This review contains some mild State of Decay 2 spoilers.
I’m not always the fastest player. I like to take my time and explore, and if there are side quests, I will stay distracted forever, following tiny threads and traveling the countryside. I love scrounging things, too, picking flowers, finding out-of-the-way places, digging for treasure. A game like State of Decay 2 offers the best of both worlds then for me; you can search and range and scavenge, and help all the random survivors who pop up and need an assist, but eventually, there is a limit on a map. It gets more difficult to find things. Eventually you have to move on. There’s no procrastination left.
So even though I’m not the fastest player, in my limited time with the game, I managed (with the help of my partner taking some play shifts) to finish not one but two communities in order to start a new game with two legacy bonuses. I wanted to be able to speak to how that worked before I wrote this review, which meant “finishing” the game, or at least a single campaign (though I did two for maximum bonuses). To finish a campaign, you have to complete your chosen leader’s particular quest, based on their leadership style – and then, much like in Breakdown in the first game, the group packs up and moves on. Except now they can scatter, taking knowledge and skills with them to new towns, to new groups. Building a legacy means “generations” of survivors can live, thanks to your people. But the quests to get there can be particularly violent. The Warlord quest involves killing a lot of people, and I did not like that much; in fact, I really appreciate the way most of the characters will comment on the horror of having to kill another survivor if it comes up.
When you “win” with a community, the game doesn’t end; your leader offers up a particular bonus for when your survivors move on to a new place. Unlock the Warlord bonus, for instance, and you start with guns, ammo, grenades; unlock the trader and you start with 4000 influence (an incredible boon). All the legacies you can unlock (there are four) offer bonuses, and when you start a new game, you can use two, and repeat previous survivors (with all their skills – and even a rucksack, if they’re carrying one!) to boot. So in my newest game, I used one of my old survivors, who had Powerhouse and Swordplay (a beastly combination of skills), two legacy bonuses, and two new survivors, since I wanted someone with driving skills.
Of course the start put me on my least favorite map (there’s still one I haven’t played), with the high hilltop house and the mountains, but having a driver and ridiculous bonuses made it more palatable. I worried the start might make things too easy (and killing plague hearts and infestations is easier with a cache of grenades to start, I’ll say), but there’s enough going on even with loaded up survivors that game start is still rough. It takes some time with any crew to reach equilibrium, especially with people back home wasting supplies left and right while you’re out scavenging or questing (people back home need to get it together). And around you, the game continues. While some small quests repeat, there was some different flavor around many of them; while there are still hostile enclaves who demand you bring them things (that was the same), now instead of Man Babies/Greasemonkeys, I had the Rumrunners, a drunken enclave who, when friendly, would deliver emergency booze… but heaven forbid you had to quest with them, because they’d start vomiting from withdrawal or hangovers and be useless.
These little touches really elevate the game. I know some people have complained about bugs, and I finally did encounter a bad one, a car that was undriveable because the camera wouldn’t follow it! – but for me, these little touches of humanity far outweigh the occasional (and hilarious) bug. Bugs will get worked out. Little scraps of humanity often aren’t patched in.
The car bug was pretty great, though; poor Jessica just drives off into the sunset.
Overall, I find gameplay solid here. The combat is not terribly complicated, but skills change what you can do with the same buttons, which offers not only some customization but the adaptation of style, and since the AI works better in this game and companions are worthwhile, you can get some nice synergy between someone who employs more throws and someone who is a finisher. I had a great time playing as a character focused on bladed weapons with blunt weapon companions, who would grab and throw zombies so all I had to do was chop off their heads or stab them. Helped save on resources, time, and effort, and the little conversations between the two were delightful. I try to keep a few people around who can do this together, and your companions’ skills will rise doing this (and just hanging around the base, too! My gardener, for instance, just kept leveling gardening because we had a garden – and those levels matter and can be used to unlock other skills). In terms of the UI, I don’t like the chat/emote button because I keep pressing it by accident, and I miss a quick drop command for rucksacks, and I miss the journal feature to check up on events I might not have seen/heard, but overall the UI is smoother and easier to navigate. These are small complaints and they certainly didn’t get in the way of my gameplay. I’d almost trade anything for the fact that we can now flip cars that get stuck, or wiggle them back out of (most) tight spaces. That’s a huge improvement for me. Maybe not super realistic, but cars are scarce enough that we need it.
Nothing’s perfect, of course. I do find the constant pestering of friendly enclaves intrusive. It’s difficult to get other things done when you constantly have to spend gas, time, and resources to keep allies going, and if you refuse a single question, no matter how friendly they are, you risk them leaving. This feels like an artificial difficulty overlay and honestly, I prefer the increased scarcity of the past game’s Breakdown advancement to repeating Man Babies, or Drunk Babies. So far, this hasn’t affected my desire to play, but I am concerned that eventually it might, unless I decide to just ignore enclaves altogether, but surprise! There are downsides to having no friends in an apocalypse.
But the good for me far outweighs the annoying. My new community is all women. What a singular joy this is, to helm a group of women in a video game, a group of capable, badass women, a group of metalworkers and soldiers and former skateboarders, a group traveling the land and saving the day. This is such a small thing, but it’s so important when I can count the number of memorable playable women I’ve enjoyed on my two hands. And even with skills, and legacy bonuses, nothing helps you but raw skill and intensity if you get into a bad moment. Clearing an infestation of seven can turn into fifteen and a feral and those moments are punishing. You’re likely to survive if you keep your wits about you, but getting home after that will be a nice trick. Hope you weren’t on foot.
And I like that. I like that even the most prepared, the most capable, can still get caught out. That keeps the game fresh for me, and alive in a world that is dead. The game is at turns punishing and rewarding, accommodating and not. I’ve put in a very intense week, with (too many) hours of playtime, and I don’t see myself putting it down for a while yet. That’s the strongest recommendation I can offer, but it comes with a caveat: the game is not for everyone, just as the first wasn’t. The sequel improves on the original in many ways, but it’s still a game about balancing humans who need to work together in a hostile landscape. You still have to manage mental health concerns, personalities, rations, supplies. You still have to decide what kind of person you’ll be in this world, and while you’re doing all that, you have to fend off juggernauts who’d like nothing more than to tear you in half.
For me, it’s an ultimate experience. The State of Decay franchise remains everything I want in a game. If you want to join me, I’ll be here.
State of Decay 2 (Undead Labs, Ultimate Edition $49.99, Standard Edition $29.99 USD)
Full Disclosure: I received a copy of State of Decay 2, for review purposes, from Microsoft Studios and Undead Labs.
You can reach Alisha at her website.
