Darksiders Complete Collection

The Darksiders Complete Collection packages the first two games in the franchise - War's origin story and Death's world-spanning quest to resurrect humanity - along with the Darksiders II season pass content including the Abyssal Forge and Demon Lord Belial expansions. For the uninitiated: these are third-person action games that wear their influences on their blood-soaked sleeves. Darksiders I is basically what happens if Zelda and God of War had a very angry, very metal child. Dungeons are structured around a central hub that branches into item-gated sub-areas, each capped by a boss fight, exactly like Ocarina of Time's formula - except War cleaves through everything with the Chaoseater sword, hurls a Cross-blade boomerang, fires the Mercy pistol for air juggling, and yanks armored enemies apart with the Abyssal Chain grapple. When the Chaos meter fills, you transform into a towering demon and deal massive burst damage, which never gets old. Souls collected from enemies serve as currency spent with the demon merchant Vulgrim on abilities like Stoneskin damage reduction and the Immolation damaging aura, so there is genuine build tinkering, even if it is fairly shallow. Darksiders II is the more ambitious half of this bundle and the one that rewards patient players. You play as Death - agile, dual-scythe-swinging, too arrogant to even block - and the shift in design philosophy is immediately apparent. Gone is War's relatively linear dungeon crawl; in its place is an open-world structure that blends Diablo-style procedural loot with Prince of Persia platforming and puzzle rooms that involve parkouring walls, directing energy beams, and rolling objects into pressure plates. Death has two distinct skill trees: the Harbinger path for raw physical damage and the Necromancer path that leans into summoning allies and boosting defense. The Reaper Form ability, which transforms Death into a scythe-wielding grim reaper, functions as the game's Devil Trigger equivalent and rewards aggressive play. The sheer volume of loot means your loadout is constantly shifting, which keeps the middle hours from going stale. The narrative framing is genuinely enjoyable in a pulpy, biblical-mythology-through-a-heavy-metal-filter kind of way. War is wrongly accused of triggering the Apocalypse and fights to prove his innocence while being shadowed by a watcher with the power to kill him. Death, meanwhile, sets out to resurrect humanity to exonerate his brother. Neither story hits the emotional highs of a Disco Elysium or Planescape, but the world-building is consistent, the voice cast is strong (Mark Hamill as the Watcher is exactly as unsettling as that sounds), and the cutscenes are well worth watching. The lore rewards curiosity - the Charred Council, the Four Horsemen mythology, and the war between Heaven and Hell all have a coherent internal logic that makes the world feel built rather than assembled. Where the collection stumbles is in pacing and PC controls. Darksiders I's ranged-weapon camera is genuinely awkward without a controller, and some of the combo inputs require finger arrangements that feel like console ports wearing a keyboard disguise. Darksiders II, for all its ambition, has a padding problem in its latter half - the world is large, some side quests exist purely to fill time, and the loot loop can start to feel like grinding gilts through repetitive enemy rooms. Neither game reinvented anything, and by today's standards they show their age. But the dungeon design in both titles is thoughtful, the boss fights are spectacular set pieces, and the sheer density of content in this bundle makes it one of the more generous packages in the action-adventure space.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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