Well I haven’t posted a review in three weeks and I don’t want my audience to think that I’m taking a break longer than I should be. Well I say “my audience”, because half of my audience is imaginary and my website is practically a ghost town. Plus I haven’t been on break, the high school I attend has been remote since the beginning of November and I finally got to go back in person earlier this month. For the past few weeks I’ve been busy working my ass off and I wanted to end my semester with flying colors. I still do have time to play video games just not as much as usual, so that’s why the amount of reviews published each month is gonna dip down again. However, I am getting back on track and it’s time for this year's first game review!
What did I play? Another soulslike. Good f*cking lord how many souls-likes can I play before my little peanut brain explodes and tells me to bash the closest person against a wall? Well I’ll never get tired of souls-likes, because while it’s not my favorite genre and they are not as good as the source material they are extremely fun to talk about, especially to Soulsborne veterans. I get to pick apart what I like about each game, what intriguing elements do they mix into From Software’s design philosophy, and explain why these elements mechanically work. Today’s souls-like is quite special, because it’s made by a team of developers that have been struggling to understand the Dark Souls formula for years now. Deck 13, founded in 2001 by Jan Klose and Florian Stadlbaurer and is currently made up of seventy employees who are now working strong together.
The team wasn’t always known as Deck 13. Deck 13 is the successor to Artex Software who were known for developing Ankh on the old fashioned home computer, RISC OS. Deck 13 took Ankh and decided to turn it into a full on franchise. Deck 13 made about three Ankh games and they all were pretty bad. The small budget team went on to create new IPs like Venetica and Blood Knights and luckily they too also really sucked. So right now we are reliving the history of a team of determined developers who constantly put out sh*t. Around 2011, and you hopefully know where this story is going, From Software published Dark Souls and it became a massive hit. Deck 13 saw how successful Dark Souls was and decided their next new IP should take inspiration from it. They wanted to create their own Dark Souls, a norse themed Dark Souls.
A few years later in 2014, Deck 13 developed Lords of The Fallen and it was received pretty decently by the public. It was their most highest quality product to date so that there is an improvement, but the overall experience failed to perform. Many critics complained that Lords of The Fallen failed to understand what made Dark Souls so incredible. The controls were clunky so that made combat a slog to play through. Everyone was expecting a norse Dark Souls and what they got was something else. The world wasn’t really that intriguing lacking the depth and complexity the world of Dark Souls had. What made things even worse is that From Software released Dark Souls 2 the same year and the outcome seems obvious by now. Lords of The Fallen was a mixed bag, but Deck 13 was willing to learn and improve upon their mistakes.
They decided their next game would be yet again inspired by Dark Souls, but this time they decided to be a little more original. They asked themselves very carefully: what if Dark Souls but in a sci-fi setting? That is what led to The Surge which has been in development since 2015. The Surge released in 2017 and reception was still mixed. It was much better than Lords of The Fallen so that’s another step towards improvement, but there were still problems that Deck 13 didn’t know how to improve. While the sci-fi setting was unique the environments weren’t really that interesting. Level design sucked, boss design sucked, and combat was still clunky to control. The Surge seemed like another failure, but it did have some good ideas. Some people even liked The Surge and said it was a decent game that needed more breathing space to express itself.
Deck 13 took note from all these complaints and spent the next two years creating a sequel to The Surge. I always thought The Surge looked like a unique game. It combined two things I absolutely like, Dark Souls and science fiction. Then I listen to all the problems The Surge has and then that’s what convinces me to not buy the game. A sequel to a flawed game didn’t seem like a good idea. At that point you should just go on and make another franchise, but Deck 13 was determined. They spent months cracking away at The Surge 2 and finally in 2019 they released it. The Surge 2 is... surprisingly good. Holy sh*t they pulled it off. The Sugre 2 is a huge step up from Deck 13’s previous game. Better combat, better level design, better controls, and expanding upon what made the first game a tad bit enjoyable. It’s sad that I bought a used copy of the game though. I found the game for sale for sixteen at Gamestop and I didn’t know I would enjoy it so much. Maybe I can turn the tables and convince you to buy The Surge 2. You can support Deck 13 and help them make other games in the future. Today we’ll be talking about why I love The Surge 2 and why it deserves you attention. This game will make you stronger, faster, and more resilient than ever!
Story
The Surge 2 takes place several years in the future where mankind has used up a majority of the world’s natural resources meaning the vast plains we knew are now basically dry stretches of deserts. Hundreds of individuals are unemployed since job opportunities are at an all time low and our race is on the brink of extinction. Luckily there have been attempts to reserve whatever is left of mankind and keep things going. Enter CREO, a corporation whose main focus is to provide jobs to those who were unemployed and return life back to earth. They created specialized exoskeletons designed to enhance human capabilities and their most current project is UTOPIA.
Project UTOPIA used a special robotic intelligence known as Nanites to help them speed up the process with saving mankind. However the Nanites grew consciousness and slowly began to ravage the company from the inside out. They corrupted each piece of machinery CREO had and slowly took possession of the workers within CREO who were hooked up with those robotic exoskeletons they created. Project UTOPIA was never completed due to the Nanite virus spreading like wildfire, but luckily one of the newest recruits to company Warren didn’t become possessed and helped forge a rocket capable of containing the Nanites and saving mankind. Warren launched the rocket into the atmosphere and found a way to escape the now destroyed CREO complex, but as the rocket blasted into the air it collided into a plane. The Nanites transferred into the plane as it crashed towards the nearby Jericho City.
The Nanites began to spread yet again and a special governmental force known as AID as sent in to deal with them. The AID begin to take over Jericho City, streets gangs begin to rip up the streets, and chaos is at an all time high. A great wall was built around Jericho City to contain the Nanite virus and no one is allowed to enter or exit the city no matter how hard they try. We play as a random individual who wakes up in the medical bay of the Jericho City Police Department. The individual has little recollection of how they got there, but they are given visions that they were one of the very few survivors from the plane crash. The Police Department is overrun with rogue machines and prisoners, so the survivor fights his way out. They encounter a specialized medbay capable of equipping them with one of CREOs exoskeletons and seeing how they want to get out alive they fit themselves with one. The survivor fights his way through the prisoners and warden before finally making it into Jericho City.
The survivor encounters a man outside the station who calls himself The Stranger and he informs the survivor of what has happened in Jericho City while they have been in a coma. The survivor encounters visions of a girl the AID is after and it turns out she has some connection to the plane crash and the Nanites who are overrunning the city. So the survivor makes it their task to track down the girl, figure out what’s going on, and save whatever survivors are left in the city from the Naninte possessed machines. The survivor has to be wary though. A cult known as the Children of The Spark are slowly taking over Jericho City and their leader Eli seems to believe the Nanites are a message that the end of times are coming. Eli wants to help speed up the process and he may end up posing a threat to you and your journey.
Gameplay
The Surge 2 is another soulslike so you know what that means. Tons of areas to explore, waves of relentless enemies to fight, and dying over and over again until you get everything right and can proceed. The way Souls games work is that you have a health bar and a stamina bar. When you take damage your health bar goes down and if it goes completely empty you die. You lose any experience points you were carrying up until that point and are forced back to the previous checkpoint. You can retrieve the experience points you lost, but dying before retrieving them makes you lose them forever. The stamina bar dictates how many actions you can do. Unlike most action games where you cancel out into other actions with the press of another button, once you press an performance button you can’t cancel out. So you have to decide whether you go all in with attacks or you dodge away to regenerate your stamina bar for more actions. Stamina is used for attacks dodging, running, long jumps, and a few other actions. The experience points you gain can be used at Medbays to upgrade your stats.
However, one key difference between leveling up in Dark Souls and The Surge is that there are only three categories in The Surge. Health, stamina, and battery efficiency. These stat choices may seem very limited at first, but it helps the player focus on other aspects to help them survive fights. Mainly finding new weapons, new armor, implants, and injectables. Before we get into armor and the customization let’s talk about the combat first. The Surge 2’s combat is so f*cking good! An easy fight can ramp up within seconds and being able to down every foe is so satisfying. Unlike Dark Souls’ enemies, a majority of the enemies in The Surge 2 are just basic dudes in armor. Wait wait wait wait! What if I tell you The Surge 2 does something to make fighting dudes in armor fun. You can target each individual part on an enemy's body. Parts that are not covered up with armor take more damage hit while parts with armor take less damage.
You are encouraged to attack armored parts of enemies throughout the game, because that’s the only way to pick up the recipes to forge new armor and upgrade materials for your equipment. If you strike the armor part of an enemy enough you’ll weaken it and can go in for a chopping attack. This not only kills the enemy instantly, but it allows you to pick up armor recipes and upgrade materials. One you get the recipe you go to a medbay and use the upgrade material you found to forge the armor you like. There are several sets of armor in the game. Some sets not only offer extra protection and resistances, but also special set bonuses. Equipping a certain amount of armor pieces to a set will boost your skills and offer you special perks.
Weapons can also be looted off of enemies if you strike the place where they are holding the weapon and the weapon variety in this game is really good. You not only have basic sharp staffs, spears, and shiny axes you have the type of stuff you would actually see from a sci-fi action game. Let me list a couple of the weapons I picked up during my playthrough of The Surge 2. There was this glowing spear that not only swung around at breakneck speed, but also did a good amount of both physical and energy damage. There’s this one polearm in the game that has this roundish glowing tip and acts like a spear, but it can split apart and do massive amounts of physical damage. I got this need-like power gauntlet that swung really slowly but just obliterated foes with each successful hit. Then there was my build where I unlocked these boxing gloves that did shock damage and allowed me to evade easily. The Surge 2 may offer a limited amount of stats to level up, but there is build variety and playstyles.
Every so often when you level up, you unlock new slots for implants. Implants give your character special perks and injectables they can use during battles. Injectables are necessary if you want to survive the burning streets of Jericho City because they are basically the consumables of this game. Each injectable provides healing or resistances to certain things and they can be upgraded for more uses. For example healing is important in Souls games and one of the first injectables you get is the ability to heal for a short period of time. The only way to use injectables is to use battery energy and this where the battery efficiency stat comes into play. Whenever you strike an enemy you fill up your battery meter. Fill it up enough and you gain a charge. Charges can either be stored into injectables for future purposes or used immediately to perform the equipped injectable action. So the game is encouraging an aggressive playstyle since the only way to heal is to constantly be beating up enemies. Which I like because The Surge 2 leans towards the design philosophy of Bloodborne rather than Dark Souls.
The level and world design also leans towards the design of Bloodborne and the original Dark Souls, where areas were interconnected and shortcuts looped back into earlier parts of the level. It gets a little confusing at times and it’s easy to get lost, but I extremely like it because it encourages exploration. What else can I talk about The Surge 2? I can mention how side quests work and how they provide some actually good awards, but unlike Dark Souls they don’t progress along with the story. So The Surge 2 is a really fun soulslike, what more can be had when you can cosplay as a literal goddamn transformer and wield the tail of a giant dead robot?
Thoughts
The Surge 2 is a game I was expecting to do a terrible job replicating the FromSoft formula, but ended up absolutely enjoying the entire way through. This is probably one of the few better soulslikes I played amongst a genre of immiatotrs not knowing how to incorporate a few original ideas or mechanics. Third place at least with first place being Remnant: From The Ashes and second being Fallen Order. However, if I were to also include titles that took inspirations otherwise the 2D soulslikes then it would be somewhat low on the list. Yet, there is just so much stuff that The Surge 2 does right.
The combat is exhilarating with aggressive foes that are always keeping you on your toes and reasons for you to farm for the strongest gear. The level and world design is top notch with secrets and shortcuts hiding around each corner. There’s even a world changing event later on that forces you to navigate the world differently and forget what you had in your head before. Customization is great as the player can specialize in whatever playstyle they want. Everyone complains that the controls are =clunky since performing actions feels delayed, but I thought the controls were good. They are tight enough to let navigating around sharp corners easy and let each attack pack a punch.
One complaint I heard is that the environments in the first game lacked variety which I can understand since it mainly takes place within a mechanical complex. The environments in The Surge 2 are bright, varied, and always make the player wonder how the hell they got there. At first I punched my way through a desolate city filled with bandits, then I ended up in a shopping mall, then a fishing harbor, then a rave party, then a park filled with plant life, and there was one point where I kept going up and up and I felt like I was going to touch the sky but ended up at an AID encampment. Final complement I have with this game is that it has a high amount of replay value. There are several reasons to replay this game like finding new equipment, doing side quests you may have missed out on the first playthrough, or seeing if you can get through it better. The game is pretty fair. At first it took me a bit to get used to how the game worked, but I embraced the power loader fantasy the game wanted me to have.
The Surge 2 is just a really good soulslike, but it doesn't mean it’s a perfect one. The bosses suck and when I say they suck they really suck. Some fights are quite literally standard enemies with a jack ton of health, and the fights that are original seem challenging at first but they do become a pushover once you realize what the easy strategy is. The game can be broken at times if you upgrade your armor and healing items to a point where you can tank blow after blow. There’s this one after credit scene that should have been placed at the beginning so the player has a better understanding of what is going on. The story may be my biggest gripe with this game. It’s not a bad story as it has Soulsborne levels of world building, but the game lacks the depth or philosophy Bloodborne or Dark Souls had. It keeps bouncing back and forth between themes that I didn’t know what the overarching lesson was. Is it about religion, human nature, evolution, or whatever our main goal was from the beginning.
The game took me around twenty hours to beat and it’s a quality experience with tons of content. Deck 13 really gave it their all. I recommend The Surge 2 to any Soulsborne fan and if you were turned off by Deck 13’s previous games then give this one ago. Overall I’m going to give The Surge 2 an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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