If you're looking for a new game to get into, this game is probably not for you. The new\returning player experience is atrocious, there are so many half-killed systems in this game that you'll spend most your time wondering what you're supposed to be doing.

I hate doing this, but this game was a let down for me. It felt overly punishing, and entirely inaccessible to someone that hasn't spent a lifetime honing their skills playing former FromSoftware games. The DLC embodied all the disappointing parts of Elden Ring, and somehow made them even worse. The slog of the snowy Fire Giant area, multiplied by 2. Finally killing bosses didn't feel rewarding any more, more like finally succumbing to death after a long uphill battle with a disease.
I can't recommend this game to any but the most die-hard fans of Elden Ring, definitely not to fans of Sekiro, Bloodborne or the Dark Souls saga.

Tries to cheat player retention by forcing players into bot matches while queueing for Quickplay. Scummy move that insults the playerbase.

Good game is good

Terrific game, let's you roleplay as an actually competent Voldemort casting 300 avada kedavras a second

It seems very clear to me that the creators of this video game only really wanted to produce a story, and not a video game. It feels like the game is taking the player hostage for large chunks of time. Prior to writing this review, I was stuck in conversations with characters for 66 minutes before I gave up.
There is also an abundance of handholding in this game, from tutorial tips for the same thing after 40 hours of "gameplay", to Aloy instantly mansplaining at me that I need to shoot at that wire.
The game might put you in a state of immersion, but it rips you straight out of it a few moments later.

This game fell short of its predecessor, and after all the hype that Techland put out for this game, it was a rather large letdown. I wrote this review after I'd completed the main campaign, and half of it in co-op as this game was so laborious that my co-op partner decided it was more fun to stare at the ceiling for 3 hours instead.

The Combat:
I personally ended up only spamming left mouse button, as that was just objectively better than using the abilities that you unlocked as they had so nichey usage areas. One would think that sneaking up on an enemy and stabbing him repeatedly with a knife would do more damage than one shot from a bow, but you'd be wrong.

The Skills:
Firstly, the game has the skills divided in two - parkour and combat, similar to the first game except they removed survival, which is fine. The parkour skills kind of had you paying twice or thrice for the full use of a skill, which does not feel particularly great. For example there's the fall damage reduction bit where you pay for rolling after you fall, then you pay for a bit more height you can fall before dying, and again, you pay for being able to jump after landing. I'd say the value of each individual skill is lower than the amount of time that it takes to unlock one measly skillpoint. Same goes for the one that unlocks sliding and its following skill, which allows you to jump after sliding.
The combat skilltree was just completely lackluster as I used each skill maybe twice and realized that they were just pretty much useless. What's the point of boosting stealth damage when it still does not kill enemies?

The parkour:
It just felt off. Something with the controls on a PC made it not feel right. I felt as if though I wasn't actually on Earth, but was jumping around on Mars. This might be just me being clumsy but I felt as if though there was some auto-correcting going on that threw me off my game, and caused me to fall off ledges. I also ended up jumping for a ledge, but instead the Aiden decided it was better to run on the wall and fall to his death. Maybe he had enough of the parkour himself. It was definitely a step down from the original Dying Light.

The Crafting:
Ultimately the crafting felt unnecessary, as the items you craft are either just plain weaker than using a decent weapon, or again, it has a very niche usage area. Explosives always draw more enemies in, so that removes the use of half of those items. The only crafted items I didn't regret upgrading were the medikit and the lockpick. The cost of upgrading items also became absurd, as you need a ridiculous amount of zombie trophies to upgrade them as the cost scales exponentially.

The Story:
It was so full of clichés that it almost hurt. During the co-op bits we joked about the plotline and how it would play out - but we just ended up cringing as the jokes turned out to be what the story actually was. I felt little to no attachment to any of the characters, because literally everyone is just a pain to interact with.
But the worst was how oblivious the main character is. Aiden the dunce, I started trying to keep count of how many times he was knocked out but it just got out of hand. I'm sure someone was very pleased with themselves when they developed the "your-eyes-are-closing-now" graphics, but wow, maybe went a little bit overboard with the use of that. It was also completely unbelievable that Aiden the simpleton would be surprised every time some zombie looked slightly different than the others, come on.

The aesthetics:
I'll admit that the general layout of the zones is more interesting to me than they were in the first game, it's just a shame that so many of the interior areas are essentially copy-pasted. I got a little bit confused at times because I honestly believed I'd been in this or that dark-zone several times before, despite it being a question mark before I got there.

Conclusion:
I am definitely being harsh with my review, because this isn't a new IP, nor is it a spin-off; it's a sequel. And sequels are in my opinion meant to improve upon the previous concept of the prequel, maybe implement some new features, but for the most part it should be the same but just better. This is why I can't give the game a positive review. I did the game the honor of playing through the entirety of the story to see if it got better, but there were just too large issues with the core concepts of the game-play. I didn't mention the bugs on purpose, as that would be somewhat unfair as they may be fixed at any point, but core game-play is unlikely to be altered. If by some miracle the game does vastly change, I'd be inclined to change this review if those changes agreed with me.

This game's good if you like deckbuilder games and aloof story-games. Definitely enjoyed the 10 hours of playtime I got out of it.
The story is pretty good, better than most games that I personally have recently played.

Game's pretty good, but it doesn't quite capture the wow-factor that the original game had. Missing the most important element of the first game: cyclops.

So I randomly stumbled across this when I was done with Dark Souls 3, and I was feeling a bit empty inside since I had few interesting things to play. I figured I'd give it a shot, as the graphics looked appealing to me. Overall I'd say this is a good game, with a rather good character progression system, and a great gear system.
Some fights can be a bit irritating, as large enemies have a tendency to push you back a lot, and even block you off from certain areas. My main irritation so far has been the boss fights, as the ones I've done so far (6 or 7) have been kind of lackluster. They start out with a set of moves, and progressively as the fight goes on, they just become faster. I'd much rather have phases in the fight, rather than linear difficulty progression, and adding new moves when you reach said phase would make it a lot more interesting.
That being said, I can definitely recommend this game if you enjoy combat-heavy metroidvania games, and liking the Souls series doesn't hurt.