Kyle F*cking Crane is back. The Nights are scary again. Overall it's a good game.

The original Dying Light impressed me between the parkour and content. Traversal felt fun and I didn’t feel as though my time was wasted from one objective to the next. The franchise introduced a multi-genre’d game that can accurately call itself an “action/stealth” as the nights become terrifying. DL2 dropped the ball initially on release by making the days boring to traverse and the nights annoying, but their eventual “Good Night, Good Luck” brought the volatiles back and they were as scary as ever, and if you were clever enough they’d be a good source of upgrade materials and vendor cash. I quite enjoyed DL2 despite the grander gaming community considering it the lackluster if passable middle child of the franchise so far, but after 20 hours of Beast I find myself yearning for the content in DL2.

Before I start driving a stake through this game’s heart? If you like the franchise, this game offers more of the same. Less live service than DL2, a bit more meat on its bones than DL1, but it comes with other issues. The gameplay loop is largely the same and familiar so if you liked the parkour and zombie beheading, this game is just fine.

The first problem in the Beast I found was the landmass. It's European farmland, so there’s no skyscrapers nor large shantytowns to climb. The verticality comes from steppes and winding pathways, so I find myself ignoring the rooftops. In DL2, traversing the rooftops were not only ideal but gave you real incentive to do so, by adding these caches here and there denoted by yellow-leafed trees which always had enough materials to make a couple of healing items as well as a weapon in case you were running low on equipment. That’s not present in the beast. The only incentive to be on the rooftops is to avoid more Volatiles at night, but they sometimes spawn and climb up there as well. It’s honestly just a less interesting place to look at.

So let’s talk about the night. In DL2 if you were leveled and equipped enough with some decent mods, Volatiles were a worthy hunt. To draw some near a UV safe zone. They were plentiful and again, DL2 gave incentive to take over outposts because they’d spawn three or so small semi-safe space towers and houses with UV lights as break points between chases. Drawing some volatiles could create a type of farm, there was still plenty of risk because if you lingered in a UV lighted area too long the chase would just instantly cancel and the enemies would flee into the darkness. It was a balancing act of how bold you could be, hitting them and skirting the edge of safety. It was a lot of fun.

That’s not present here. For one, the Volatiles drop next to nothing. In my experience my attempt at these farms mostly netted a couple of common valuables and just raw money. And the XP was abysmal, and some sources tell me that they actually nerfed their XP gains. So what’s the point of hunting them? There isn’t, any longer. The volatile nests at night drop some UV bars but since they’re the most powerful item to deter volatiles… This game actually seems to incentivize me to just wait out the night. Oh, double experience bonus? Why bother? Resting cancels out our beast mode sure but we can grind it up on a nearby cluster of basic biters which both acts as a small “return” on any lost experience and charges our beast bar back up. So this game has effectively removed any incentive to actively hunt at night.

There is one caveat. Sometimes when pushing missions and side quests I’ll simply be “caught” out at nighttime, which does bring that pulse pounding stealth endeavor I enjoyed from the first game. Still, the devs wanted to bring the “horror” back in “survival horror” but I find myself just beelining it towards one of my towers and waiting the night out. After that the only horror comes from the occasional sleeping popup zombie that actually did jumpscare me once, because they like to hide around corners in dark hallways. Watch out for those.

The lack of fast travel is replaced with various trucks that litter the zone. I find them less common for my liking and fuel is almost a commodity, notably a higher tier resource. I’ve only found a few here and there, and it also serves as flamethrower ammunition (which I’ve yet to play with… because I’m too busy fueling trucks.) I find this a redundant mechanic that only serves to waste my time. DL2 only gave us fast travel by way of subways and if memory serves (It’s been a while), you at least had to fast travel directly FROM one of the subways and there were only one or two per zone (like twelve in total or something, I don’t know the exact amount). So some work was still involved in getting to use that mechanic. But in Beast, it’s just work. It’s busywork gameplay.

I’ll say this. The game’s quest flow has so far been pretty decent. The map seemed small at first but even 20 hours in I probably only have about half of it explored, maybe slightly less. The northern half of the map is largely untouched so I don’t know where the cutoff is. Despite feeling small, the quests generally do a good job of making me run into safe houses and exploring dark zones. Dark zones, by the way, is an improved concept here. In DL2 they were littered with volatiles during the day but now you can just go in any time, with only a howler to scream at you and alert the resting dead, and it’s fun to try and rush them before they do that so I can slay them at my own leisure. I also feel like the Dark Zones in Beast have a lot more stuff in them. So that’s a point in the Beast’s favor.

As I said before I like the game just fine, I just think it’s a step down. If DL1 was a 9/10 and DL2 was an 8/10, the Beast is still a very solid and playable 7/10 for me. All fun games. I have the most hours in DL2 so time will tell if the Beast’s NG+ is interesting enough for me to continue to burn through its Legend Levels. Otherwise I’ll beat it once and let it cook for a while, and maybe they’ll fix the near pointlessness of wandering around at nighttime in a future patch.

Stand-alone DLC priced at a full priced game and doesn't have enough content to back it up.
This DLC was a disappointment.
They removed the ability to customize the vehicle other than the paint job most of them DLC locked.
Most of the main quests are copy & pasted to make the game feel longer until you hit the end game.
Not a lot parkour to do in a open forest with only 1 small town and a few smaller areas to climb around.
Might be worth 20$ or less.
Wait for a big discounted sale or until the price drops.