Dying Light 2 Review: The Parkour Still Carries It
I came to this Dying Light 2 review the slow way. I picked the game up a few weeks after launch, bounced off the story, and still found myself climbing back into Villedor every few months. Dying Light 2 Stay Human arrived on 4 February 2022 for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, and Techland has been patching it ever since.
Anyone who skipped it would be buying a different game. Techland rebuilt it in pieces: guns, a roguelite co-op mode, a rewritten prologue, free movement stamina, and a mod platform on top. I have had a go at each of them.
Below, you'll find what holds up, what never got fixed, and who I think should play it.
Dying Light 2 Review Summary
The Dying Light 2 parkour is the reason to play, and an update that stripped stamina costs out of movement improved it.
Nights in Villedor are the best horror in an open world, with Volatiles turning a loot run into a sprint.
The story is the weak part: flat dialogue and faction choices that redecorate the city and leave the plot untouched.
Firearms arrived in February 2024 with four gun types and scarce ammo, and melee still breaks fast.
Tower Raid became permanent in February 2025, and its four classes kept me logging in once the campaign ran dry.
The Parkour Is Still Unmatched
Nothing else moves like this. Aiden vaults a railing, catches a ledge one-handed, swings up onto an air conditioner and keeps going, and each beat has its own weight. I stopped using the roads in my first week. Once the grappling hook arrives in the Central Loop, and the paraglider after it, the city becomes a set of lines you draw yourself.
Techland's best post-launch change took stamina out of parkour. A fumbled jump mid-fight now strands you next to three Virals far less often, since stamina belongs to combat, swimming and the paraglider. Only Dash and Dart still spend it on movement. I felt the difference minutes into a save I had abandoned.
Level design earns the system. Yellow paint marks the routes indoors, and the open rooftops trust you completely. A stupid idea gets to play out, so a bad line ends with me hitting a car roof at half health. That failure is part of the appeal, and I still take jumps I know I will miss. Last Of Us fans, you don’t want to miss it.
Villedor Nights Still Scare Me
The night loop is why the game sticks. Villedor empties after dark, the infected pour out of the buildings they sleep in, and the Volatiles hunt by sight and sound. Get spotted, a Howler screams, the chase meter climbs, and four of them keep pace with me across the rooftops. My first reaction was to bail into a UV safe zone and wait it out.
Rewards push you back out there. GRE quarantine buildings hold the Inhibitors that raise your health and stamina ceilings, and those buildings and the Dark Hollows both get easier once their residents wander off after dark. Your immunity timer ticks down the whole time you are indoors and away from UV light. I have lost a full haul to a countdown I misjudged by ten seconds.
Techland has moved the difficulty around since launch. The Nightmare difficulty update on 18 April 2024 stopped menus from pausing the game, cut automatic health regeneration, and made flashlights dim and flicker with use, which puts a night run closer to stealth. The Breach later made Volatiles slower to spot you in the first region.
Combat Improved, Weapons Still Break
Melee here is about physics more than combos. I shove a Biter off a rooftop, dropkick the next into a spike trap, and swing a machete that lands with real recoil through the arms. Bodies come apart in ways that make a fight legible: a severed arm means one less grab, a leg means a crawler. Human fights hold up worse, since Renegades parry on a rhythm I learned inside an hour.
The Firearms Update on 22 February 2024 gave a bad night a new ending. Pistols, SMGs, rifles and shotguns each run on their own ammunition, and Techland said plainly that ammo would stay scarce, so a gun works as an emergency button. A shotgun in a stairwell full of Virals is the most relieved I have felt here, and I still finish most fights with a hammer.
Weapon durability is the part I cannot defend. Every melee weapon has a fixed lifespan, mods add a handful of swings, and a rare blade I liked was scrap in two sessions. The Reloaded Edition added Legend Levels up to a Platinum tier, which smooths the late game, and none of it stops me hoarding good gear and fighting with junk.
The Story Is The Weak Link
Aiden Caldwell is looking for his sister Mia, and the man who might know where she is happens to be the one who experimented on them both. The premise is fine. The execution is where I checked out: stiff dialogue, stiffer delivery, and a cast working so hard at morally grey that nobody in Villedor gets to be a person. Lawan is the exception.
Techland sold the faction system as the spine of the game, and it lands as set dressing. Handing a water tower to the Peacekeepers fills the district with car traps, and giving it to the Survivors strings zip lines and airbags across the rooftops. Those changes are real, and I enjoyed them. The plot barely registers, so I finished feeling like I had redecorated a city.
Bloody Ties, the story expansion that landed on 10 November 2022, is the tighter piece of writing. Carnage Hall is an old opera house turned into an arena, and the whole thing runs on fights with showmen around them. Its pacing beats the campaign, since it knows what it is. If the main story loses you halfway, and mine nearly did, go there next. Also, if you like The Blood of Dawnwalker, this is a game for you.
Tower Raid Is The Best Addition
Tower Raid kept the game installed for me. Techland made Tower Raid permanent on 19 February 2025, and it drops up to four players into a tower of randomised floors. You pick from Tank, Brawler, Ranger or Specialist, keep a slice of your progress after a wipe, and choose between Quick, Normal and Elite runs.
It takes the parts of the game that were always strong and cuts the rest. No dialogue, no faction politics, just movement and crowd control with three people shouting about a Demolisher. Sola at the Raid Hub trades run rewards for gear you cannot get elsewhere, and the Spring Update in April 2025 added 27 more weapons to that pool.
The rest of the co-op offering is thinner than that mode makes it look. Campaign co-op has been in since launch and still hands story progress to the host, so a friend joining your world is along for the ride. Survivor and Elite missions give a group something structured to do, with Watcher Tokens on the line. Matchmaking outside Tower Raid can be slow.
Is Dying Light 2 Worth It?
Yes, for the movement and the nights, with the story treated as a thing you tolerate. If you want an open world you cross with your hands, this is the best one there is. If you came for a narrative to match the premise, sit it out. I would tell a first-timer to play on standard, chase Inhibitors early, and stop worrying about whether the plot pays off.
The game is in the best state it has been in. The Breach rewrote and shortened the prologue, and opened Villedor up to community maps through mod.io. Update 1.29 raised main-mission XP, so the dropkick and the slide arrive earlier. Reloaded Edition folded Bloody Ties and the guns into the base package for free, so the Steam store page version is the complete one.
Wait if you need polish. Frame pacing wobbles in the dense parts of the Central Loop, co-op still desyncs, and the heavier community maps skipped the oldest consoles at launch. Techland's newer game, Dying Light: The Beast, arrived in September 2025, and what lands in Villedor now is refinement. That is enough for me, and it will not be enough if your patience for rough edges is thin.
FAQs About Dying Light 2
Final Words
The campaign matters remarkably little to my memory of Dying Light 2 Stay Human. Ask me about it and I will describe a rooftop in the Central Loop at 2am, a Howler I did not see, and a paraglider catch I had no business making. The plot is a delivery system for a city, and the city is excellent.
Years of patching went to the right places. Guns, a roguelite mode, a harder difficulty tier and free movement stamina all serve the part of the game worth serving. The writing was never going to get fixed, and I have stopped wishing it would.
Open question: how much attention does a game get once its studio has a newer one? Community maps look like the plan for keeping Villedor busy, so watch that space.
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