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[NullForceOmega]

Okay, a bit further in and more stuff to report.

New weapon classes, including hammers and dual-duty weapons.  I haven't used the hammers yet, but the dual duty are interesting beasts like claws of gestalt and a heavy duty weapon combined, upside titanic damage output and if they've got an elemental effect it'll proc very quickly.  Downside, they eat stamina like nothing else in the game, I've got quite a bit of stamina and it gets pretty much completely used up in a singe attack sequence.

Implants, I haven't seen everything, and what  have seen is very different from what was available in Surge 1, it looks like they went for transformative over additive, swapping even one or two implants can completely change how you need to fight.

New enemies, remember robots?  How the community wanted more of them?  Well, they got their wish, spider bombs, combat drones, sentry turrets, and my current hatecrush Gaia guardians.  And I'm sure there will be more, I've even seen a partially disabled PAX.

Some human enemies have new abilities, like combat drugs that boost their speed and damage, or invisibility.  And they carry shields sometimes, those are always fun.  And you'll actually fight opponents with guns, that can be a real blast, but I also feel that it explains through action why guns aren't a major portion of your arsenal.  While you can still very much be killed by a gun, as can your enemies, it often takes a lot of shots to drop an armored augmented human opponent, while hitting them with a big weapon designed for power armor tends to be much faster.

There are some really cool visual elements to the city too, like wrecked tanks in some places, and lots of other details that build an engaging (to me) atmosphere.

Lots of rage inducing stuff too, like just absolute tons of it, but I haven't felt stonewalled like I did against some of The Surge's bosses (lookin' at you Sister 1/3!)  That said, holy hells can some of this shit be straight up brutal.

Having fun with it tho'.

[NullForceOmega]

Alright, been sick for a while but had some more time to play finally.

Some more things:

The map, it's pretty large, but probably smaller than it first seems when you start exploring.  There are only four proper sections to it, downtown, the port, the park, and the military compound.  They're not bad maps by any means, with lots to explore and all kinds of stuff hidden in out of the way corners, and shortcuts everywhere.

More on weapon variety.  I am at endgame.  I do not have all of the weapons available in game.  This impresses me, as I have been very thorough in trying to clear each area completely.  So there are nine weapon classes this time around, but three of them are variations on another class (they do have their own animations, but they play very similar).  Spears are staves with thrusting animations but some sweeping animations, Double Duty are heavy duty with super fast attacks like dual rigged, and punching gloves are dual rigged with less elaborate animations.  They're fun variations and bring some needed variety to the world of The Surge.

Enemies.  Ohh boy, the enemies.  The vast, vast, vast majority of enemies you face are humans or humanoid, but they have been allowed far more breathing room in their roles, instead of dude in operator, goliath, or sentinel, you get operator with dual rigged, operator with heavy duty, operator with dual duty, sentinel with heavy duty, sentinel with rifle, etc.  This makes engagements vastly more varied than the previous game, you also encounter packs MUCH more frequently than in the past game, this requires far more tactical thought and a bit of actual strategy.  You'll also notice a number next to enemy health bars, this is their gear level, it tells you how hard they hit, how hard they are to break, and what level of components you get for executions, it also tells you how easy they are to enrage.  Machine enemies, well, I had hoped that I hadn't seen all of the machines the game had to offer when I last posted on the subject, and I wasn't wrong, but it wasn't anywhere near as much as I wanted.  In the end the only new enemies we really got were drones with arms, a much less bullshit nano-mass creature, spider drones, and the Gaia guardians.  Reprising themselves in updated ways were bloodhounds, P.A.X. (I haven't actually tried to fight it), ramming drones (in exactly one area), and homo machinalis portrayed by robots instead of crazy cyborgs.

Bosses.  Way more human bosses this time, and I actually think that's a good thing overall, it makes the huge non-human enemies feel more special, but also lets you engage in some fairly tense duels with pretty well set up opponents.  Of special note was the General, phase one is straight up fighting a mech with a goddamn rail gun, and once you bust it up, then you get to fight the general himself while the mech continues to provide fire support.  It wasn't a hard fight, but it was exciting and felt good to win.  Overall the fights are probably much easier than in The Surge tho'.  I did not manage to one and done any boss in The Surge on my first playthrough, in The Surge 2 I have managed to do so against  four different bosses.  I don't think that this is bad, but due to the fact that I know that I'm not very good at soulslikes, I am certain that there will be plenty of people out there who think its too easy.

Right now I'm grinding up some core levels in preparation to take the final boss, I've already tried a dry run against him and I've seen everything he's got to offer, so I don't think I'm going to have much trouble with him.