Death Stranding 2 Review, Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Death Stranding aged like fine wine. So, how, then, does Hideo Kojima’s one-of-a-kind experience begin a new journey?

With the first Kojima Productions effort, internet discourse and an almost outright misunderstanding of what the effort attempted to do and convey chased it to launch. But over time, it reached more than 20 million players and blossomed into something that, even if slightly, changed the perception of storytelling in the medium. 

Still, a sequel brings new expectations. The challenge for Death Stranding 2 is, how does one take the post-apocalyptic delivery concept that everyone is expecting upon launch and still innovate and surprise? 

Better yet, how does it both avoid simply being more of the same, but better and potentially push the medium forward again?

There isn’t an easy answer, but Death Stranding 2 sure intends to provide something of an answer. 

Graphics and Gameplay

Death Stranding 2 isn’t here to reset how players think about video game graphics. 

Obviously, this sequel looks better than its predecessor in terms of sheer fidelity while using modern horsepower. But this isn’t one of those games where it really matters, as the onus is much more on the creativity. 

Where Death Stranding 2 really makes a veteran of the original gasp out loud is the dramatically more pronounced draw distances. Reaching a high point and just taking in the landscape and its variety can be shocking compared to the original. The new areas are just as diverse, if not more so, than the trek the first takes players through, too. 

More breathtaking than anything, though, are the environmental wrinkles this time out. Sweeping, grainy sandstorms, rain downpours that raise traversable rivers into a deathtrap, earthquakes, rockslides and more, all can be intimidating in scope and enthralling in their visual dominance. 

Tack on a day and night cycle, too, which impacts some enemy behavior and the visual impact of, say, lighting coming from things players constructed out in the world. 

There will be nitpicks, fair or not. Some of the visual assets are obviously carried over from the last game. Those who care for super-accurate lip synching need to focus on reading the captions. 

Voice acting is once again a highlight thanks to the big names like Léa Seydoux, while Norman Reedus again takes the protagonist role and runs with it to memorable results. 

The soundtrack from Woodkid and Ludvig Forssell is as unforgettable as the Low Roar moments from the first game. This time, it’s dynamic, too, with hours-long tracks shifting and responding to a player’s action to match the tone.

Players still have to figure out how to best arrange their cargo (pro tip: Hold triangle to hit auto-arrange when prompted). They can chart their course and see potential dangers on a very impressive 3D map with proper elevations. Then they must make the trek, be it carefully balancing the load on Sam’s back or picking one of a handful of vehicles and tools like ladders to help manage the task. 

Still pervasive is a sense of loneliness and community intermixed in a way that made the first game so compelling. Trodding along, especially early in the game, only to be assisted by a helpful sign placement by another player, or a convenient ladder or even a fully constructed stretch of battery-sustaining road over tricky obstacles, just creates a flood of relief and appreciation for that random player who went through the same thing, then doubled back to thoughtfully help those who come after them. 

Death Stranding 2 also greatly expands on the combat options available to players. There are more weapons and gadgets available and every enemy outpost feels like its own little sandbox. It’s all very Metal Gear Solid-like in terms of scouting out a base, then planning an attack.

All that said, while Death Stranding 2 will end up described as more combat-oriented, that’s just not the case. There are more options, yes, but players still retain the agency to stealth through nearly everything or outright avoid enemies by traveling a less direct, more perilous route to their destination.

Like the first game, human enemy AI is a little spotty. Players can rather easily manipulate them into an endless loop of investigating a knocked-out friend, then doing the same to them, even on the hardest difficulty. But it’s not a major detriment to the experience and even carries its own sort of Metal Gear Solid charm, enabling things like, lobbing a smoke grenade at their feet and tying up everyone in the confusion. 

The ghastly BT enemies have some new types to navigate, though, and there are other little Chiral creatures out in forests and other places now to navigate. There are again some early, unforgettable setpieces on this front, plus some of the frustration from BT encounters early in the first game seems to be pared down. 

Outside of combat, traversal gets some interesting wrinkles. One of those is the monorail system, which when upgraded, will let players ship massive hauls of resources around the world. Some of the expected vehicles return, while others unlocked later are shocking and, frankly, flip the game navigation on its head in a way that is so fun (and Kojima goofy in the best way). 

It all combines to feel like a much, much bigger game, sheer ladmass-wise. The game compensates with plenty of ways to team up with fellow porters around the world to build safer, more efficient routes. 

Story and More

Sam Porter Bridges returns as the protagonist, though his feats from the first game have, quite literally, changed the world as players knew it. 

Being a Kojima tale, Death Stranding 2 dips into the unexpected and often odd while overall delivering a heartfelt tale with some really dense questions and answers, though actual interpretation will vary greatly on a player-to-player basis. 

Not even a year after the first game’s conclusion, Sam is off on his own after connecting the United Cities of America, only to split from the UCA. Fragile, now leader of Drawbridge, tracks him down and whisks him away from Lou and his hermetic retreat.

The side characters in the first game were memorable, but goofy, if not eye-rolling. Not here. Rainy, backstory notwithstanding, is a radiant presence. Elle Fanning’s Tomorrow might be the best thing introduced to the series. 

Sam is still one-note as a player-stand-in, yet gets these little small humourous moments that become hilarious and more memorable than they have any right being. Sideish characters, especially Rainy, outright steal the show. Dollman being portrayed in stop-motion is the most Kojima thing ever. 

Death Stranding 2 progression goes the old and new route. Sam still receives upgrades and new blueprints for growing a strong connection across the game and specific outposts, with a faster pace certainly rolling out vehicles and helpful items. 

Sam passively upgrades specific attributes like stealth through actions related to them. Sneaking successfully through a mission upgrades that stat. Combat, that stat. General things like balance, strength to carry more weight, etc., passively scale, too. 

The real skill trees and player choice come in the form of the APAS. As players help Sam expand the Chiral network, more point allocation and abilities open up. These range all over the place from advising Sam on where things he’s constructing fall within environmental disaster ranges like floodplains, to helping with aim in combat, and so on. 

It’s a nice system that asks players to make tough choices, but also gives them major agency over how the game unfolds. In this way, no two Sams will necessarily be alike, depending on the player. It’s also generous in letting players respec things. 

Sam can also modify the backpack with devices that do different things to help players, be it extra batteries or other things that would get into spoiler territory. Combining it all properly for the current job is a fun task of strategizing before seeing it play out in the field. 

There is major vehicle customization this time out, too, that goes beyond tweaking the color.

Speaking of customization, the greater sense of player agency even includes the ability to change the images on safehouse walls, even to custom shots the players took themselves. 

Like the first game, players can form connections with other specific players. Liking them or even going into the social media-like feeds to form strand connections with them means more of a given player’s created constructs will populate in the player’s world over random ones. 

There is a massive database of information in the menus, be it story or character profiles or even tutorials. There’s so much conveyed in the writeups, especially when thinking about enemy types, status effects and more, that should probably be better displayed during gameplay itself. But the depth to them can be immense and, if nothing else, it’s all just a few clicks away. And to its credit, the game will prompt players to hold a button, even in the middle of a cutscene, to trigger more information about terms and lore. 

Death Stranding 2 runs well and offers different performance modes, too, rounding out a robust package of options

Conclusion

Like its predecessor, and somewhat ironically, Death Stranding 2 deserves praise for trying something new in the era of the sequels.

In continuing to be different, Death Stranding 2 succeeds. In telling a captivating tale with heavy themes and unforgettable characters, it succeeds. In crafting a gameplay loop that is addicting while encouraging players to go out of their way to help total strangers, it dramatically, uniquely excels. 

Death Stranding 2 might not win over players who didn't enjoy the first. But this is a triumph in one-upmanship in terms of gameplay feel and loop compared to the first, while obviously paying respect to player feedback while refining and adding to the foundation. 

An obvious Game of the Year favorite, Death Stranding 2 asks players to keep an open mind, presents tough questions about the concept of human connection and wraps it in a fun video game shell that will likely have players yearning to return to it over the months, if not years ahead.