The Failure that was Darksiders 2 Death Lives

Don't think for a second the title of this article means that the game is absolute trash. On the contrary, it improves on almost every aspect of the original, almost. The failure of this game comes from two things, the first, and most important, was the fact that this game was somehow supposed to keep THQ afloat. The company was going belly up and this was one of the last games that could potentially save the company, well, it didn't. Part of that do to the fact that the game had so many bugs coming out the door that versions of it weren't even playable on the PC. The second was the DLC content that should have been in the game. the "Bloodless" quest comes to mind, Karn's fetch quest, the search for the book all should have been in the game already. In the case of he "Bloodless" quest you can even see and hear them roaming around in the first world. They're translucent, but they're there.  The book quest, as well as Karn's fetch quest are all similar. If you knew where to look for them, you could see the items sitting right there, but unless you payed for it, you couldn't do the quest.
Some things, like the extra side dungeons, I didn't mind so much paying extra for. "The Abyss" "Labyrinth of the Deposesed King" and "Earth" were among the three in the "season pass" for the game, which I got, but could only play one dungeon. When I downloaded the others the game would crash on me. The only way to stop it was to delete the DLC, which was a shame, because I really wanted to play. The other quest mentioned above though, should have been part of the game from the start. The Remaster fixes all the bugs and adds all the DLC but that doesn't change the fact that THQ wanted people to pay for extra content that should have been there to begin with. Suffice to say, it didn't work.
The company went belly up, and for a long time, it looked like the Darksiders franchise would be lost forever. Nordic Games stepped up, but that's a story for another time. Right now it's time to take a dive in and see what the game has to offer.

Like in the first game, the story is fairly straight forward. You play as one of the four horsemen, Death, on a quest to erase his brother, War's, crime from the first game. Death hopes that by restoring humanity, he'll be able to redeem his brother. But Death has no idea how to do that, so begins his quest by seeking out some who does. The keeper of secrets. The keeper of secrets tells Death he'll help but only if Death relieves him of the souls of the Nephilim, which the horseman had given to the keeper of secrets long ago. Death refuses and the keeper of secrets refuses to help. Death is left with no choice but to kill him.
He is then transported to the Makers land. He learns from one of the makers that the way to save his brother is at the Tree of Life, which is currently blocked by something called corruption. Death's only choice is to help restore the the lands to their former glory and awaken a colossal stone beast which is supposed to be able to rid the land of corruption. It's worth mentioning that this first world you go to is as big, or almost as big, as the entirety of the first game. At least if felt that way to me.
At the end of the level the colossal monster becomes corrupted and Death has to put it down Shadow of the Colossus style. The whole level is wonderful.
The second level is great too, I'll be it a bit slow. First Death has to summon the throne, then, in order to speak to the king, he has to find three keys to fight a beast in the arena then he talks to the king and has to find his three judges, one of whom you have to help by saving three human souls, another you just fight, and another who is locked away in someplace called the Psychomeron, which is basically Hell, especially if you chose to play the game on one of the higher difficulties. So once you get all three of them and take them back, the Lord of Bones kills the three judges and sends Death to the City of the Dead where he'll find someone willing to help him. Whilst inside the game tricks you by having these Leviathan like creatures flying all around the sky. At one point you have to dodge one to get a key. I thought you were going to have to fight it, but nope, it's just there for show although, when you fight the colossal Whaling Host, depending on what difficulty you chose, he can summon those things to aid him in battle. Pretty cool I guess. Any way, you defeat the Whaling Host and meet the keeper of secrets, naturally. He tells you that there are two keys (wait, not three? weird) one held by the angels and one by the demons. Death goes in search of them.
The third level of the game is where things start to suffer. Unlike the previous two games the third and fourth areas are much shorter, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it's definitely a bit disappointing. The place is called Lost Light and you start out by making your way to a spire, where you are told to speak with the Archon. He tells you that the key is unreachable, but that if he had the Rod of Arefel, he could clear all the corruption away. Death goes on a surprise trip to Earth (surprise because I didn't think he was going there in the game) to retrieve the three rod pieces. Once found he takes the rod back to the Archon who clears the way to the city of light where death meets Jameirah, a scribe, who tells Death that the Archon has the key. Going back to the Archon he and Death have chat which ends with the Archon on the end of Death's scythe.
The fourth and final level is the smallest. Death goes to the Shadow Realm, the realm of demons. There are no surprise visits to Earth or any other realms from here. It's one big straight line with only two branching paths, one leading to a secret treasure vault (more on that later)and the other leading to Lilith, who gives Death the power of the chronoshere much like in the first game, only instead of slowing time, it will take death into the past and present, though it only works in side the spire. Death fights his way through both past and present in order to find the king of the realm, who happens to be Sameal from the first game. He taunts Death and the two of them fight. Death wins but Sameal makes it clear that it was a test, and that he passed.
From here you can go back and talk to Lilith if you want, and she'll tell you to resurrect the Nephilim, which by the way is revealed in game that the four horsemen became the four horsemen when they grew tired of their race killing off everything and every one, and so made a pact with the Charred Council for immense power. Their first task as horsemen was to wipe out the rest of the Nephilim. The eldest of the Nephilim, Absolom, fell upon Death's scythe, birthing corruption.
In a not as epic as the colossus fight at the beginning of the game (the closest thing to that being the Whaling Host, the Noss from Earth or Sameal) Death and Absolom fight. Death wins, naturally. The keeper of secrets then tells him that the only way to resurrect humanity is to sacrifice the souls of the Nephilim. Death reluctantly does so, jumping into the well of souls, himself to do so. The game ends, sort of, the same way the first one did.
There is an extra scene with Lilith and the Prince of Darkness but that's only if you meet certain requirement. Basically he tells Lilith he's not happy and that she must be punished, but not in the good Dominatrix way that she likes.

There is some subtle characterization in the game, but Death is otherwise unchanged throughout the game. In the beginning, we learn that Death didn't want to destroy the Nephilim because he didn't want his race to be gone forever, but in order to save War, he realizes that he has to chose between the Nephilim or humanity. Death chooses to save War above all else, there by sacrificing any hope he may have had of bringing the Nephilim back. Kind of sad when you think of it like that, but seeing as how they were murderous monsters, it's probably for the best.
I only bring this up because War, throughout his entire campaign, is vastly unchanged. Death is, all be it very little, but he is changed none the less.
But enough about that, lets get into game-play. If Darksiders was, as someone said, Zelda May Cry then Darksiders 2 Death Lives would have to be Prince of Diablo. Seeing as how Prince of Persia was one of my favorite games growing up, (and seeing as how Ubi$oft would rather make fee to pay games now) I'll take it what I can get.
The game play though, is one of the parts of the game that kind of bother me. Running along walls and rooftops and the like is fun and very reminiscent of the old Prince of Persia games. I love it. The one caveat is that sometimes it feels like things are just there for Death to grab onto, such as pegs in the wall or "Death Grip" points. I guess that's more of a level design thing. My problem with it is that it just kind of feels weird, like there happens to be a peg there for you to extend a wall run. In Prince of Perisa it felt more natural. Not always, but for the most part it did. Like I said though, that's more of an aesthetic thing than a gripe about game play, which is still fun.
The fighting is much better in this game. Death has his traditional scythe(s) as well as three other types of weapons: bucklers, which can be used to counter enemy attacks, claws which are used for fast brutal attacks, and hammers, which are used for powerful but slow attacks. There are some other weapons in the game like glaives and tridents and such but they all play so similarly to the aforementioned three that it's hardly worth mentioning.
Fighting with either of these weapons have both their advantages and disadvantages. In the first game your combos were limited between the sword, gauntlet and scythe, each of which had only a certain number of moves even after you had bought them all from Vulgrum. This game expands upon your arsenal so the fighting never feels stale. Death's movement, and ability to dodge is also a big improvement. War could dash away from attacks, but Death can dash away or even around an enemy. The only gripe I have about Death's dodge is that you can only do it three times before he does a pause, leaving him open for enemy attacks. There's a way around that, but in the middle of combat, especially when you're surrounded by enemies, it's easy to forget.
The "Diablo" like elements in the game come in the form of the loot system. Death opens a chest and a plethora of gear and gold comes out. There are also the weapon classes, such as enchanted weapons, possessed weapons, etc. It's a fun idea, but the more chests you open the more you begin to realize that the gear you get is pretty useless. At least in the latter parts of the game it is. More often than not, I'd pick something up only to find out that what I had on was better. Sometimes there weapon or gear would have something worth sacrificing to a possessed weapon, but for the most part, I just didn't feel that it was worth it, so stopped picking up the stuff about mid way through the game.

One of the great features of the game is that you get the horse right from the get go. I love being able to use it to travel faster and I feel like a bad ass when I get into fights while riding. That is until an enemy attacks you, knocking you off. You don't always get to use it though. There are plenty of areas in the game that are "no place for a horse" forcing Death to "have to go alone." In those huge areas though, where you do get the horse, I'm somewhat reminded again of Shadow of the Colossus.
I now have talk about the side quests. With the acceptation of the "go kill this monster" quest, there are only three, and they can be very tedious. The first is from Vulgrum, who, while present in the game, which is fun, lacks much of the humor from the first, which is a real shame. Anyway, he asks you to go and find the BLUE PAGES! Oops sorry, wrong game, the Book of the Dead pages. There are 40 in total through out the game. The next quest is the stone collection quest where you have to find a total of 70 effing stones for this guy. Finding them can be a huge pain in the ass. I did the quest one time so I could get the trophy for it, never again. NEVER AGAIN. The last one is a quest from another merchant in the game Ostegoth. He asks you to retrieve 30 relics for him. You don't have to do any of the quests mind you, unless you want the Abyssal Armor for Death, then you've got to do both the page quest and the relic quest, thank God you don't have to do the stone quest.

The other quests in the game, the DLC ones mentioned above, were fetch quests and go kill this thing quests as well, but they weren't nearly as long, and the reward for doing them, honestly, wasn't that great. That has been amended in the Remaster though, making them totally worth doing, except for the maker quest. You have to go find a helmet, a shield and a compass for him. Whatever he gives you for finding them isn't as great as being able to keep the compass would be.
This brings me to another fault of this game. There is 0 indication on the map where to find the pages, stones or relics. You just have to, basically know where to look, or just check everywhere, which, as mentioned above, is incredibly tedious, essentially trying to find the damn stones. In the first game relics were indicated on the map. Having a compass or item that revealed them on the map would have been very helpful. It sucks going back to the Dead City, looking everywhere for that one lost relic only to realize that you've already collected everyone from this area. The game puts unopened treasure box locations on the map, so I don't see why it couldn't have done that for the other collectibles. It just makes finding them all the more irksome.

New Locations DLC are very fun, at least when they work. Even though I bought them for the original game I was only able to actually play them after purchasing the remaster. They are as follows: "Layer of the Deposesed King". Here you go on a quest for Ostegoth. He tells you that there are secrets all around if you know where to look. Going through the dungeon you'll eventually run into Tiamat, the bat queen's brother/ husband/ friend/ acquaintance/ really the game never really says. Either way, like Tiamat in the first game it's a giant bat. You kill it. The secret you get is some nice ice claws and various other collectibles from chests in the level.
The second location is called the Abyssal Forge, the place where the Abyssal Armor was forged. Here, you meet the Mad Smith, a maker who was cast out and lost his Celtic accent because of it. When you meet him, at first he fights you, but when you are about to deliver the final blow, he tells you that he's willing to help. Long story short, they Abyssal Forge is going to implode in on itself if Death doesn't stop it. He reluctantly does. There's something here, and only here for some reason, that happens in the third game all the time, which I like. If you die to the boss of this level, you don't have to watch the cut scene before hand every single time. If you die once you just go back there and, as soon as you reach the boss, the fight starts. A welcome addition in my mind, especially when it's so easy to this boss.
Third is Earth. Ureal asks Death to seek out the demon lord Balaris and along the way Death comes across the last of the humans, at least the last of the humans in whatever trashed city on Earth Death happens to be in. The human, afraid at first, finally agrees to help Death. After killing the demon lord Death returns to the human who asks death to put an end to him.
None of this pertains to the main plot it's just nice that you get some extra life out of the game. Something odd though I noticed. In the Remaster, you unlock the Abyssal Forge after beating the wailing host, the Layer of the Deposested King from beating the Archon, and Earth, from beating Samael. I feel like you should get the Abyssal Forge after the Forge Lands, the Layer of the Deposesed King after the Dead Lands (and the place where you actually fight the deposesed king) and Earth after defeating the Archon. Not a big deal, just kind of strange the order they unlock in.
I mentioned above that the game-play isn't the best. I do love much of it, the fighting, the wall running and the items that you get, like the death grip and void walker, but there are many aspects of the game I don't care for, like all the useless loot and the fact that the gold you pick up isn't really worth using, especially since you don't really need to buy anything when there's so much loot just laying around in chests. Even Vulgrum doesn't really offer much, which is a real shame. It'd be nice if you could by special weapons from him, rather than just getting them in game, i don't know. There are also things like the timed floor in the Dead Lands (you all know the one). I can do it, but I still hate it. It regurgitates horrible memories for me when I think about it.
There's one other special world accessible in whatever world you're in, and that's the Crucible. A place where you can go to fight hordes of monsters. That's basically it. It's super fun, until you have to fight the DAMN MALISTROM. It's also the place, though not the first place, where you really get to utilize the Execution commands. The game starts out with them, letting you insta-kill enemies once their health is low enough, but as you progress further in the game they kind of disappear. There is a way to initiate them though, which is by sacrificing items to possessed weapons. One of the abilities of some of the weapons in the game is Execution Chance. The more weapons you sacrifice with an Execution Chance, the higher your chances are of getting executions with that weapon.

In conclusion, there are many things about Darksiders II Death Lives that expand upon the lore of the first game gave us but there are some choices, like the loot system, that I don't think really work well for this game. Never the less, this game is an excellent expansion of the story that the first game gave us. It's fun, the music is great and Death is awesome. The reviewers can all go and choke on their words. What more could you want out of a game?