After the commercial success of Dead Island, all eyes were on developer Techland to see how it would follow up its popular open world zombie game. It ended up releasing a new kind of open world zombie experience called Dying Light, which retained the quest structure and action-RPG elements from Dead Island, but added an impressive parkour mechanic to vastly improve player mobility. Now, seven years after the launch of the original game, Techland is back with Dying Light 2, a sequel that, unfortunately, fails to impress.

The original Dying Light earned mixed reviews at the time of its release for a variety of reasons, including its weak story and poorly-written characters. Anyone hoping for Dying Light 2 to rectify those issues will be sorely disappointed. The sequel stars generic protagonist Aiden, whose goal is to find his missing sister that he hasn't seen in decades. Aiden's memories about his childhood are fuzzy, with details filled in through flashbacks that do nothing to make players emotionally invested in his plight or care about his sister. It presents a mystery that players won't care to solve, with some predictable "twists" thrown in that will have most players rolling their eyes.

Dying Light 2's main story quests are a slog, largely thanks to its uninspired main character, who is completely unmemorable. The characters Aiden interacts with throughout the main quest aren't much better, with players meeting one bland side character after another, all of whom talk a lot but never seem to have anything interesting to say. Sitting through Dying Light 2's dialogue is a chore, though the actors do what they can with what they're given to work with.

Jonah Scott of Beastars fame provides the voice of Aiden and does a great job delivering his lines, and Rosario Dawson does well in her role as Aiden's ally Lawan. But despite some of the actors' best efforts, the Dying Light 2 script is beyond saving. Along with the poorly-written and endless dialogue, there are some strange logic jumps in the story that don't do it any favors when it comes to getting players immersed in the game world. Character personalities and opinions of Aiden swing dramatically from one end of the spectrum to the other in a way that feels abrupt, unnatural, and unearned.

Between the excessive talking and the repetitive objectives, with players often tasked with running from point A to talk to one character then to point B to talk to another character, Dying Light 2's campaign is a mess. But that doesn't mean there isn't some fun to be had. While running from point A to point B is not a hugely inventive or engaging objective, Dying Light 2's parkour mechanics ensure that players are having as much fun as possible when they're performing these tedious tasks. Leaping over zombies, climbing rooftops, and sliding under obstacles never gets old.

As Dying Light 2's story progresses, Aiden gains access to helpful tools like a glider and a grappling hook that vastly expand his traversal capabilities. These tools combined with the skills players purchase with upgrades open whole new doors for Aiden when it comes to making his way across the city. And while the main hook of Dying Light 2's parkour is the freedom it gives players, there are a handful of linear platforming sections in the main quest that are expertly designed, standing out as some of the game's most thrilling moments.

Techland has absolutely nailed Dying Light 2's parkour. It controls like a dream and is incredibly forgiving, so players will never have to worry about Aiden randomly letting go of a ledge or missing a jump.

Unfortunately, Dying Light 2's parkour is only one half of the equation, with the other half being the game's rather frustrating combat. Dying Light 2 tries to capitalize on Aiden's acrobatic skills in the combat as well, with players able to do things like leap off enemies' backs and hit them with dropkicks. There's a parry system that requires near-perfect timing on the part of the player as well as a dodge mechanic, but honestly the best bet is to grab the most powerful weapon one can find and simply hack away at the enemies.

Dying Light 2 combat scenarios generally involve players fighting hordes of zombies or, more often in the story campaign, enemy humans. Dying Light 2 has almost no guns, and so players are using an assortment of melee weapons for most of the game. The combat is completely serviceable for the most part, and it's fun to cut off zombie heads, but fighting larger groups can be annoying because Aiden will almost always get hit by someone from off-screen. And while Aiden's fancy attacks look impressive, they require some awkward button combinations that can be difficult to remember in the heat of battle.

Whereas Dying Light 2's parkour gets better as the game goes on, the opposite is true for combat. As players progress to the more difficult quests, enemies start attacking in larger numbers and have bigger health bars, which only serves to make it all more frustrating. The last chunk of the game is one combat encounter after another, and while it's possible for players to stealth their way through some of these sections, there are also times when they're forced to fight.

Dying Light 2's core gameplay is all about combat and parkour. It does a tremendous job with the parkour, while the combat leaves a lot to be desired. There's another key element to the game, though, and that is player choice. Aiden makes key decisions throughout the campaign that have immediate consequences, mainly through dialogue options. Dying Light 2's choices also come into play when exploring the world map, like when players take over windmills and water towers or restore electrical stations.

Like many other open world games, Dying Light 2 has a massive map with an exhaustive list of activities for players to complete, and also like other open world games, many of these activities consist of liberating an area or scaling a large structure. The twist in Dying Light 2 is that after players complete these activities, they are given the choice to dedicate the resources they unlock to one of two factions: the Peacekeepers or the Survivors.

Helping one faction over the other will change Dying Light 2's open world. For example, if players decide to dedicate a windmill to the Survivors, they will find that the city has been updated with new structures that make parkour a little easier. On the flip side, helping the Peacekeepers opens up new combat opportunities in the area.

There are games that promise to have meaningful choices but drop the ball but to Dying Light 2's credit, players will often see the immediate, obvious impact of the decisions they make in the game. Dying Light 2's ending tells players what those choices truly did as opposed to showing them in a dedicated scene, which is a bit of a letdown, but otherwise many players will likely come away impressed with how the game handles player choice and how it impacts the story. Unfortunately, the game doesn't have manual saves, which means that players will have to replay significant portions of the main quest to see how their choices in Dying Light 2 could've played out differently.

All of this content is spread out across Dying Light 2's massive open world, which players gain more access to as the game goes on. It's great that players are able to freely explore the open world, enter interior areas, and more without ever running into load screens, and even more impressive, Dying Light 2 is a mostly polished experience that maintains its frame rate while delivering high-quality graphics and detailed environments.

It seems as though Dying Light 2's delays and the extra development time has paid off, as the game doesn't have nearly as many glitches as one would expect from a huge open world game. However, the glitches that Dying Light 2 does have are rather significant, even if they are few and far between. During our time with the game, we ran into a glitch where it wouldn't let Aiden sleep and progress from night to day, which was inconvenient as nighttime in Dying Light 2 means deadlier zombies that make getting through the city a hassle. Rewards are increased at night and running from packs of dangerous zombies is fun when players are actively attempting to enjoy that experience, but it loses its luster when it's forced on them because of a glitch.

Another rather annoying bug occurred a couple of times in the game where the audio would completely go away. This happened during key Dying Light 2 story moments and to make matters worse, it also seemed to speed up the subtitles so that they were completely unreadable. The Dying Light 2 characters never have anything all that interesting to say anyway, but this would be very frustrating for anyone trying to get into the story. The only thing that fixed it was to completely reset the game.

There are other instances where a full reset of Dying Light 2 was necessary to fix a glitch. Enemies may sometimes completely disengage with Aiden and stare off into space, or sometimes they will find themselves glitched inside objects. This isn't a big deal when the enemies are random zombies in the streets that players can safely ignore anyway, but the latter can be a real pain when it happens during the game's obnoxious final boss fight.

Dying Light 2's glitches are inconvenient, but really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the game's problems. The game's biggest issues are its main story quests, boring dialogue, and underwhelming combat. However, those who can overlook those issues will find a game with an excellent parkour system, amusing side quests, and a huge open world that's a blast to explore. Throw in Dying Light 2's 4-player co-op, and it's clear to see that there is a great game underneath some problems.

Techland is apparently planning years of Dying Light 2 DLC, and while that won't fix the problems that the base game has, perhaps future content will focus on what it does right. Those who liked the first Dying Light will likely be able to overlook the sequel's serious flaws, but unless gamers are starving for a new open-world game, it's better to skip Dying Light 2.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human launches February 4 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, with a Switch version also in development. Game Rant was provided with an Xbox Series X code for this review.