Something strung me into this, maybe it's the appeal and that of how unorthodox the game plays out. After spending around 30hrs into it, I was pretty surprised by its bizarre nature. It doesn't reveal to you the wholesome details of its strange world with floating cities, abandoned ruins, mystical powers and creatures. It draws you in, caught up in suspense of it all while you traverse around areas like a ragboll cruising in the air. Also stemming from the fact the studio that made this is not currently working on Demon Souls remake.

Oh yeah, that something who strung me into this title happened to be a friend of mine obsessed with JRPGs. This game tries to break a lot of traditions regarding combat, exploration and storytelling. Quite a majority of the characters here had me invested, although the ones who come into the role for the mainplot will require you to play the previous game just to inherit the knowledge of their wellbeing.

I was amazed by a lot of things and vexed by a few issues too; mainly of course the camera. The fact that you can levitate and attack your enemies by kicking them in mid-air is enough to peak my interest. So here's my review of Gravity Rush 2.

Story

Gravity Rush 2 is a straight sequel to the first game continuing on from where the main characters left off. The game has you play as protagonist Kat, whom alongside Syd has crashed in a different realm from their homeworld: Neu Hiraleon. After Kat finds her feline cat guardian, Dusty, her powers return and she embarks once again on an adventure to help people for the betterment of their lives and find a way for her to return home alongside Syd and her long lost friend-in-arms, Raven.

In the first act, you meet a lot of new characters alongside some of your old ones. Though it seems to me, the newer ones don't hold that much charm in comparison to the latter. Most of the time you go helping out doing chores, getting involved in political strife between poor and rich classes with subplots also regarding around mining of precious stones that brings her enemies; the Nevi.

But once the story progresses, you immediately jump into the main course. Older characters do return from previous games and help shape majority of the plot. There are some really spellbinding moments, complemented alongside finding new interesting abilities and powers as you progress further.

There's also additional side quests that diverges you into side character's stories, as you do their tasks, you unlock branches for their take on your adventure later within the game too. The side quests provide interesting interactions in awkward, misplaced situations allowing for funny scenarios. Some tragic as well.

Gravity Rush 2 is an action-adventure with JRPG elements. The main emphasis of the gameplay revolving around your character, Kat is that she's the gravity queen. Her powers mostly involve floating in air, thrusting herself to travel around one location of the map to another and attacking her foes with either her superkick or telekinesis to throw objects at enemies. As the game progresses, you unlock different forms for your character to access different kinds of attack and abilities. Though even the most robust ones come much later in the game, which kind of leaves it outside of use for other activities in the early during of gametime.

Kat floats off the ground with (R1) button, pressing it again in mid-air will thrust her in the direction of the crosshair and third time will stop her. It can be done multiple times rapidly to change directions. Holding (X) during thrust reduces drag and pushes her to her destination much quicker. Pressing (L1) returns her to the ground by turning off her gravitational field. But with her field on, you can walk on floating craters, buildings, levels in different diagonal points. Though doing so will consume her energy levels, thus making the use of them limited.

During combat while in levitation, press (Square) to attack targeted enemies with her gravitational kick. Tapping (Circle) twice will carry nearby objects as projectiles and throw them to highlighted targets. Holding it will create a vacuum field with objects doing sustainable damage for longer periods. Then there's her special moves, tapping (Rectangle) will initiate her special move where she spirals on a target to give sustainable amount of damage for a period of time, she will move on to the next one if target's changed with the camera or when one specified is eliminated.

The gameplay is somehow easy to learn, though difficult to master at times. It's not highly fluid control scheme and you'll often make bumpy mistakes. Your thrust ability relies heavily on camera, so my advice would be to turn up the sensitivity to make things easier in sticky situations. Then there's the camera of course.

The issue with the camera is very apparent, adding insult to injury is the somewhat godforsaken motion sensors from the Dualshock 4 controller which tilts the camera on all 6-axis. I wanted to turn it off but dialing it down was the only option available. Now the camera problem mostly happens when you're floating too close to a building or when enemies just bypass you out of the blue and it just zaps in too close to your character at times. It's a bit of a nuisance. You might also get nauseated of the camera since it requires you to adjust your visual perspective multiple times.

Though besides all that, once you've learned to tolerate the inconsistencies, it's fun. There are side activities like treasure hunting, time runs, paper delivering and silly stuff like sharing portrait photos for online leaderboards. Side quests varying from one NPC to another, in return reward you with Talismans, precious stones, cosmetic items and increasing both health and special attack bar.

As I've mentioned before, progressing through the game unlocks different forms of Kat's abilities. Changing them by swiping with the touchpad. Each form changes how Kat's gravitational field abilities work including special attacks. Can also be very useful whenever you're facing more dangerous adversaries in certain missions.

Another form is some kind of a super move like a devil's trigger from DmC which changes you into some kind of a strong canine with increased mobility and deadlier attacks. Though the camera doesn't help there either.

The game is rendered using Unreal Engine 4, though the interesting artstyles, eye popping effects and well designed cell shaded characters do make this title look like a stunner. In certain areas, the visuals are well a bit underwhelming. Understandably there were compromises made, especially regarding buildings and other levels. The motion blur does not help with that at all, especially while you change your camera rapidly from one spot to another in intense battle sequences making it difficult to focus on.

Though I did stumble on to a couple of bugs, the technical aspect of this title isn't entirely perfect. One laughable situation is when a woman is inside a pole shown above where she's somehow posing. Even in numerous occasions my framerate would drop whether because I stumbled onto a crowded location or during intense battles, especially during battles in fact.

It kind of makes me feel some semblance of pity over myself because the soundtrack in this game is phenomenal. Also has a much higher duration than most other AAA video games(3hrs length). Damn, that's quite the effort into such a game. I won't go through much critiquing the soundtrack because that's a lot to go through and am not even that avid about this game. But this is nonetheless a brilliant soundtrack with an orchestra of such high ambiance brought into it.

As for the sound design, close your eyes and just listen to the gameplay itself; sounds like an anime of sorts, with high quality production. There's an intriguing characteristic put into the audio itself, the joy comes from playing this game is that characteristic giving this game the identity it needs. Whether you're magically dashing in and out of open spaces, breaking off weakspots from the Nevis or hearing gibberish dialogue, you'll be attuned to this game as if you're playing in some whimsical world full of bizarre extravaganzas.

Gravity Rush 2 is sort of an acquired taste. Not a game for everybody and certainly not for super JRPG players out there. Though even with its middling problems, the game has quite a lot to offer. But I did have more issues I didn't mention before, like the grinding is a huge chore. Especially for precious stones which you use to level up your abilities and such.

Though I'll admit, this game left a mark on me. Then again, there's that darn camera, it is very nauseating.