- Combat
- Melee with the shape-changing Aberrant, plus supernatural abilities won from bosses. No parry.
- Structure
- Large separate zones of Manhattan with main quests, World Quests and side activities; a hub called the Gap for loadouts.
- Difficulty
- Assist Mode with sliders that make it easier or harder, changeable at any time, and no trophies locked behind it (Remedy).
- Growth
- No character level: zones level up, and Dylan grows through Talents, artifacts, upgrade crates and the abilities each Resonant gives.
The combat loop, in Remedy's words
Hit with the Aberrant
Melee hits refill the resource that powers Dylan's abilities, which the PlayStation Blog's hands-on calls Power (Remedy's Miika Huttunen, PlayStation Blog, 4 March).
Stun with an ability
Supernatural abilities stun enemies — shields, projectile barrages, or an ally assembled from junk lying around are the examples given. Remedy's Thomas Puha names two: Barrage, a projectile attack, and the Volatile Anomaly, a summoned ally that can be thrown and detonated.
Execute
A stunned enemy can be executed, and executions can be chained; the PlayStation Blog's hands-on puts it on L3 on PS5.
Hit harder
Executions temporarily raise melee damage, which feeds back into the first step (Huttunen).
The Aberrant
🔨 Named forms
You start by picking one of three primary forms (daggers, scythe or axe) and, during the prologue, one of three secondary forms (a hammer, a drill or a whip). Before launch Remedy had named Hammer, Blades, Scythe and Fists; the Steam page shows the two-handed hammer and the dual blades.
🔀 Primary and secondary
Forms are split into Primary and Secondary, with Combo Enders on top (Huttunen, March). Reviews describe two weapon slots on Square and Triangle with three forms each; the PlayStation Blog's hands-on counts six primary and secondary forms by default.
🔥 Effects and perks
Forms carry status effects such as burn and infect, and perks such as better cooldowns and more damage on combo finishers (PlayStation Blog, 18 September). One review found the damage effects poorly explained in the interface.
🛡️ No parry
Reviews note that there is no parry; one reads it as a choice that puts the weight on timing and spacing. Remedy's Assist Mode does mention a perfect-dodge window.
Getting around
- Shift: walk up walls and through Gravity Anomalies. It comes from the first Jesse Sighting, The Incursion Fault, and the West Incursion Zone's Resonant cannot be reached without it.
- Reach: a grapple for gravity-defying spaces, from The Subway Fault.
- A higher jump by holding the button, an air dash, and a double-tap speed dash that leaves an afterimage (PlayStation Blog, 18 September). An Automatic Rush option in the settings makes sprinting a single press.
- Fast travel through 32 doors across the seven zones, which Remedy's Thomas Puha calls almost instant on PS5.
- Power Core Stations: some doors and elevators need a charge carried from one, on a timer that Assist Mode can stretch since update 1.4.0.
- Traversal abilities follow the story and do not carry into New Game Plus (Mohov, April).
Structure: zones, quests and the Gap
🗺️ Zones
Seven: Downtown, Central, the West Incursion Zone, the Evacuation Zone, the Park, the Underpass and the Unknown, each with its own encounters, lore and secrets. Remedy's line is that it did not want a world map that causes anxiety (Huttunen). The Unknown opens late, and its islands are linked by Pope's Research.
📈 Zone levels
Dylan has no level of his own; each zone does. Quests and world events raise it, fifteen levels per zone, and each level is a Zone Upgrade with benefits such as better crafting materials and healing.
📜 Quest types
Three questlines — Contain the Crisis, Search for Jesse and Defeating Resonants — plus side quests, world events, FBC Tasks from the Taskboards and collectibles.
🕹️ Arcade cabinets
Each zone has a SHÜM! arcade cabinet with timed challenges, marked as a Challenge, that opens at a set Zone level; beating them gives outfits.
🌫️ The Gap
A limbo-like hub, opened by holding down on the d-pad, where loadouts are changed and tried out, Talents bought at the floating rock by the monolith, artifacts crafted, and Resonant abilities swapped at the Mural. It has an endless training dummy.
👹 Resonant bosses
Six, one per zone except the Evacuation Zone: the Artist in the story and five in their own questline. Each gives a choice of combat ability.
Progression
- Three pillars, per Remedy: supernatural combat abilities from Resonants, Aberrant weapon forms, and Talents that strengthen how they combine (Huttunen, March).
- Six ability slots; the sixth opens with the Resonant Token from Pope's Research.
- Health and Power Upgrades come from special containers, each worth a third of an upgrade; the six Secret Hideouts and the six Testing Facilities hold one each.
- Source and upgrade materials pay for the Aberrant forms and their upgrades. They drop from enemies and containers and come from World Events; Talent Points are separate, and come from raising Zone levels and finishing side stories, not from kills.
- To farm Source, start a Hold the Line or Firebreak World Event, kill the Heavy enemies — they carry the Source and materials — then let the crate or the officer fall. The failed event resets with its enemies back, ready to repeat.
- Artifacts are crafted in the Gap and raise Aberrant Strength. Three slots, with a fourth in New Game Plus (Mohov, April); the Untapped ones come as quest rewards.
- Remedy says outright that not everything can be unlocked in a single playthrough.
Assist Mode, option by option
| Option | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Enemy Aggression | How often enemies attack |
| Perfect Dodge Window | How wide the timing window for a perfect dodge is |
| Enemy Projectile Speed | How fast incoming projectiles travel |
| Incoming Damage | Damage Dylan takes |
| Outgoing Damage | Damage Dylan deals |
| Outgoing Falter | How quickly enemies' posture breaks |
| Power Recovery Speed | How fast the ability resource recharges |
| Enhanced Melee Magnetizing | How forgiving melee positioning is |
| Immortality | Dylan cannot die |
| One-Hit Kills | Enemies die in one hit |
| One-Hit Falters | Enemies falter in one hit |
| Power Core Charge Duration | A 100–300% multiplier on how long a Power Core charge lasts (added in update 1.4.0) |
What Assist Mode is for
Mohov's point is that the sliders go both ways: Assist Mode can also make the game harder. It can be switched on or changed at any point, and no trophies or achievements are locked behind it (PlayStation Blog, 10 September). The PlayStation Store lists nine accessibility features for the game; we did not find that list published.
New Game Plus
➕ What carries over
Aberrant upgrades, health and ability-resource improvements, unlocked combat abilities, Talents and Artifacts (Mohov, PlayStation Blog, 30 April).
🆕 What changes
Several abilities from the same boss can be equipped together, a fourth Artifact slot opens, enemies get more dangerous and bosses gain new behaviour. Side stories and conversations can end differently.
❓ When
It was in the launch version, for one further run. Update 1.4.0 (1 October) added New Game++, which keeps starting new runs on top of earlier progress, and raised the main-menu save slots from five to seven; New Game Plus runs keep their saves in separate folders.
What reviewers said about how it plays
- The combat is where they split. IGN (8/10) found the stylish action sound but the RPG layer shallower than it looks and the later hours tedious. Push Square (8/10) says it shines in the first half and turns repetitive as enemy health grows and upgrades dry up. PC Gamer (76) summed it up as too many hours of middling combat.
- VGC (5/5) says the genre change pays off, with the reservation that some open-world activities repeat towards the end and big fights can get crowded.
- Kotaku praises the encounter design and calls it the most demanding game Remedy has made, but finds some dialogue too clever by half and the puzzles uneven.
- Eurogamer (3/5) argues that leaving the Oldest House cost some of what made the first game special.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 23 September 2026 and re-checked on 2 and 4 October 2026 against the PlayStation Blog, the Steam page, the PlayStation Store listing, Remedy's post-launch plans and update 1.4.0 notes, OpenCritic, the guides of PowerPyx, KeenGamer, GameRant, AllThings.how, PixelNitro and Gamer Guides, the Spanish-language guides and reviews of Eurogamer.es, Vandal and EliteGuias, the Fextralife wiki, and the coverage of Wikipedia, VGC, Push Square, Kotaku, IGN, PC Gamer, Eurogamer and Noisy Pixel. Not from a playthrough: nobody here has played it, and what the sources do not describe is not on this page.