The original Dusk Diver mixed action RPG mechanics with a more story-heavy design than most and stood out as a result. The characters all worked nicely with each other and the combat featured a combo-heavy approach with a summon-esque Guardian allowing battles to end in a more satisfying manner. Some exceled at just taking foes out quickly, while others were better at breaking down enemy defenses before turning the offense up to 11. It featured a nice mix of world-building and combat, but was hurt by the combat feeling one-note overall with a set formula in place. It was the kind of game where the player could see a better game within it, but it wasn't present in the final product.

The sequel aims to increase the combat variety by allowing the player to switch between two characters at will, while keeping the same core formula of world exploration followed by dungeon-crawling intact. It's an iterative attempt at improving Dusk Diver and one that should in theory deliver a far more satisfying experience, but ultimately falls to the same shortcomings as the original did, but with more action to spruce up the duller moments. Dusk Diver 2 starts off with so much potential by building up the world and introducing the player to the characters, showcasing more of the environment and letting the player explore.

Exploration is something that pays off nicely in the overworld because it allows you to stock up on free supplies and see the Taipei area in a fully-explorable virtual form. Going through a video game interpretation of a real-world area can be tricky. We've seen it work wonderfully in titles like Shenmue that strive for historical accuracy as much as possible while a lot of anime-infused games go for the theme park versions of a real-world setting and focus on the nicer sights to get a certain vibe across. Dusk Diver 2 goes for the latter and reminds me a lot of things like the version of Akihabara in the Akiba games where you can do some shopping and interact with people, but it isn't striving for realism.

The ability to roam around the city is something that allows Dusk Diver 2 to shine since it does at least feel like a living world with people roaming around and adding to the ambience. Being able to buy things throughout the world helps make this feel like a 3D variant of something like River City Ransom, only with more supernatural elements as the cast is transported to otherworldly realms for battles. One element that Dusk Diver 2 fails at compared to something like a River City Ransom or even the more modern Shredder's Revenge, however, is making combat areas feel as lived-in as the real-world sections.

Combat takes place in dungeons of various visual themes throughout the game, but the dungeons themselves share a nearly-identical look and feel. You can start off in a bright and vibrant area and then move on to an area that's 99% the same -- just with a different mix of enemies than the last room you were in. This same format was featured in the original game and led to it having more of a grind than one might anticipate for something that's an action-centric RPG as many of those have a wide array of attack patterns to work with alongside freshening up the look and feel of gameplay environments.

Dusk Diver 2's gated environments all wind up feeling similar and make combat seem far more tedious than it should be -- even at an early stage. The first game suffered from the same issue, while the sequel allows players to switch between characters to mix things up with combat to some degree. In theory, it should feel different to go from a quickly-attacking character to one that's slower and deals out more damage, but in execution, it doesn't do nearly enough to keep things fresh and exciting. Using short-range fast attacks generally takes foes out faster with a slight increase in risk, while lumbering around with long-range guns can help to mix combat up, but the hand-to-hand combat still feels largely the same across the board.

WANIN has fine-tuned the combat to feel more responsive in the sequel -- which is good to see. Unfortunately, the combat still doesn't have enough variety to it even with being able to switch characters and change up attack patterns with special attacks to avoid getting old very quickly. Where Dusk Diver 2 shines is with its character work, because the cast all comes across as real people and that makes it easy to care about what's going on in the game and wanting to progress forward and meet more characters and see how they all interact with one another.

That's why it's such a shame the combat is what it is because so much of the dungeon areas feels like busy work and it's not made any better by actual busy work being thrown in like collecting a certain amount of tokens to unlock yet another room of enemies. The game has a great many hours of content in theory -- but little of the combat-centric portion of things is outright fun. Combat does click more during boss battles that challenge the player, but the seemingly endless slog of the same overall look for dungeon rooms hurts every dungeon. Dungeons would be better offering a far more streamlined experience of many 2-3 rooms and then a boss battle.

When you hit your 10th combat zone of the same basic formula for combat, things drag on and a game should never feel like a chore. Musou-style games can be a fine line between feeling samey and being exciting and this falls more into the former than latter category. It does offer a lot of fun for those wanting to explore the city and its denizens, but there's a grind to get to those portions and it's something that can hopefully be addressed with a patch. Offering up abridged versions of dungeons after the fact would be nice and would cut down on the empty calorie feeling that dungeons have as it stands.

Visually, the sequel offers a similar look and feel to the original -- but with a better and more stable framerate across the board. Combat animations are smooth as are running animations when roaming through the city itself. Having both the PS4 and PS5 versions to work with on the sequel showcased a nice improvement in loading times and especially texture pop-in on the newer device. The overall look isn't radically different from version to version, but the PS4 version does tend to suffer from of texture pop-in for new environments that goes away after about a second.

Like many modern-day RPGs, Dusk Diver 2 features a Japanese language voice track with English subtitles. It may not be to everyone's liking, but personally, it's far better to have the game feel more authentic with its original voiceover work rather than run the risk of a bad dub. So many games have been marred by iffy dub work and something like this with tons of dialogue over a great many hours would be at a higher risk of having iffy dub work. The soundtrack is fantastic and one of the best anime-infused soundtracks for an action RPG on the market. Everything has a thumping dance sound with a bit of rock and it works wonderfully at getting the blood pumping. The sound effect work is outstanding and things like punches and kicks feel impactful, while super-powerful projectile attacks are even more satisfying.

Closing Comments:

Dusk Diver 2 shows a notable improvement over the original by adding a second playable character to switch between in-battle at any point, but doesn't improve the formula enough to be a must-have for anyone who didn't love the original. The combat system has been beefed up, but variety is still in short-supply and the same environments being used throughout dungeons hurts things. The overworld exploration is the most pure fun the game offers up in its current form and it's a shame some streamlining wasn't done to dungeons to make them less laborious and more fun to complete.