given how few people will end up finishing the crucible in one sitting immersion isn't sacrificed I view it as more of a secret the que probably stands for Killington if the file names are anything to go by but the more controversial part of his appearance would probably be his fight it's as if it's designed to be as bad as possible with him being damaged at random intervals being immune somehow to melee attacks and being capable of killing you in a matter of seconds this is one of the few intentional cases of so bad it's good I think it's a pretty cool reward by itself but you do also get another talisman for beating it and the title of wall a befitting reward for the most dedicated players and that gives me a good opportunity to talk about builds you're gonna need one for the game's hardest trials but how do you make one builds are made by wrath abilities stone bites armor weapons and your talisman wrath abilities and Darksiders 2 is certainly better than anything from Darkseid as one with almost every aggressive ability being extremely flashy and endlessly satisfying you'll unlock more abilities with level but you have to buy them with skill points which forces you to spec smartly although you can buy a respect from vulgrim for an extremely low price it's really the level 20 abilities that disappoint since frenzy is far too similar to murder and Reaper storm just isn't very good really it's your first two abilities that you'll be relying on for most of the game the third is a passive and while they're effective they're also not particularly interesting or important unless they're on apocalyptic or nightmare I think the biggest problem people have with the skill system is that the tree is largely composed of stat boosts for your abilities and that is a fair complaint I like having all these perks because it allows for far more build variety but I also think it makes leveling up fairly uninteresting they'd have sold this far better if they separated the way you buy abilities and the way you upgrade abilities because then there'd be no false impression that this massive skill tree would be anything more than it is still anyone can use a skill tree the fun part of making a build is with the gear talismans weapons and armor all have random stats ranging from elemental damages critical chances all the way to execution chance there's a huge variety but everything is distinct and extremely useful apart from guilt drop rate money is never a problem so you just equip gear with the right stats nothing new but you get a lot more control when you factor in possessed weapons these are red tier weapons and they seem perfectly normal at first glance until you see the option to upgrade them essentially you feed your weapon other pieces of gear with a percentage of the bar being proportional to how good the gear is once it's fully fed every stat honor is boosted and you get a choice of enhancements these can be completely new abilities or upgrades to old ones the cool thing is your choice of enhancements is determined by what gear you feed the weapon so if you want critical chance you just feed it accordingly you get 5 upgrades total all of this means you can craft a relatively perfect weapon out of other loot drops having a weapon that feels like your own is cool enough but further than that it gives every other piece of gear a reason to be you should hold on to things that you aren't using because maybe you'll be able to feed them to a possessed weapon later an even better it takes care of inventory space woes maxing a possessed weapon can free up 5 to 50 slots easily it's important to consider that if at any point you fully upgrade a possessed weapon it's unlikely you'll find anything that could challenge it for a long while not a problem for other gear drops because you're sure to want other possessed weapons my problem is the visual aspect you'll be using the same pair of sides visually for a very long time and if you don't like them then you're screwed it's also worth noting that some attributes can only be put on possessed weapons by feeding it legacy talismans from vulgrim there's a chance that the attribute will be a selectable enhancement if you don't get what you want you can save scum which is clearly not something the game should be encouraging even though it isn't perfect possessed weapons are still a brilliant idea that in one implementation gives you a pseudo weapon crafting system fixes inventory space problems and makes every loot drop worthwhile it's fantastic and I'm shocked than no other developers of copy d yet that leaves us with the final way to make a build Stone bytes over the course of the game you've probably collected a good amount and you we also forgotten who to give them to remember black root that's the guy you feed him in combinations of three in exchange for permanent stat boosts and they're not tiny Inklings they're leaps for to power and a resistant stone bite you get +10 critical damage based on the amount of stone bytes in the game 69 you could theoretically double your crit damage and there's good combinations for every build so it's extremely worthwhile not only is this an engaging way of upgrading stats because there's a considerable amount of depth to choosing what combinations you want but it's also an excellent way of encouraging you to look all over the environment for collectables and that's your lot from what David Adams has said about the game I'd gather that these Diablo RPG elements were to make players feel like they've made their own death that each death would be different from everyone else's given the amount of depth to the stats where you get them from and what they do it's astounding how simple and easy to understand the process of upgrading them is it's got that perfect balance between depth and simplicity so much so that I don't think I've ever seen a better implementation of it in a game that doesn't revolve around it like Borderlands or Diablo I said we'd end on a good note and so we have the endgame activities from the crucible to the side quests to upgrading your build are largely excellent and where them done it's time for our journey to come to an end you can open the door to the well of souls from any tree so I think we'll end it where it began when you enter the Well of Souls there's nothing but darkness ahead if you push on you get a loading screen and then you're teleported to a completely new area with the gate the well directly behind you but we went far past that we've been teleported to a new zone essentially because the game can't load the well in the previous realm at the same time for goodness sake guys this is not the time for screwing up the concept art for the well of souls I think presents the most staggering contrast of the lot the art depicts something terrifying the combination of the disaster by its tornado like form with the stretched dark phases paints a horrifying picture the abandoned arena makes me question what could have been here an ancient civilization might have discovered the well and worshiped it it's a vast difference to this quiet place of power you see in the game you're not given much time to soak the atmosphere in ever wondered what you are then so be it the last thing death said before the first story significant boss and now the last thing death says to Absalom [ __ ] easy but who cares Absalom's bread and butter is a pair of axe wings they're lightning-fast high range and strong enough to send you flying backward so this is immediately sold as a tough fight you'll want to be hitting him from the sides not head-on with enough damage comes a stagger it only makes ups a lot stronger with higher range in a projectile attack to back him up the up-close-and-personal strategy is reinforced another execution cuts Absalom back down to size but he still got more to give an AoE in a very special grab attack you're restrained from underfoot requiring a button mash to break free Absalom will slowly walk over and if he catches you you'll be smashed to a pulp so much so the blood will pour from your body there's an almost horror like vibe to it but now he's out of tricks when any other enemy grows weak enough death would cut them to pieces as the Reaper but not Absalom he deals the final blow personally calling back to deaths original sin when he tried to pull Absalom free the same offer is made once more I've killed absalom stops the corruption I stand at last at the Well of Souls wouldn't no idea what I must do it is quite simple and yet most difficult I'm in no humour for riddles bro father you may tap the power of the world to return the kingdom of man or you may resurrect the Nephilim but no the choosing one will forever doom the other my brother wore I would protect him above all to return man to the earth it will require a sacrifice [Music] thus from death came live and the seeds of humanity will be sown but deaths journey was not ended on the shattered earth his brother war had slayed the destroyer he will be hunted the white city for certain the council and there will be others it would wage this war alone no not alone war had broken 7c summoning the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the number of the riders shall ever be for Darksiders two's final boss should have been far more spectacular and to be honest far more difficult as well but that ending redeems it for me death knows that there's no chance of proving his brother's innocence he seeks instead to erase the crime guilt for slaughtering his own people has weighed on death since Absalom died and only now has he discovered the corruption that wrought resurrecting humanity is his Redemption it's perfectly fitting that he would use the monument of his sins to absolve himself of them it encapsulates everything the game was about as the crow Father said from Death Comes life the undead Plains were not a necessarily bad place and time and time again in the forged lands especially deaths acts of destruction were in service of the makers creation finally the destruction of the Nephilim allowed for the creation of mankind it's a beautiful and smart ending I particularly liked the back in the Blackstone samael tells death that sometimes the hero dies in the end Samael knows seemingly everything so it would follow that he's able to see deaths death I don't think many players will pick up on this I certainly didn't but I loved the spiteful foreshadowing nonetheless what didn't resonate very well though was Absalom and corruption as a whole to clarify when death slew Absalom he had committed the sin of genocide but more than that the genocide of his own people that sin birthed the force of corruption in Absalom who sunk to the Well of Souls from there corruption was sown throughout the entire universe undoing everything in its path this is quite biblical given the parallel to Eve's original sin that created the force of darkness itself it's perfectly appropriate for the setting and it's direct link to death gives it a more personal element this is something you as death are responsible for the problem with corruption is that it's simply a force of destruction the Absalom doesn't seem to have much control over I've brought this up several times previously when a character rules a force the force is an extension of the characters well and therefore the forces actions are the characters actions this could work for corruption however we never see corruption do anything that even remotely hints that there's an intelligence behind it or that it's being controlled at all Absalom doesn't seem to rule corruption but to be its progenitor even if that's not true and it very might not be is the impression you get from playing the game and the result is Absalom's lack of screen time doing what it usually would for any character no connection to the player both absalom and corruption while not bland are fairly boring this is the narratives biggest failing where its strengths lie were the exceptional characters and the smaller stories it tells saving the makers from destruction the politics in the kingdom of the Dead and the conspiracy and lost light all engaging conflicts and they're not over just yet when the credits finish you see this you are alone Lilith where are my Nephilim he end war is upon us yet instead of the army you promised me death has returned man to the balance I await your punishment this time Lilith you will get no pleasure from it that was Lucifer himself punishing Lilith's failure to sway death in favor of the Nephilim Lucifer's anger here is mainly due to the fact that his time is ending as the ruler of hell Samael is next in line so Lilith's failure has lost him the army that would have secured his seat forever and won him any war he pleased if everything went according to plan this would have set the stage for Darkseid his 3jo man's original concept was having all four horsemen assault Hell itself to find and kill Lucifer things turned out differently and that really is the end I've spent months on this video and I would have spent a year Darksiders to is one of my favorite games in general there's very little out there that top it I love it so much because of how incredibly well the worlds have been realized from art to music to voice acting everything is a sensory feast and that makes it particularly immersive to the combat is brutally satisfying the RPG elements are brilliant and many of the later puzzles top anything else you can get in the genre but above all of that my favorite thing about the game is death playing as the personification of death is an interesting enough concept on paper and Darksiders to execution of that is unbeatable through Joe Mann's marvelous design Michael Wynne COTS perfect vicious rasp and deaths actions in the game they made him a character too Revere instead of some ridiculous edge Lord yet at the same time they strayed from the biblical take and realized death in a sense there isn't evil that is a force of balance a creator of ends and ends that allow for beginnings just as death is philosophically accepted as in many cultures today now I understand that those things might not mean much to everyone I know a lot of people want to death to be a ruthless warrior who'd be more focused on murdering everything than helping people that's perfectly fine and there are times I can understand why deaths journey was not perfect some parts were underdeveloped some parts were mediocre at best and I have never seen a more spectacular failure to give narrative context to your actions than with the kingdom these things to me are bumps in a road I recommend Darksiders to whole heartedly now more than ever given the price I hope that the series will live long enough to top it and I hope that when I get to play Darksiders 3 it'll honor its predecessors I really hope that you enjoyed this video I've been cooking up the methodology and writing style for months so this is a pitch my channel like Darksiders has been a bit of a mix and match of other review styles Joseph Anderson Mandalore Rea Civic I've had my own writing style since Crysis 2 but I never did anything that no one else was doing I never intended to do anything more than a normal critique for Darksiders 2 but with the release of darkside is 3 and this being a game I have an inexhaustible supply of passion for it made sense to try this format if you've enjoyed it I'll try to keep doing it along with normal content but that should be improved as a result of this video too I want to thank everyone who supported me in the comics liked my video subscribe door even just viewed because that what got me here they're the reason I felt like trying miss was worth it be it a hit or a miss so thank you if you have a couple of bucks to spare any donation to patreon really help set aside the time to make projects like this and if you'd like to support me otherwise leaving a comment with any feedback is also extremely useful did you like the integration with the cutscenes the montage summaries did you like the editing the sound quality audio levels was the music too loud anything you noticed or like to suggest would be great after having written 40 thousand words on Darksiders 2 and spent months trying to make this video it feels weird to finish but thanks for watching goodbye [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Whitelight

Views: 2,198,671

Keywords: darksiders 2, darksiders 3, darksiders, gameplay, darksiders ii, darksiders 3 gameplay, darksiders 3 walkthrough, darksiders 3 2018, action-adventure game, gunfire games, thq nordic, action rpg, intro darksiders, darksiders 2 ending, darksiders 2 review, darksiders 2 critique, darksiders 2 deathinitive edition pc, darksiders iii, joe mad, vigil games, darksiders 2 walkthrough, gameplay darksiders 2, darksiders 2 trailer, darksiders gameplay, jesper kyd, the guardian, zelda

Id: 1096v5YoFHM

Length: 180min 0sec (10800 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 22 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/DiomedesTydeus]

I enjoyed the video. The volume level difference between the speaker and the in game cinematic left me adjusting my computer's volume while watching.

[u/Send_Them_Noobs]

Man I just remembered how great this game was, especially the soundtrack. And you could see his love for this game and the franchise clearly in the video, didn't stop him from criticizing the shit out of it. It would be interesting to see his opinion on DS3 now since it came out a completely different game that DS2

Guys it's a 3 hours but I highly recommend.

[u/gAt0]

Three hours, WTF! I'll watch it through the next week.

The things I most disliked about Darksiders II were:

• Spongey enemies. Or at least that was they felt to me. The combat was too flashy for the end results.
• Way too many meaningless weapons. (too much loot = too much time comparing stats = boring)

Darksiders I was much better overall. Also, Death should be much more agile. War was a titan with an arm that weighted a ton and moved more or less the same as Death.

[u/[deleted]]

I've not watched this video yet, but I do really like whitelight's style of video. He goes super in depth and focusses a lot on gameplay mechanics and functions. And gives possible advice.

[u/DoctahDonkey]

Something I love so much about Darksiders 2 over 1 & 3 is the character of Death. Michael Wincott is cast perfectly, it's such an interesting take on Death as someone fighting for life, while still being tasked with taking it. Most interpretations are very brooding and dark, but Death cares for his fellow horsemen a lot, as well as humanity. As well as having a sense of humor that isn't just purely dark and edgy.

His dry wit and sarcastic remarks throughout the game are all very well placed and delivered, as well. He's just a really great character.

[u/Alpha-Trion]

I'd rather die then watch or listen to a video about a video game that's longer then Blade Runner 2049.

[u/Deltaasfuck]

I barely played the first few hours of the game, focusing on finishing Persona 5 first. Does this have spoilers?