IGN’s review on Watch Dogs 2:

The unique hacking adventure of Watch Dogs 2 successfully makes itself differs from GTA series. When you walk through the beautiful bay area, the unique mechanics of the game will remind you that it’s not a copycat of GTA. Hero Marcus is too kind-hearted that it’s hard for us to believe that he’s the one who caused the chaos. But the flexible hacking style gives the players a chance to complete most of their missions without using violence. Meanwhile, the multi-player game provides the players with a distinct experience of “hide-and-seek”.

Score: 8.5

It’s good to have a funny character like Bagley in the game. But since the number of playable characters in the game is too many, Bagley’s role is not that distinct. Different from the previous two games, where players are only able to play two roles (Aiden Pearce and Marcus), players have to control all the characters in the collective (players are able to shift from one role to another in the game). The highlight of the game is that almost all the NPCs can be recruited to DedSec. In the game, you can scan any persons in the street, and see their abilities. And if you want to recruit them, you need to do a specific task. No matter building worker, stock broker, doctor, protester, killer or security, you can recruit them to DedSec in a specific way. But sometimes in order to recruit somebody, you have to spend lots of efforts to investigate his/her personal data.

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The way of recruiting NPCs in this game is quite similar to recruiting orcs in Middle-earth: Shadow of War, when you find out the professionals of drones or find out someone with spy ability, you will feel like finding out a gold mine. The outlooks and voices of the characters are generated randomly in the game. As the game producer has prepared enough faces and voices, you will hardly see any repetitive faces or voices. But if you recruit a large number of people, some of the recruitment tasks will be exactly the same. Besides, to avoid repetition, game producers has processed some of the voices, making those voices sound unnatural. In addition, characters’ mouths do not match with their lines.

Different from traditional action games, heroes in this game are not powerful. They are not able to acquire new abilities like Pearce and Marcus. Players may feel constrained as every character is limited to certain weapon and certain ability. But every time when we find a new unique character, we feel fresh. I once came across a magician in the street, who can hypnotize my enemies to fight for my side. And that ability was exactly what I need. And the magician became one of my best characters.

However, I haven’t found any characters who had the typical hacking abilities like the previous two games: they are not able to change traffic lights, they are not able to call upon cops and members to attack targets, and no one in the game are able to paralyze the city and its infrastructure. I miss those abilities, but I also admire Watch Dogs: Legion’s attempt to go beyond the conventional rules. Besides, vehicles have been marginalized in this game, as there are few missions related to vehicles, and cops’ chasing can also easily be shaken off.

Drone is the key element, because some of the missions have to be completed through drones, which adds more fun and diversity to the game. There is also puzzles like Watch Dogs 2, and you should solve them through changing the rotation of the junction shapes. Sometimes, you even have to solve the puzzle in fire. Some of the puzzles are really difficult, but it also adds fun and diversity to the game.

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When you are controlling some specific characters, you may find the gaming experience completely different. For example, you can choose the character armed with heavy weapon (such as veteran) to make gun battle easier. This kind of characters help you complete most of the missions with the use of force. In other cases, you can choose characters who are able to control cameras and spider drones to approach your target and implement hacking. Through this way, you can even complete the mission without going to the mission zone. And you can also recruit characters who work for the private security company, and use their identity to infiltrate into the heavily fortified areas. You can get in touch with those characters in the private security company, as long as you don’t get too close to the guards. There are countless possibilities. The complex game designing encourages players to use different methods to deal with different problems. For example, you can use drones to complete most of your missions.

There are no level-ups for the characters, but there are tasks for the whole team to upgrade, including the ability to hack drones, the ability to reload rapidly and the possession of invisibility devices. All those abilities and devices helps the whole team to upgrade. It’s good that the upgrades should be unlocked by tech points, and tech points should be collected through world exploration or tasks. That mechanism encourages players to explore the world instead of accumulating exp. points by killing people. 

On the other hand, the mechanism mentioned above also makes the money you earn meaningless, as it can only unlock the clothes, which are not important to the game. Similar to Watch Dogs 2, the game’s emphasis on non-lethal weapons is to some extent meaningless, as the lethality of weapons in the game make no difference with bullets, and no one care about how many people you kill. I guess, maybe the producer attempts to encourage players to be nonviolent vigilantes.

The main difference between Watch Dogs: Legion and traditional open world games is that characters in the game can be sacrificed or replaced, even though their death will have some impact. By default, if the characters you are controlling are shot, beaten or bombed, they will be sent to hospital or prison, and you cannot use them for a while. But if you are in the permadeath mode, the risks of the missions steeply rise, which is much more thrilling than any other open world games I have played.

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In the permadeath mode, the death of characters means permanent leaves. Most characters may be easily replaced by other candidates, while some of them with special abilities cannot be found any more. Sometimes, my characters are lucky enough to dodge a bullet, while sometimes they die because of some unexpected accidence. For example, there was once I was driving and didn’t notice a powder cask, which exploded and blew my character to the sky. (I thought it was bug, before I check my video history.)

Generally speaking, it’s not difficult to survive if you behave cautiously. Your HP will recover quickly if you pull back in a fight. There is an upgrade option that you can knock down an enemy in 30 seconds, which is useful in stealth (not many people around you). There are almost no falling damages in the game, as the gaming experience will be too bad if you lose a team member by misjudging the distance.

You don’t have to worry about losing members or about their kidnap (common in the game). If you lose all you members, the game will be over. But recruiting more members is not difficult, and your AI partner will guide you to find new elite members. I gained some of my potential members’ trust with the help of marks in the game. For example, if you find someone with a red mark in his/her head in the map, it means that the person is the enemy of one of your candidates. Kill the person, and you probably will have a new member.

Enemy is not the only relationship in the game. You can also come across families, friends and lovers of your members. I once met an old lady. When I scan her, I found that she was the grandmother of one of my members who had sacrificed. And I told her that her grandson died for the future of England. The details make the game more like reality. I feel like that the NPCs are all real persons. 

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The character design system is saturated enough, while I still hope that more unique features can be seen upon the NPCs, especially those who have negative features. I once came across a member who hiccups all the time, which exposes his position. And there is another member who may die without any symptoms. But why should I recruit them if they didn’t have any powerful abilities? In the game, I can invest a large amount of resources to enhance a character’s ability. But if the character dies, that will be a big loss. Some of Watch Dogs: Legion’s game design ideas are derived from roguelike game, but not many. There are already two roguelike game masterpieces (Hades and Spelunky 2) launched in the market this year, and it’s good to add some roguelike elements to Watch Dogs: Legion.