Diving into repetition.
The first Dusk Diver was a title I never got around to playing at launch. Finding it on sale on the Nintendo eShop thankfully allowed me to finally dive in, and honestly, it was a solid adventure that while it did end up feeling a bit repetitive by its end, was an absolute blast that whet my appetite for its upcoming and much-anticipated sequel. While Dusk Diver 2 does make great strides in crafting the gameplay to be more action-packed as well as several few visual and gameplay enhancements to make its combat, characters, and exploration feel more alive, it, unfortunately, doubles down far too much on its grind, making for a very repetitive experience that is only saved by its engaging characters and memorable story.
Dusk Diver is a series that is framed around its young protagonist, Yang Yumo, a high school student who gets caught up in an adventure where she gains special powers in order to defeat demonic creatures known as Chaos Beasts. As she gains these powers, she is introduced to the reality that the world around her is actually made up of two dimensions, the one she has lived her whole life in, and another that is more supernatural in nature. The series takes place in Ximending, a wonderfully crafted adaptation of the same real-world city in Taiwan, complete with its own Cold Stone Creamery and other true-to-life locations. Ximending is favored here in the same way Kamurocho has been the go-to location for the Yakuza games. It doesn’t quite have the same charm as that comparison, but it certainly gets the job done.
While it is possible to play Dusk Diver 2 without playing the first game, you are certainly going to get more out of the character moments here as Dusk Diver 2 really dives into more about what makes each of them tick and expands into a lot of their backstories; bits and pieces that were teased in the first game. There is a story recap you’ll eventually unlock, but it is drastically too condensed to really take in all of what exactly happened. I would say that while it is certainly possible to make this game your first entry of the two, I still strongly suggest playing the original as it is sort of the better game, at least in a few ways. And, since it is only around 10 hours or so, it’s not a huge time investment to get all caught up.
Dusk Diver 2 takes place roughly a year after the events of the previous game, seeing Yumo and her friends going about their lives after bringing Nemea, a young girl who was created to be the AI control unit for the other dimension, back to the human realm. Now in College, even if the game only makes little mention of it, Yumo is thrust back into action as the consequences of freeing Nemea from the other dimension start to make themselves known. While there is certainly more to it than that, as the story is full of some absolutely stellar reveals and action-packed moments, the first half of the game is largely slow-going unfortunately, without much of note going on.
While I’ll stay silent on where most of the story goes, the first half of the game almost lost me. While it was great to catch up with old friends, there isn’t much to do apart from some ‘run there and back’ fetch quests and the more story-focused dungeons, which I’ll dive into shortly. Dusk Diver had a fair bit to do in the city between your missions as you had the gatcha machines to unlock new costumes and artwork, moments to hang out with your friends, deliveries to take on, to even working at the convenience store itself, the location where you’ll receive your missions and one that acts as your overall hub. However; Dusk Diver 2 removes a lot of those side activities as while the gatcha machines are still present, they are merely a background element as costume pieces and artwork are scattered around the world, often resulting in having to replay old stages to grind away to track them down.
The Dusk Diver series is sort of if Platinum Games made a Persona entry, but with a quarter of the budget to really make it sing. Still, WANIN Games does a solid job here even if you can often see the limited budget at play. The series is half city exploration and half action brawler, complete with additional moves to unlock, perk-based food to consume, and skill points to make your characters faster, stronger, and better. All in all, it’s a solid time, but Dusk Diver 2 does a lot to make its combat and dungeons feel far too repetitive and it causes a lot of the game to feel like its dragging on and on, which is a shame since I still really enjoy the majority of what is here and the vast improvements the team has made. Do I recommend Dusk Diver 2? Totally, but that comes with some caveats.
Dusk Diver was a fast-paced action brawler where you would trounce a lot of enemies at once. You would often see a dozen or more on-screen as you would destroy them with a series of special attacks, combos, and assists from your teammates, summoned in to unleash a powerful attack. Here, Dusk Diver 2 allows your teammates to join in on the fray, fighting alongside you, but honestly, it simply doesn’t land the execution. First, Dusk Diver 2 removes the mass amount of enemies in favor of fewer Chaos Beasts per encounter, making battles feel less chaotic in that sense. However, they often have a ridiculous amount of health, making them nothing more than melee sponges regardless of whatever level you are. Hell, I was 20+ levels higher than anything I was fighting and they would still take a beating. And, while having your teammates fighting alongside you sounds like something that should have been there since day one, the AI is so braindead that they often walked around and only engaged in combat if they were attacked, and sometimes, not even then.
While I can speculate that WANIN Games was likely looking to make it more focused on combo attacks and making encounters a bit tighter, they simply went about it in the wrong way. Not only do we have far fewer enemy types to fight here, but some of the more basic ones from the first game are simply not accounted for, making the few Chaos Beasts and Robot forces you encounter to be the only types you will ever see apart from the few sub-bosses that are then used ad nauseam. After almost 20 hours throughout the game, I had battle scores of Chaos Beasts well over a thousand, across their three different color forms, to say nothing of the 845 robots I had smashed, all equally similar to one another. While there are additional tiers of them, the enemy variety here is simply lacking all across the board. And, which was the case with my teammates, the AI here was bizarre to the point where most of the robot forces would walk towards the boundaries of the battle and just sit there.
Dusk Diver 2 has a great deal of quality of life features that more than surpass the original. You no longer need Dragon Vein Shards to travel into the other dimension, nor are the dungeons littered with progression-blocking doors, at least in the same way where you would navigate the zone to find a key. While it’s unfortunate that the shopping bonus seems to be gone, which saw you gain perks if you were a reliable shopper, Ximending, and its neighboring locations, are filled with even more places to buy food than ever before. Dusk Diver 2 also features a vastly better map, more intuitive menus, making the overall package simply feel better in so many other ways.
Dusk Diver had a very enjoyable combat system, but much of it was bogged down in a few areas. SP was gained back while attacking or via special nodes that would be strategically placed around the level, and your special D.ARMS form was only accessible upon picking special orbs that filled up a meter. While all of this still technically exists, it simply feels better realized here as SP now charges up on its own, refills instantly upon a well-timed dodge, and using your special attacks now charges up your D.ARMS meter, making the execution of that form and your skills to be rapidly more accessible, enriching your combat experience.
Dusk Diver 2 allows you to fully take control of not only Yumo, but returning characters in Leo, Viada, and Bahet. Each character has a wide range of skills and attacks that you will level up in the exact way you would with Yumo. Yumo is your all-arounder, with Leo bringing a bit more heft, Viada with her range, and Bahet being a very quick and agile fighter. While you can freely swap to characters during battle, there is sadly a very long cooldown that prevents the ability to really play around with combo attacks between characters. Personally, I think this could have opened up a massive amount of experimentation here as you could have created incredibly cool combo attacks as you rotated through your companions. Still, it’s great to finally play as each of the cast as you unlock new abilities for them to use and equip them with a wide range of stat-infused accessories.
Combat is your typical third-person brawler type. You can lock on to targets, dash around to avoid taking damage and perform critical attacks when you’ve broken through their armor. While Viada has a set of pistols, Dusk Diver 2 is largely built around melee attacks. As you progress through chapters, you’ll unlock the ability to upgrade your weapons, which in turn unlock new skills or harder-hitting enhancements of current ones. While it’s a shame that EXP is shared among the group, as you’ll likely only level up your main and leave others in the dust, I can understand why they went that route, even if I don’t much care for it. Still, you’ll also find and earn EXP items that oddly are used via a menu that the game doesn’t even tell you about, which is hitting Triangle at the EXP usage menu. Honestly, there is no single prompt to make you aware of this. I stumbled upon it by accidentally pressing the wrong button to find that I had almost 25 items to level up my characters nearly 5 levels a piece.
Each character has light and heavy attacks, with combos that are more or less the repeated usage of said attacks one after another. It’s not a deep system, but once you start to unlock more and more moves, you suddenly find yourself bouncing enemies around in ways where combat really starts to feel good. Granted, that is some hours in, but regardless, some of the combinations I was pulling off with Yumo really started to give off some major Platinum vibes that I was all there for. While that doesn’t always solve the melee sponge health bars of its enemy forces, I at least was having fun during combat, and that’s a win for me.
I mentioned it before, but Yumo has what is called her D.ARMS mode, and this is a special form where she becomes vastly more powerful and can dish out far more damage when this mode is active. It will eventually deplete, but if you build up its attack to 180%, which is done by using her special attacks, you can unleash a huge attack that can almost kill anything in a single blast. While you can use items to heal or recover SP, you can also use some items to fill this gauge, keeping you in D.ARMS mode longer and more often. and thankfully, items replenish at the save zones around each level. The ways that Dusk Diver 2 wants you to feel powerful more often is greatly appreciated, but again, having the harsh limit on enemy variety and how spongey they feel, still drags down the satisfaction of where combat could have gone here.
While we do have more areas to explore outside of the other dimension, the dungeons that exist here are anywhere from decent to pretty average. The starting dungeon is this interesting take on some sort of game table with a huge fighting environment via an air hockey table that has you dodging a few speeding pucks that can knock you down all while you are taking part in combat, to having to move obstacles via a crane game that requires a few tokens laying about. Each dungeon has some maze-like qualities, and are fairly quick to move through them, but there are a few that are sadly bland and annoyingly built to funnel you into very apparent enemy traps. There is one location near the end of the game that breaks away from what you’ll see for much of the game that is sadly only used once and it’s a shame since it really allowed the team to offer up some much-needed variety and a change of pace from the dark and gloomy dungeon aesthetic.
Visually, Dusk Diver has a lot in common with looking like your typical VITA remaster. It has that “look” to it that works for what it is aiming to do and is easily tied to the overall budget this team had to make it work. Ximending itself feels bigger and there are several new locations to visit and thankfully, you can now run directly into the convenience store instead of being treated to a loading screen for your troubles. However, for all the improvements made to expand upon its world, every area is filled top to bottom with pop-in, not to mention the same bland populace that are colorful avatars from afar, and faceless character models up close.
While the first game was decently good-looking, it’s easily visible that character models are drastically improved here, with more details to bring them to life. The game runs rather great on the PS5, even if it doesn’t really outpace the PS4 version by that much. Apart from the very noticeable pop-in and the occasional slow-to-load texture, the game runs remarkably smooth. I have some issues with some animations causing Yumo to stall a bit in her momentum, but it’s a pretty minimal gripe. Character portraits are night and day better, offering vastly improved artwork for its visual novel-like moments. While I don’t mind that method of narrative delivery, there are some really gorgeous cutscenes here that feature full 3D models that look amazing, so it’s a shame these moments are so few and far between.
The game does only feature Japanese or Chinese language support, and while there are very minimal translation issues or spelling errors, much of that has since been fixed as of launch. While the sometimes melancholic and high-energy music that is here is damn good, so good in fact I now have the soundtrack on my phone, a lot of it is simply borrowed from the previous game with very little in the way of any new music, at least from what I have noticed. I will say; however, there is a certain usage of one particular song that hit at just the right moment to really sell one of the late game’s best encounters in a way that made me audibly cheer in excitement. I think my only major gripe from an audio point of view is characters constantly telling you that you are nearby an item when you are literally grabbing it. Since they appear on the mini-map, they are never hidden, but the Boss will constantly shout at you nonetheless.
Dusk Diver 2 is a solid sequel in many ways but sadly is not where it really needed it. While the story, characters, and quality of life features to combat and actually having a party are absolute game changers, the grindy encounters and the excessive reuse of environments are where Dusk Diver 2 simply disappoints. That said, I did enjoy a great deal of what WANIN Games have done here and really feel that if we get a Dusk Diver 3 that it could pull from the strengths of both titles and become something really fantastic. If you can get past the grind and put up with its flaws, Dusk Diver 2 is a solid action JRPG that does a lot more right than wrong, offering a fun story that really entertains to a high degree in that back half. Again, it has some issues, but it’s still a damn fun adventure.
Developer - WANIN International. Publisher - Idea Factory / Justdan International Co. Released - August 30th, 2022. Available On - PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch. Rated - (T) Fantasy Violence, Suggestive Themes, Mild Language. Platform Reviewed - PS4/PS5. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.