The Surge 2

Unplayable , entire screen is grayed out from char creation to in game , drivers are updated and verified the files and restarted the sys but still not working. Unable to find a solution online too.

No issues with the first game. Horrible performance issues here. Tons of suggested solutions, some worked passably well, none worked well enough (or were permanent enough) for me to justify playing this.

Played the hell outta of it for a good 27 hours. had my fun until i reached NG+. Just for the dread of knowing they haven't made a update since 2020, not worth getting for long term fun, but good passable enough for a janky good time; wouldn't recommend tho

Have only played a couple of hours at this point my view so far
Graphics sub par compared to the first Surge game.
No character voice lines
cut scenes are not cgi'd as well either

Combat is a little more arcady which makes it more player friendly
break down of what gear offers is more understandable.

Will play until i have completed all the campaigns but i feel like they should have expanded on the first game rather then making a new one with worse graphics.

Just wait for good Soulslikes to come out.

I finished the Surge 1 and 2, Surge 1 is better for me

I'm not someone who normally blocks in Souls-likes, but apparently the devs at Deck13 keep their fingers firmly placed on the block button, because in both Surges and LotF they keep insisting on a particular playstyle. It all kind of feels like an antitheses to what these sorts of games are supposed to be like.

There are a few nitpicks I have vs the first game. First being that the directional block mechanic has an "implant" to tell you when to block and in what direction. Having a perfect block was enough, and the directional aspect basically makes the implant mandatory unless you play a LOT of hours. The second is that unlike the first game you can't change your clothes. Not a huge deal but it does make some sets look awesome and others just silly. The final aspect I have issue with is how weapon drops are handled, two drone weapons you have ONE chance to get per play-through, and one of them isn't even hinted at existing. You almost are required to know of it's existence to get. Nanite weapons make sense in context of why you get them where you do, but basically are just given to you by the game in a way that kinda feels insulting to use at that point. The final is the DLC weapons are just weirdly scattered, but one of the best weapons that almost breaks the game can be gotten very early on.

Overall the game however is better in most regards than it's previous. The world is bigger, the fights are fun, you have more armor sets for playstyle choices, and armors can completely change how you play, hence why not getting a drone weapon is a big deal. Unlike the first game the drone really can be a part of your playstyle this time around. Overall if you liked the first game I would say this one is worth your time. If you haven't played the first game I would still say this is worth your time if you like souls like games. Especially on a sale, and if you want more sci fi for your souls experience.

One of the most entertaining souls-like i've ever played. Better than it's predecesor, Surge 2 delivers a strong fight mechanic, a beautiful setting and the thrill of finding out what the heck is happening. NG+ makes it even better.

fun stuff

its nice

what is the worst than bad game? the unplayable one, i love surge one but somehow i got eror when try to launch the game it said FLR eror even there is no fix on internet too coz of vulkan API shyit, what a mess.

Absolutely loved the first game, short and sweet and a pretty unique take on the souls like genre. This one is just not it. Random extreme difficulty spikes which force you to play in a specific way which kind of removes the whole "hard but fair" attraction to these kinds of games.

Sci-Fi-Souls, still torture...
...or even AI-generated Souls.

The redundancy of dying and respawning only to fight through the same enemies over and over again quickly makes this a torturous experience. The promise of colorful fun is like sugar on poison. Don't play this game. It is a can a console crap that rots the mind. It promotes by way of mental anguish: school shootings, driving cars through malls, and slitting wrists.
This is a console game that might have been playable with the lock on and button smashing being enough, but it gets in the way here.

Still one of the best souls-likes along with The Surge

If you love dying a lot and have patience, give it a go. A lot of builds and weapons to craft. Writing this while i have died 500 times already.

Its amazing

I LOVE THE SURGE

Another solid early soulslike with a dismemberment system, directional parries and more!

Disclaimer

I finished the game once.

TL;DR

Technically a better game than The Surge 1, but also much worse in pacing and overstays its welcome by a lot. Both games are equally janky. Buy on a sale if it looks interesting to you but it's not a great game, at most it's okay.

Description

I won't recount mechanics of The Surge 1, I've described them in the review for the original. The new mechanic is a directional parry system. It's jank and makes 0 sense how some attacks look unblockable, but are, while others look to be from a certain direction, but are from a different one. There's a special implant you can equip that shows you a direction of an incoming attack and parry timing, so you can use that, I guess. I mostly played through the game without using this mechanic because it's slow and boring, relying on dodge instead was more fun to me. There was 1 boss that pretty much demanded usage of parry and that's about it.

Story is nonsense, a bunch of religious freaks worship the nanomachines and try to become one or something, I don't know, I don't care.

Pros:

+ First half of the game
It's actually good. A fun exploration and challenging combat as well as The Surge's unique dismemberment mechanic makes it fun and rewarding to actually play and farm for parts and upgrade your character.

+ Lots of parts
I didn't find a single interesting one-handed weapon, which was a problem because I played using that type almost exclusively, but if you are a fan of other types then there's a lot to choose from, and a bunch of elemental options too.

Cons:

- Too long
Second part of the game makes you retread and re-explore things you already saw, but not with a bunch of passages blocked off, forcing you to use some new unlocked passages, but this feels artificially constraining and not engaging at all. There's suddenly a lot of big enemy groups instead of giving you actual interesting encounters to fight through, so the game becomes a slog.

- Story
All characters are awful and boring, religion angle is overplayed and dumb.

- Many minor issues
Camera sucks a. I died many times due to how I get blocked on random piece of scenery and an enemy keeps me stunlocked.

Some enemies are just badly designed, being far too aggressive and having attack hurtboxes completely disjointed from their actual attack animations (like the tri-legged big drone's flip, which was just as broken in the first game, so there's no excuse to still have it be this bad).

Implant menu isn't fit for purpose in it's current form, having eaech implant being a colorful icon that barely gives you any idea of what it actually does is annoying when you want to find something specific and implants is the one thing you cannot put favorites in (you can favorite weapons and drone modules for example).

Areas have confusing layouts that don't feel fun to explore, mostly starting to happen around halfway point.

Near the end of the game there's a random medbay (rest area) around a large group of enemies. That is - it's right next to them. If you rest there, they will respawn and prevent you from resting again until you kill all of them, and while 1 by 1 they are easy - the whole group is designed to really mess you up with slows, dot's, damage areas, etc. On the other side of same area there's a shortcut to the starting point where there is also a medbay. But what's even better - activating that shortcut will make that big enemy group not respawn anymore! So if you go to the medbay in the front - you are screwing yourself over with an annoying fight every time you want to leave, but if you go other direction - the entire area is fixed. It's such a dumb design decision - why even have that medbay there? To bait people? The game should do a better job directing the player to the shortcut and not have that forward medbay at all, or have it placed right before the end boss.

Lowdown

The best thing I liked about this game is I liked when it was finally over and I didn't have to play it anymore. The start is fun, the end is not.

I'd give The Surge 2 a

5/10

Mediocre, only buy on a sale if it looks interesting to you.

I've never really played many souls-like games before as I'm not a fan of that genre, but I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic mega-corporation industrial-hell sci-fi types of games, so when I saw The Surge 1 & 2 pack on sale, I had to give it a try. The first Surge tickled all the right neurons in my brain, so naturally I had to give The Surge 2 a chance too, despite the theme being quite different from the first one.

I am personally not as much impressed with The Surge 2 as I was with the first one, but on the other hand it does improve certain things.

My biggest praise for the first one was the incredible level design, which unfortunately does not hold up in this one. While the first game was mostly about staying in one level for a very long time before moving on to the next one (with the added freedom of backtracking), this one is more like an open world where you constantly have to move between different locations. That means you are going to see loading screens way more frequently. There are also certain locations that you enter (loading screen) only to find out that you can't really make any progress there at all because you lack a certain tool or ability and have no choice but to go back (another loading screen). The level design is overall much more frustrating and confusing.

Now the sequel does improve many gameplay aspects. You can now change all implants at any point and the injectables got reworked in a way that makes more sense. The enemies show their level, making it clear what tier items they are going to drop. The combat got fleshed out a bit and drones can do more stuff than before. I'm definitely going to miss these improvements when I return to the first game to finish all the achievements.

To me this is like 8/10, not as good as I'd hope for, but still worth playing.

Rating:
★★✮☆☆ (2.5/5) stars

Review:
The surge 2 takes the ideas and problems of its predecessor and improves, but also worsens certain aspects. The surge 2 loses its sense of grounding that the first game had, ditching slower punishing combat for a faster pace that the character, conveniently still seems to be built for the original slower pace. The world, weapons, and armor are greatly expanded which is nice, although most of it is completely reused with no update or some nano status attached. The story gets less coherent than the first game and it feels like half the bosses in the game are an upgraded version of a boss you fought previously. Combat remains solid but imbalanced. The largest issues from the surge 1 were enemy placement and map design. The surge 2 takes these and make them 10x worse. Most of the game enemy placements always feel like an ambush and certain enemies feel designed around this entire idea. Map design was tough in the surge 1 but in the surge 2 there were multiple instances I had to look up where to go because I absolutely could not figure out where to go or how to navigate the confusing maze it feels like every region produces.

All in all the surge 2 is an expanded scope of the surge 1 at the cost of some of the ideas the surge 1 gets right. It feels heavily lazily designed. I enjoyed the surge 1 more, but this game is still playable with a unique style.

I love this game serie so much and really hope they are secretly working on the third game and bring back Warren as the main character following his departure from Jericho City and finally ending it all.

oh no it crashed!

the Best

good game. shit level design.

Good

Crashes 4/5 times I try playing it

If you never played the first game, you're perfectly welcome to jump in here.

Overall this game feels a lot more balanced than the first game, although I feel the story is a little bit weaker. The combat scenarios feel well thought through, and the hubs are fun bits of respite from the action. Also the variety of environments is a nice change of pace.

бомба братья, бомба

Very enjoyable. Not much build variety but there is some. Runs and controls very well. Has nice style. Easy to recommend at this point.

clunky mess, wasted potential

have this on ps4 did not complete but had to get on steam you c the hours says it all,
real fun
real gem

the happiness i felt after hearing the medbay song from the first game towards the end made the experience worth it! great souls game

I got it for free with TS1 and wish I could refund it, actually terrible in comparison

WHAT A VISCERAL EXPERIENCE INDEED!

I am enjoying this so much. This has to be one of the best games in the genre. The graphics are dated sure, but the game-play will satisfy the most demanding gamer of my generation! I will play the first installment next.

Really poor sequel IMO,
The main thing it lost was the 'illusion' of grounding the first game had, and the addition of lots of elements that didn't deliver anything meaningful or were outright silly (NPCs / Fetch quests / Graffiti Tags).

We know that mech suit combat is never going to be realistic, but the original game has virtually all the weapons resemble tools or miniature particle accelerators. This makes sense in a factory/lab with a robotic workforce. This also makes sense as to why there are Medbays everywhere. In a City this seems like a stretch, why would A.I.D leave these valuable Med bays liberally scattered around, so any person can walk in an claim a free Rig to dramatically increase their combat abilities?

Many of the weapons (see Icon of the spark, Fanatical Excruciator ...) also seem misplaced - you may be surprised to hear that the cult and these weapons existed before the plane crash and the plague that kicked off the game.
This means the government allowed a cult to prosper in the city and manufacture weapons ?
It does seem as the Spark cultists were *Excruciating* people with these before the nanite apocalypse??
Wouldn't the techno-evolution-cult make far more sense as a *reaction* to this current nanite predicament?

Also, many Weapons are just reskins with a nasty purple 'nanite' effect on

Other issues:
- Level design is overly difficult to navigate (I enjoy Dark Souls 2 to put this in perspective)
In the Surge 2 there is a 'map' which is entirely useless as it cannot be used a map. Walking towards an area that is not
in eye-shot will result in a brick wall due to the excessive amount of vertical movement necessary

- Bosses are worse, both less enjoyable to fight and less interesting.
For instance in the Surge 1, the Firebug fight is glorious.

- Bad DLC and monetisation
I have an issue with putting the 'treasure scanner' in a DLC is anti-consumer - this is almost mandatory and will vastly increase your chances of getting treasure. It's just dropped in your inventory on game start.

- Plot and characters are horrendous
I shall not elaborate.

- The Wiki has little information on it

The opening cut-scene of the game is fantastic an delivers a strong theme, but the tone is completely different when compared to the actual game.

Fighting bosses inside a public swimming pool and watching movies at the drive in with your robo-buddy turn Surge 2 into the golden standard for Souls-likes.

>Fully upgraded angel armor set
>Equip codename'd twin rig
>Have high battery
>Have high Stamina
>Spam cross guard move
>Spam B
>Cue Sundowner Theme

Now the only thing that can kill you is dodgy camera angles

Its (imo) a hidden gem.
I played this long before i new what a "souls like" even was.
After ageing a bit and playing some well known souls game i came back to The Surge 2 for another play through and i was definitely not disappointed.
Is this game a "10" no. Nevertheless you need to play it.

One of the best soulslike games in my op

Genuinely great game. Combines soulslike dodging/parrying with a directional component and a future/sci fi setting. DLC was pretty short but for $35 I was not dissapointed.

Great souls-like again. More forgiving in difficulty, and easier to navigate compared to the first one. Black Mirror meets Dark Souls. 4/5 scrap.

Amazing souls-like with a very unique crafting system (cutting off limbs of your enemies and taking their gear).
Striking foes gives you energy that you can convert into healing items, allowing the player to keep the action going strong.
Great game.

Fun game if you liked the first, although I liked the vibe of the first slightly better. TS2 wasn't terribly difficult although it did have its moments. Feels like the same engine as the first but this game feels marginally better to play than the first in terms of getting around and combat. From the cover it looks like it might be open world but it definitely isn't -- the city itself is a cleverly convoluted maze of shortcuts that can be pretty easy to forget what leads where when you take a couple days off from gaming. Story falls flat at the end but games like this are more about the gameplay and the core loop here was enjoyable til the end.

Don't support these devs. They don't know the first thing about making a souls-like, action rpg, rpg, basically just games. Something that these devs thought was such a good feature was making you fight more than 1 enemy. Why does this suck? Because there's not a traditional lock on system, instead of using the right stick as a way to switch enemy you are target locking, it selects body parts (another annoyance since they can't even do the one unique thing about their game correct.) So you switch targets by pressing the left trigger. But then let me ask you, which enemy does it select if your fighting 3? Well of course the enemy furthest away from me. Sometimes they'll be a mix of gun enemies and melee enemies. In the same encounter. And because they devs don't know AI, of course they're offset just enough to stun-lock you. The metal armor boss is where I realized the devs don't know what they're doing. Get close to the boss? Tracking from the flame thrower damn near certain to hit you. Far away? Get chaingunned for who knows how long until it wittles you down on health. Phase 2? Guns still working while you're trying to fight the boss. The thing is, its pretty close to being decent, but clearly they either A) Didn't play their own game so they have no clue how it feels, or B) They just don't care, my guess is B as everything is so half assed that even some elevators won't work randomly. STAY AWAY.

Crap game for me at least the directional block is crap if it were just blocking no problem but this directional thing is horible no wonder the game is 3 bucks i dont recommend unless its 3 bucks its not worth more not now and now when it launched. game looks good the idea on gear farming and nice but that block mechanic ruined it for me so bye bye.

Huge improvement over the first game.

Insanely fun combat and criminally underrated. Level design with all the shortcuts is cool too, until u have to go back and forth 5x thru the game