About a year ago I talked about a little PlayStation gem by the name of Gravity Rush. You may not know what Gravity Rush is, which is understandable, so let me break it down quickly. It was an experimental exclusive for the PlayStation Vita. The last handheld console Sony invested time and interest into excluding that handheld gamepad they made for the PlayStation 5. Let’s be real, how many people eagerly bought that on top of a five hundred dollar system? Gravity Rush was a test to see what the PlayStation Vita was capable of. Create an innovative action RPG making good use of handheld tech. The result, while not completely successful, was satisfactory for the company. The game was developed by Japan Studio who’ve stood alongside Sony for quite some time up until that point. Having worked on Loco Roco, Ape Escape, and even helping out a little on Bloodborne. That lovecraftian masterpiece by From Software that’s trending every two weeks on Twitter. Gravity Rush sold well enough to warrant a sequel, and Sony moving onto stronger tech with the PlayStation 4 it was time for Japan Studio to evolve the formula. Immediately after the release of the original they began work on the ambitious follow-up Gravity Rush 2.
A lot of heart was put into Gravity Rush 2. The world is two and a half times the size of the first, the visuals received a massive glow-up, new mechanics were tacked on to create more diverse gameplay, and the story would finally explain the mysteries unanswered in the original. This was to be a grand sequel, and for a lot of fans it was. Gravity Rush 2 released in early 2017 and the reception for the sequel was much better than that of the first game. Go on the wikipedia page and you’re bound to see the game with more 9/10s whereas the first was a mix of eight and even 6/10 scores. Gravity Rush 2 was the grandest project Japan Studio had made, but sadly it would be their last as in 2020 the whole studio got shut down. Gravity Rush 2 despite reviewing well amongst critics wasn’t a financial success, and Sony no longer believed smaller scaled projects with creative niche ideas were no longer profitable. This is a proven fact, because during a recent interview with Shuhei Yoshida he talked about the current state of PlayStation. He described the desires listed above and that it feels like there’s no room for Double A games anymore. There’s only room for indie games and big budget Triple A titles. No more, no less, just those two.
Which is a shame, because Double A titles provegames don’t need to be the shiniest things in the world to be considered good. Gravity Rush 2 was the last game Japan Studio made and just like the original it has obtained cult status over the years. Being used as an example of how to make a video game sequel. Building upon what made the first great, adding in what probably needs to be added, and not sacrificing the series’ identity. I’ve been meaning to play Gravity Rush 2 for quite some time now. I’ve been bingeing game franchises I haven’t played the rest of lately, and this was voted as my next choice by my close friends. If they’re reading this then thanks guys for giving me that push towards the next direction. That said, Gravity Rush 2 is the most whelmed I’ve been with a video game sequel. Not overwhelmed or underwhelmed, just whelmed. (Also I stole this line from a content creator named Bricky.) On one hand I think this is miles better than the first game. There’s a lot on offer here that makes Gravity Rush 2 the much better video game. One you sink dozens of hours into striving to achieve full completion. A title with more content of top notch quality and display. A game that ties up as many loose ends they possibly can especially during the final act. I recommend this game slightly more than the first. However, it has a lot of the same problems as the first game. Problems I’m surprised they have not managed to fix and in some ways they’ve doubled down on issues the first game had.
I don’t want to sound rude, because again this is the last game Japan Studio made before Sony murdered them. It’s just hard to praise a sequel when you feel like not a lot has changed and if so what was added was minor additions in the long scheme of things. Gravity Rush 2 is a darn good sequel. I think people who loved the first game are gonna have a heck of a time with this entry. When the game is firing on all cylinders it’s at an all time high, but once the steam settles you find a lot of really cruddy lows. Stuff that makes you wonder why Gravity Rush 2 has such a low completion rate despite not being all that hard or long of a video game. I believe fifthteen percent of players have beaten the final chapter of the game, which is ten percent lower than that of the first one. It’s hard to explain why Gravity Rush 2 is both extremely charming and confused with itself at the same time, and I don’t expect this review to do a great job explaining. So what does this game do well? What does it obviously not do well? Why do I think it’s the better game even though it hasn’t improved all too much? Buckle up because we’re in for a hell of a rush.
Story
The plot of the sequel takes place a few weeks after the events of the original. Mysterious gravity shifters Kat and Raven have become Hekseville’s greatest heroes. Chasing off any evil that dares to pop up and preventing any crimes from occuring. All is well, but during a recent mission they are sucked into a dangerous vortex. Being transported far away from Hekseville into unknown territory. Kat along with her officer friend Syd find themselves aboard a mining town. Folks who dive deep into the world to mine precious ore in dangerous environments. Kat and Syd are forced to work as they have no way out of the town. Times are tough, and the reason why is because the town is basically enslaved by wealthier individuals who sit above them. They cannot move on til they mine enough ore and pay a massive debt. Kat wishes she could help the people, but without her cat Dusty she can’t utilize her gravity shifting powers. Weeks turn to months, and Kat spends most of her nights starving and cold. One day though, village inhabitant Cecie runs off. Kat is told to locate her and she finds Cecie with Dusty. The two reunite and during a Nevi attack she uses her powers to defend the people. She then helps the town mine precious ores more easily, and soon enough they are able to pay the debt and move away from the mines.
The mining town ports with Jirga Para Lhao, a bustling city containing three leveled sectors. A middle class district containing shops, a low class district composed of junk and sadness, and the high end district for the rich and their parties. There’s clearly class division amongst the people as arguments have arisen over who should rule. Who has the most influence? Where should hard to obtain resources be directed towards? How do we deal with the ongoing gravity storms and recurring evil when all we can do is argue amongst ourselves? Why is the rich mainly to blame for this? Well there you f*cking go, it’s the rich people’s fault. It’s always their fault since day one. There’s a bright neon sign labeled rich motherf*ckas and nobody batted an eye. You know they’re evil. I know they’re evil. Look out the window and you can witness this happening in real life right now! Anyways, Kat is back and it’s her duty to serve as the hero for the public. All the while trying to figure out how to return back to Hekseville and uncover where Raven hides. It’s gonna be a long journey, but soon enough she’ll realize her place on top of it all. The reason why she's even here.
Gameplay
Being a sequel, Gravity Rush 2 does more of what made the original special in 2012. Be an open world game where you fly around using your gravity shifting powers, collect resources that make you stronger, and fight enemies. Combat is just about the same. You can fight guys on the ground using basic kicks, but it’s easy to get swarmed with how you’re attacked from every direction. So instead you’re gonna want to make use of your gravity shifting powers fly around and instead go gravity kick in the face. Flying around is easy, just activate your powers, turn the camera towards the direction you want to fly, and you’re off. Targeting enemies is easy as all you have to do is place your cursor on them, and then just twirl away. It’s like firing off a cannon, but you are the projectile. Gravity kicks can be chained which allows you to keep the pressure up, but what you want to be cautious of is your energy meter. This dictates how much you can fly around and use your gravity shifting powers, and once it’s out you’ll start falling. This meter can be refilled by either standing on solid flat ground, collecting blue crystals that refill it immediately, or falling for a short period of time. I only recommend doing the last one if you’re fighting in a large open space. Combat is simple, but the addition of new shifting forms allows it to be more diverse.
First you unlock the lunar form which makes you light as a feather, be able to jump higher, and teleport towards your enemies when attacking with gravity kicks. The Jupiter form makes you a tad bit heavier so you can’t jump or move easily, but you move faster when flying around and are able to crash down on enemies with a charged kick. There’s one last form unlocked late into the game and that is the panther form. This is activated when you charge your ultimate and instead of spending it on one of the three forms’ special attacks you instead go full panther. Running in the air wildly without the need of energy, and being able to slash away needlessly. Enemies come in a variety of flavors whether that be basic Nevi units, bigger foes with multiple components you need to chip away at, or heavily armed militia packing deadly machinery to use in the field. Some enemies are big and small, slow and fast. You always want to be on your toes during fights as later on you’ll learn standing still is a death wish. As you fly around the world, collect large sums of ore, and complete missions you’ll want to spend your earnings to get stronger. This can be done by opening up the level up screen where you can spend collected ore. Improve the power of your attacks and other stats, because enemies get harder as time goes on and appear in larger numbers. Occasionally during a story mission a boss appears and thistle tests you in certain skills. Whether that be being able to keep up with them or prioritize different parts of their sprawling body. Aside from that, Gravity Rush 2 is as simple to pick up as the first game. A good gameplay loop packed into a game loaded with content. Hopefully you can bring peace to wherever you go, chase the Nevi back, and uphold your name as the Gravity Queen. A hero that'll be remembered for ages to come.
Thoughts
Gravity Rush 2 for the most part is a great sequel. It feels like what the team originally wanted to do with the first game, but they couldn’t due to the technical limitations and capacity of what the PlayStation Vita could handle. There’s a lot of love and passion packed into this game, and while I do have a few frustrations with Gravity Rush 2 and what it didn’t improve it’s hard to hate it. I always appreciate games with creative and innovative ideas more so than games that play it safe. Gravity Rush 2 is more energetic and thrilling than the first game, and for me it’s the better game between the two. All the new additions are the developers trying to create a grander experience. The different shifting styles to diversify the combat and traversal. The larger and more colorful which later on mashes the city from the first game along with the new one to create a gigantic map that is fun to fly around. The art direction looked better than ever and made it feel like we are playing an anime. I always love the art direction of games like Metaphor Refantazio and the Gravity Rush games. It’s unique and I always wondered how the programmers get it to work. I never complimented the soundtrack for these games. Paying attention to it now I’d say the music is god tier. Reminds me a lot of the whimsy I get playing Octopath Traveler, and if you know me you know I’m a sucker for whimsical music delivered during the right moments.
There’s a moment where Kat gets mistaken for a singer and forced on stage. A stage in front of an air field occupied by a corrupt militia. It treats itself like a comedy where it seems like Kat is not good at singing, and she literally has to make up a song on the fly so she can blend in. Then it becomes beautiful where Kat starts passionately singing and the crowd loves it. Showing that even action packed games like this can have moments of beauty and solitude. I do want to touch on the story of Gravity Rush 2, because in many ways it fixes the main issue I had with the first game. The narrative feels better structured here with a good beginning, middle, and end. Much like the first you are kicked to rock bottom and must work your way up. However, the cause you fight for is one player can connect to better. Gravity Rush 2 surprisingly has really good politics. The main theme being classism and power. It’s even symbolized through world design. Jirga Para Lhao, the new city, being the prime example of this. The lower class are forced to live in the lower sections of the world. Where the air is unclean, the sky is barely visible, and they must use tossed out scrap to forge houses. Middle class live in the middle portion. Having good enough apartments to live in, run stable businesses, and can see the sky even when the clouds still cover them. The rich folks live high above where the air is clean and the sun shines above. Not having to worry about what occurs below and being able to get away with doing whatever they want. Wanting to literally blow it up at some point.
The rich in Gravity Rush 2 are evil, like comically evil. Not the most compelling thing ever, but it does work. Watching them take advantage of the middle and lower class for resources and any profits they can gain. Caring more about themselves rather than helping others. Watching Kat help form a rebellion and stand up for the rights of the mistreated. I would say the game is four acts, and the first two acts along with the last are the two highest points in the story. Where we get to see where each character stands and what they fight for. The third act I’d say is weakest because it’s when we return to Hekseville and we learn what occurred after we disappeared. We learn we were forgotten and replaced by a manufactured shifter. Only for that to be thrown out the window for what feels like last minute villains and plot twists. None of which you can really care for since the game didn’t do a good job building up to it. To then be wrapped up with a big old, “So that just happened!” Then it’s picked back up with the final section of the story. Where my main problem with the first game is fixed. We learn who Kat was and where she truly came from. Her past, why she has powers, and strives to help others under any circumstances. To then be wrapped up in a beautiful ending where she makes a sacrifice to protect those who face utter annihilation. The story is miles ahead of the first game. It doesn’t contain the smartest writing in a game, but is instead a feel good and I love feel good stories.
Everything I’ve described up until now has been positive. Story, art direction, music, the themes, and all the added content and features. However, I did say while this game has tremendous highs it also has a lot of extreme lows. This is where we get to the gameplay and my critiques. At the end of the day this was a really fun game to play, but it’s when Gravity Rush 2 is not being fun that it becomes a pain to play. Some problems from the original are carried over and other times the issues are doubled down. I like the ideas at play for combat, but it has made me realize three core things. One, you’re still battling the camera half the time as you make crazy turns to direct yourself towards the enemy. That or there’s too much clutter around you whether that be all that is happening or getting it stuck in a wall. Two, combat mainly works against slower opponents or enemies with easy to hit weaknesses. Fighting anything that is small or fast in Gravity Rush is a chore, because it's hard to keep up with how you keep missing and repositioning with the terrible camera. Thirdly, as much as I love how they made use of current tech, Gravity Rush still feels like a game that plays best with a handheld device. The game uses gyro controls or directional aim, which is something popular with devices like the Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita. Those consoles allowed you to aim and react quickly, which is hard here since you have to play this game on a television screen hooked to a stationary console unit. Something you can’t move freely or look at all the time as you tilt the controller like a madman.
The new styles are nice additions, but your use of them will vary. Lunar style is good for slow descents and teleporting, but I still found myself utilizing the base style because it was efficient and dealt more damage. I barely used the jupiter style after unlocking it, because performing the charge crash often led to me getting hit before I could even do it. Doesn’t help also that the story mission you obtain it in has cramped corridors that are awkward to fly through and again the bad camera likes to clip through. Speaking of story missions, the quality of them likes to dip up and down rapidly. Sometimes you have one that is genuinely fun. Giving you enough space to fight in, having a well designed encounter, and doing a good job getting you from place to place. Then you have the ones with the boring or obnoxious objectives. There’s one moment where you got to find a gang member, and it has you walking around and saying hello to people. There’s a lot of missions that make you do this, and you just have to hope by random chance one of the NPCs walking by gives you the mission marker on where you need to head next. Anyways, this then led me to trailing the guy from a distance, which isn’t hard because the NPC awareness is bad. There’s the cramp corridor mission like I said earlier, or the boss fights that are ridiculously bad at times. I’m surprised some of them got through playtesting, because there’s no way they could have thought half of them were fun. What sucks is that these bosses aren’t hard. They’re just annoying to get through or work around. Every game has moments like these, but here they’re at large. It's hard to ignore 30 minute segments that just piss you off.
Eventually I decided to break the monotony up with side quests to then realize they’re not worth doing as well. Mission design for them is either boring or annoying as well, and the rewards you get aren’t even good. Half your power will come from collecting crystals in the world, and while I did feel stronger at the end compared to the beginning it made us wonder if my strength was gained from leveling up or the game giving me new abilities through story progression. There’s bits where you complete a story mission and the game just announces it’s gonna increase your health and strength. You don’t get this from side quests or certain points in the skill tree. Just by doing story missions. Which blows because now it encourages me to just do story missions and ignore everything else. I don’t mind this because the story does have good pacing for the most part, but if you’re making an open world game you kind of want side content to have meaning. Reasons as to why you should do some of it instead of blazing through the main course. It’s like ordering a salad at a restaurant, refusing to eat it, and then the pasta you ordered comes and you scarf it down within five minutes. That’s what I mean by content being handled better.
Gravity Rush 2 is a good time as long as you’re willing to put up with its moments of annoyance or content quality drops. The highs are high, and the lows are low like I said. It seems to have put a majority of its focus on world building and style, but in terms of gameplay some of the flaws of the first are still here and more relevant. I wouldn’t call the game bloated compared to other open world titles, as there’s not too many side quests and if you just focus on the main story you are bound to spend roughly fifteen to twenty hours completing it. The game is experimental with its ideas and mechanics, but much like any innovative title it came with caveats. Problems for being the only game to do what it did. I prefer experimental smaller titles like Gravity Rush 2 rather than large over budgeted games with too much, but yeah. Still, I do recommend Gravity Rush 2 and for those who enjoyed the first you’re bound to find the same level of enjoyment you had here in the sequel. In the end I’m going to give Gravity Rush 2 an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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