I didn’t give a crap that the original Darksiders was just a mish-mash of The Legend of Zelda with other games. In fact, I loved it for that simple fact. I have no problem with a game that doesn’t “innovate” as long as it is fun, and by combining the strong elements of a variety of different games together into one concoction you manage to make one rather incredible game.

So incredible I stretched out a pizza metaphor to describe it last time.

Darksiders 2 continues to take elements from other games, but it seems as if they’ve focused more on genre tropes than specific games themselves. In some ways this makes me sad, as I really enjoyed the Zelda elements of the first game. However, a lot of the dungeons are simply more fun to navigate and the combat simply better (and easier) than the first Darksiders. It’s more of a trade-off than anything else. Most of all, it allows Darksiders 2 to feel like its own entity as opposed to an upgrade of the first game, or potentially making its predecessor obsolete with the same gameplay but more polished.

The one game still blatantly stolen from is the Prince of Persia series, with flashbacks specifically to the 2008 version of the game (the one that was “way too easy” starring Nolan North as the Prince as Nolan North). This exploration is what makes the dungeons of Darksiders 2 a lot more interesting than the first, and in some ways more interesting than the dungeons you’d find in Zelda games themselves.

I confess it is strange to say such a thing, as usually the player will be following along a predetermined path only occasionally pressing or holding the A button (on Xbox 360) down to continue onward. There are slight deviations here and there or moments where the player must look around in order to move around, but for the most part these segments hold the player by the hand. Yet they never cease to be entertaining, making the environment feel more alive than if it were simply a temple explored completely by foot. Most of the player’s time in a dungeon will be spent navigating these wall paths between puzzles that yield the way to more paths, giving a greater sense of navigation and mobility.

In essence, you feel like you’re actually interacting with the world. It is a great mechanic and it is wonderful to see that Vigil managed to pull it off with the same polish that Ubisoft managed in their recent Prince of Persia games.

While you’ll spend a lot less actual time fighting in Darksiders 2 than you will exploring (according to my stats page I only spent three or four hours fighting in all twenty hours I played the game), it remains the focus of the rest of the core mechanics and design. You wander the world for treasures that will assist you in combat, and as you level up you gain and upgrade new combat abilities.

The fighting mechanics are largely the same from the original Darksiders. You have a primary and secondary weapon and combos for each of them, but it is simple enough for you to button mash your way through and survive. The only difference is executions aren’t so guaranteed and don’t always yield the same rewards.

This is where the equipment comes in, and what is essentially the replacement for the typical Zelda or Metroid style item upgrades you pick up throughout a map. Different weapons and armor will change different statistics, most of them specific towards the Darksiders 2 combat style. Instead of focusing on words like Wisdom and Charisma and Dexterity, the game simply has statistics for things like Critical Hit Chance, Execution Chance, Critical Damage and so on. The player instantly knows what bonus it provides and how it will change combat.

Most of the time the player will merely be picking and choosing which stats matter the most and build his loadout through that. However, there are also Possessed Scythes the player will occasionally find that can be customized, allowing a player to construct the perfect weapon. This is done by “feeding” current equipment into the possessed weapon, allowing it to take one of the additional bonus effects once enough items have been sacrificed. A player can construct a weapon with increased critical or execution chance and combine it with the ability to regenerate health on critical or execution, or to gain more wrath per kill in order to fuel special abilities more frequently.

This is about the only way the entire loot system is really satisfying, though. The game is designed well enough that you can see if an item is worse or better than your current gear once you step over it, allowing the player to skip over the annoying menu navigation every five minutes like in other loot based games. However, loot is at its core a more random entity and doesn’t always yield better equipment.

There was a moment in a game I completed a puzzle that spanned half of a map. It took roughly ten minutes to complete, and once I finished I cracked a chest open only to receive a weapon that was weaker than my current equipment. This is where things like heart pieces or missile packs in the Zelda or Metroid games always shine. No matter what, the time spent finding that upgrade provided a tangible benefit. Here, it was a waste of time.

That doesn’t mean solving the puzzle wasn’t fun. The game has plenty of cleverly designed areas and puzzles littered throughout its many worlds. Yet time spent working towards a goal should yield a goal that is rewarding. Finding weak equipment is hardly rewarding, but is also tough to avoid in a game focused on finding loot rather than specific upgrades.

This is just one change from the previous Darksiders that sets the sequel apart, though. As similar as the games are, they are also drastically different. It’s actually tough to recommend the sequel based on whether you enjoyed or disliked the first game as they do not feel or play the same. They have several similarities, but your experience with them will be different.

In addition, while I prefer a lot of what the original Darksiders did better, I enjoy the dungeons and combat of Darksiders 2 more.

What I can tell you is that the gameplay is solid. It is well thought out and put together. These are designers that don’t merely steal other people’s ideas. You can smell those games from a mile away and they rarely are ever that fun. Yet Vigil Studios has a clear understanding of why these different elements are fun and knows precisely how to fit them together. You don’t have some Frankenstein’s Monster of game concepts, but, well, a delicious meat lover’s pizza.