GAME REVIEW

Dishonored 1 was probably one of the best stealth FPS games of the modern era. It had all the elements that you would expect from a challenging stealth FPS game. Gamers expected something similar from Dishonored 2. Unfortunately, the game isn’t worth more than a single playthrough.

Introduction

During the first few minutes of the game, you will find out that Corvo, the protagonist from the previous game and now the Royal Protector, is the father of the current Empress, Emily.

Corvo was a silent protagonist in the previous game, which gave him a very mysterious feel. Also, we never get to see his face. In this game, he speaks and the first thing you will notice is the extremely bad voice acting!

If you somehow manage to overlook this, you notice the poor graphics. Some of the lighting effects are not good and don’t enhance the overall gloomy art style associated with Dishonored.

Story

The story is the standard “I-am-taking-your-throne-as-I-am-your-mother’s-sister-and-the-rightful-heir-to-the-throne.” Nothing fancy or extremely innovative there.

Moreover, some of the antagonists are presented in an absurd way that makes you question their prowess. For example, they place Emily in her own room which has open windows with walkways! I don’t think I would ever try to detain anybody in such a room, and I am not even a super villain!

Then, some of the events that occur during the course of the game are hilarious. I am talking about overthrowing the current empress, which should be impossible. But, there is barely any kind of security in the empress tower or in the city. It is as if they didn’t even consider a contingency plan. This is where the game actually loses its charm; it feels like a generic stealth game with numerous stealth game clichés after this.

Gameplay

Even if you start the game as Corvo, you will not retain your powers from the previous game. Emily has no powers at the start of the game, but she gains them within the first hour of the game. This time, you can reject The Outsiders gift and play the game without any power.

You’ve got your melee weapon, your sword, in one hand and everything else, including ranged weapons, powers and spells in the other. The trick is to remain undetected. You will be able to perform a variety of lethal and non-lethal attacks once you sneak up on an enemy. You can even use a variety of non-lethal crossbow ammunition as well as choke holds to put your enemies to sleep.

I personally like Emily’s power that lets you chain enemies so that if you put one enemy to sleep, all others chained to that enemy will also fall asleep. This is a very useful method to clear out a room with a single sleep bolt from the crossbow. In fact, the entire game could be played using the crossbow and its ammunition variety.

If you get detected, all hell will break loose. Melee combat is very difficult in this game, as enemies will sway and kick you away to stagger you. Therefore, a stealthy mentality will be well rewarded.

An extremely good improvement over the previous game is the fact that the AI is much better. The villains might be dumb, but the enemy AI isn’t. You can’t use the simple throw-a-bottle tactic to distract the enemy in this game. If you try and do that, the enemy will spot you easily, as the AI will always take a look from where the bottle was thrown from. Not many stealth games have this.

Graphics and Performance

Even though it runs good on consoles, the game is extremely bad even on a very high end PC. For most people, the game is completely unplayable.

Summary

If you have played Dishonored 1, you might find this game to be more or less the same game. Dishonored 2 could very well be considered an expansion. I didn’t like Dishonored 2, mainly because they weren’t able to tell a good story, which is what Dishonored is known for, besides its extremely solid stealth mechanics.

Review score: 7/10