Ghostrunner 2 Review

Ghostrunner v2:

Two years ago, developer One More Level scored a real surprise hit with its bloody and extremely challenging action game “Ghostrunner”. Now the sequel is in the starting blocks, which should offer more of everything that fans already loved about Part 1.

We’ll tell you in our test of the PlayStation 5 version whether the hotly anticipated sequel can live up to expectations.

Story:

A year has now passed since the events of the predecessor, but protagonist Jack and his allies have not been granted a break. The defeat of the Keymaster has left a power vacuum that could be filled by a new threat in the dark world: some of the original Ghostrunners have returned!

Of course, we won’t tell you at this point whether our protagonist will succeed in stopping this new danger. What we can tell you, however, is that this time the adventure also takes you to new locations that are outside of the familiar Dharma Tower, which provides more variety.

Overall, the story of ” Ghostrunner 2 “, like its predecessor, is more than solid and scores with interesting themes as well as one or two really fast-paced cutscenes. We also found the new opponents exciting enough to want to find out more about them and their motivation as the game progressed.

It’s just a shame that the story wasn’t even more present. For our taste, action and plot could have been linked even more closely.

Gameplay:

What captivated us far more than the story, as in part 1, was the excellent gameplay in the sequel. The world of the action game is once again extremely dangerous, and Jack regularly has to take down various enemies.

The fights are extremely smooth, and we run with our Ghostrunner through the cleverly designed levels, which often offer several routes. In addition, thanks to different locations, there is significantly more variety on offer. Speaking of  “a Game Over” in the game. As in its predecessor, dying in “Ghostrunner 2” is once again an integral part of the game experience. Jack can only take one hit, which is why any mistake is often fatal.

As standard, we are armed with a katana, with which we can split our opponents in two at lightning speed. The bloody sword action with its powerful blows plays wonderfully precisely and is once again an absolute highlight! Thanks to the once again high pace and the very demanding level of difficulty, we died almost every minute in many levels, but we never got frustrated. One More Level has distributed the reset points very fairly, and the quick loading times also help you to continue straight away after a death. Furthermore, the alternative routes invite you to experiment and keep the individual runs pleasantly fresh.

Of course, the parkour elements are also back in “Ghostrunner 2” and are once again absolutely essential for survival. We can perform wall runs, gracefully shimmy along poles and make lightning-fast evasive moves. All of this is really fun, especially in the more expansive levels.

Our protagonist always uses some of his tricks, which we unlock as the game progresses. These include, among other things, a throwing star, a type of force blast and the ability to create a copy of Jack. Of course, we can use all of these skills to our advantage in battles, but we needed them much more often in the platforming sections or to solve some small puzzles. These aren’t too demanding, but they’re a nice change from the adrenaline-pumping action. Since we’re on the subject of skills: As in the predecessor, we can also give our character a few upgrades in “Ghostrunner 2”. Among other things, we increase our time window when dodging or become briefly invulnerable during a sprint, which opens up new tactical options in skirmishes.