Caveat before going any further: I got this and the DLC together on sale for like, 7 bucks. So it is entirely possible I would have a different opinion had I payed full retail price. ... but I didn't so here we are.
I had never played the previous games in the series - I'm not... usually a huge Zombie person tbh? I occasionally enjoy the genre, mostly for some fun hack and slash, or in the case of State of Decay the community building element... but most zombie fiction tends to be extremely depressing; and I'm... just not about that.
Dead Island 2 was actually quite fun though - the tone managed to be campy, but still have serious moments, the moment to moment gameplay was quite fun overall. Most of the characters were fairly broad pastiches of well known archetypes; but none that fell into the "offensive walking stereotype" territory or anything. Everyone has just a biiiit more depth than you expect, even if it's not a ton.
A few of the characters are actually really good though, and those tend to be the ones you interact with the most.
Biggest Positive was imo, the lore: Maybe this is because I'm *not* normally a zombie obsessive; but all the deep lore about what caused the outbreak and... well i don't want to spoil that stuff but it hints at a much bigger world in this universe than *just* "and there are zombies".
I genuinely hope they actually explore that somewhere at some point, because while this gameplay is fun... I could see an entire Secret World esque game dealing with all that background stuff as well as zombie outbreaks. I'd be here for it anyway.
The biggest drawback: The story - not that it was badly written, I dont' feel it was, but you can absolutely tell where they ran out of time and had a lot more they wanted to do. Like the shift in what you're doing, why, and what your character cares about is so jarring and abrupt it's an obvious "Okay we have to ship this now so tack on an ending" thing, instead of... well... actually finishing out the narrative they were setting up.
I get it though, this game apparently had a crazy development cycle.
I will say the DLC stories are a lot more cohesive and delve into all that interesting stuff I was mentioning above under Lore.
So uh, short version: Great game for bonking zombies over the head, a plot that is... compromised by it's development cycle, but lore that goes some very interesting directions and hints at potentially awesome things in Dead Island 3.
Oh one other caveat that is a mild negative, but it's... not a huge deal? I feel like melee weapons break too fast early on, and the game doesn't clue you in that leveling up your weapons to match your level isn't a good idea until you have purple weapons. It's not huge, but it can leave you scratching your head like "why do I never have enough resources and money to fix stuff?"
But yeah, good game, and I'm really interested in Dead Island 3 in a way I never would have been if I hadn't gotten hooked on the lore. I really hope they explore that further.
