This review contains spoilers
the ghostrunner franchise is a weeb's wet dream. the dreary neon cyberpunk dystopia, the cyber ninjas, corny dialogue, it's all there. as a weeb myself(duh), and a pretty big fan of GR1(i considered giving it a 10 for a while), i was hyped for GR2. it kinda snuck up on me, and i was gonna wait to ask for it for christmas, but something came over me and i got it now. is it a worthy succesor? i'd say so, but i have a lot of issues that unfortunately hold it back.
one of my favorite parts of GR1 was the OST, there's tons of memorable tracks such as infiltrator, let them know, the orb, vendetta, not to mention the fantastic ost for project hel as well. in GR2, there are many new artists that were brought on. to be completely honest, none of them touch daniel deluxe's ost. i checked beforehand and it said "daniel deluxe was brought back". he's only credited for one song, which happens to be my favorite in the game, go figure. the new artists are fine, but there's not a coherent sound and i can't recall most tracks. it sucks to say but the ost just aint as good in this one.
the story of GR1 often gets panned for being very generic and predictable. and while it most certainly is that, there's a certain charm to the simple plot of climbing a cyberpunk tower while listening to the characters babble, the game has a lotta humor to it(especially project hel). GR2, on the otherhand, while it keeps the humor(shoutout to kira, shes great) it's story is super ambitious and confusing, and not in the way you can ignore. there's tons of plotholes. first, connor just dies and then is never brought up again, when supposedly it affected zoe a lot. it was implied they had a thing going, it's just weird that he's never mentioned again. there's a one off line about "are there any hel units left out there" which i figured was foreshadowing and it got me hyped for a rematch, which just never happened. hel doesn't appear, very dissappointing.
whatever the fake architect was was never brought up again. what we got for an antagonist was an incredibly confusing one, if you aren't paying super close attention to the whole exposition dump in mindgames level it goes woosh. the hell is a bushido? i wouldn't know because it's brushed over! i'd have preferred another predictable story than one that detracts from my enjoyment. it's so focused on being anti-predictable, too. for whatever reason. the memory of a human jack's got in his head isn't jack for some reason?? randomly jack just has memories of the first ghostrunner??? reminds me, jack was also somehow kept alive?? like what? didn't he sacrifice himself at the end of the first game? jack's decision at the end of this game also makes no sense, he said prior he helps the climbers because it feels right, yet leaves the tower at the end of the game for an inexplicable reason? the story is just so gaaaahhhhh. nowhere else to put it but zoe's voice is very relaxing to listen to, her VA should do audiobooks lol.
i ran into so many bugs man. i got 4 crashes total. i think some of that may have to do with my gpu(980) but the clipping and other bugs most certainly aren't. there's a weird bug on pc where the interact button just doesn't work on your controller unless you restart the game. i guess i was blessed with SM2 running perfectly, this is the first poorly optimized game ive played.
the gameplay is still peak. though there are weird decisions. half the playtime is spent in the outside with completely different enemy types, so its weird that the initial enemies you fought seemingly at random get thrown into the mix again in the final section. a lot of the enemies are underutilized and thrown in randomly. idk i just remember a lot more cohesion in level design, enemy utilization(as well as counters) in GR1. speaking of counters, FUCK THE BEAM GUYS. in GR1 sensory whatever countered it but in GR2 they snipe you from across the map, it's just fucking weird. in GR1 there were only 3 boss fights, TOM, Hel, and Architect. in GR2 theres rahu, arhiman, mitra, naga, and the other guy i dont remember. rahu and naga are the peak of these, by far. it was kinda like architect from GR1 but with an even cooler parkour setpiece. the rest are just beefy enemies. whereas in gr1 , despite how annoying TOM was, it certainly had a certain spectacle, memorability, corny dialogue and a great payoff. same with hel and archtect, getting into flow state with parrying and the parkour of architect. sadly none of these were present outside of rahu's or naga's fight. this game does have great setpieces like everything with the bike, including speeding down the tower, chasing whoever, or getting trapped in a decaying cybervoid, rahu's boss fight. naga's entire fight was FUCKING AWESOME.
all in all, theres a lot more that bugs me about GR2 than it's predecessor/dlc. i've noticed in a lot of my reviews i have a shitton to say about what i disliked about the game, and i think thats cuz it's easier to put into words than "this cool". this is not an exception, i thoroughly enjoyed my time here but it fell short in way more places than id hoped. im definitely expecting a dlc and GR3 at some point, but sadly i wont be getting around to them for a while. those are definitely half off buys. im hoping this game ends up like we love katamari in the future where i like it a lot more, but who knows.
next is cold steel 2. before that im gonna catch up on manga and finish invincible s2. im really excited to see where rean coldsteel goes.
one of my favorite parts of GR1 was the OST, there's tons of memorable tracks such as infiltrator, let them know, the orb, vendetta, not to mention the fantastic ost for project hel as well. in GR2, there are many new artists that were brought on. to be completely honest, none of them touch daniel deluxe's ost. i checked beforehand and it said "daniel deluxe was brought back". he's only credited for one song, which happens to be my favorite in the game, go figure. the new artists are fine, but there's not a coherent sound and i can't recall most tracks. it sucks to say but the ost just aint as good in this one.
the story of GR1 often gets panned for being very generic and predictable. and while it most certainly is that, there's a certain charm to the simple plot of climbing a cyberpunk tower while listening to the characters babble, the game has a lotta humor to it(especially project hel). GR2, on the otherhand, while it keeps the humor(shoutout to kira, shes great) it's story is super ambitious and confusing, and not in the way you can ignore. there's tons of plotholes. first, connor just dies and then is never brought up again, when supposedly it affected zoe a lot. it was implied they had a thing going, it's just weird that he's never mentioned again. there's a one off line about "are there any hel units left out there" which i figured was foreshadowing and it got me hyped for a rematch, which just never happened. hel doesn't appear, very dissappointing.
whatever the fake architect was was never brought up again. what we got for an antagonist was an incredibly confusing one, if you aren't paying super close attention to the whole exposition dump in mindgames level it goes woosh. the hell is a bushido? i wouldn't know because it's brushed over! i'd have preferred another predictable story than one that detracts from my enjoyment. it's so focused on being anti-predictable, too. for whatever reason. the memory of a human jack's got in his head isn't jack for some reason?? randomly jack just has memories of the first ghostrunner??? reminds me, jack was also somehow kept alive?? like what? didn't he sacrifice himself at the end of the first game? jack's decision at the end of this game also makes no sense, he said prior he helps the climbers because it feels right, yet leaves the tower at the end of the game for an inexplicable reason? the story is just so gaaaahhhhh. nowhere else to put it but zoe's voice is very relaxing to listen to, her VA should do audiobooks lol.
i ran into so many bugs man. i got 4 crashes total. i think some of that may have to do with my gpu(980) but the clipping and other bugs most certainly aren't. there's a weird bug on pc where the interact button just doesn't work on your controller unless you restart the game. i guess i was blessed with SM2 running perfectly, this is the first poorly optimized game ive played.
the gameplay is still peak. though there are weird decisions. half the playtime is spent in the outside with completely different enemy types, so its weird that the initial enemies you fought seemingly at random get thrown into the mix again in the final section. a lot of the enemies are underutilized and thrown in randomly. idk i just remember a lot more cohesion in level design, enemy utilization(as well as counters) in GR1. speaking of counters, FUCK THE BEAM GUYS. in GR1 sensory whatever countered it but in GR2 they snipe you from across the map, it's just fucking weird. in GR1 there were only 3 boss fights, TOM, Hel, and Architect. in GR2 theres rahu, arhiman, mitra, naga, and the other guy i dont remember. rahu and naga are the peak of these, by far. it was kinda like architect from GR1 but with an even cooler parkour setpiece. the rest are just beefy enemies. whereas in gr1 , despite how annoying TOM was, it certainly had a certain spectacle, memorability, corny dialogue and a great payoff. same with hel and archtect, getting into flow state with parrying and the parkour of architect. sadly none of these were present outside of rahu's or naga's fight. this game does have great setpieces like everything with the bike, including speeding down the tower, chasing whoever, or getting trapped in a decaying cybervoid, rahu's boss fight. naga's entire fight was FUCKING AWESOME.
all in all, theres a lot more that bugs me about GR2 than it's predecessor/dlc. i've noticed in a lot of my reviews i have a shitton to say about what i disliked about the game, and i think thats cuz it's easier to put into words than "this cool". this is not an exception, i thoroughly enjoyed my time here but it fell short in way more places than id hoped. im definitely expecting a dlc and GR3 at some point, but sadly i wont be getting around to them for a while. those are definitely half off buys. im hoping this game ends up like we love katamari in the future where i like it a lot more, but who knows.
next is cold steel 2. before that im gonna catch up on manga and finish invincible s2. im really excited to see where rean coldsteel goes.
2 Comments
You make great reviews.
NOWITSREYNTIME17
6 months ago