I’m playing the game since the beginning of the early access and it has come a long way since so it’s time to do a check-up.

Pros :
- Play local solo or coop. Play online or even local coop online!
- Build your own place to survive. You will spend some time before getting a good camp. With the most recent update, you can set a camp attack and defend it from zombies waves!
- Kovac. This character is hilarious!
- Various recipes for crafting. Literally everything is used for crafting, even junk you can melt in a foundry. No leftover.
- Missions : you will go on several missions to gain xp and loot. You can increase the level of the mission for a “high risk, high reward” gameplay but you can also decrease it if you want to go on an easy way.
- Battle gameplay. Use melee weapons or guns but don’t get outrun nor outnumbered otherwise you will have a bad time. You need to aim your enemy and keep it in sight for a critical shot. The faster you can get it, the better.
- Post-apo weapons : you see that they are really made of what you used to craft them!
- Finishing moves. It feels so good !
- Flying pets!
- Season events: we got thanksgiving or christmas missions and specific loots!
- You can customize your character from the inventory at any time. (Topless character against zombies ftw!)

Cons :
- It’s still early access. Some things are unfinished but as the time goes, we have less and less missing features.
- Environnement is repetitive. It’s either swamps or city with the same look.
- Some resources are hard to find, even quest related ones.
- In order to craft/upgrade specific weapons or buildings, you will need to grind levels or farm resources.
- The hunger and thirst does not penalize you enough. Having 0% hunger/thirst penalize you in combat (You will hit like a fly and your aim will be awfully slow) but your health will remain unchanged so it cuts the “survival” a half.
- If you play in public, be prepared : you obviously have player killers, robbers and griefers. So I recommend playing with friends only for the best coop experience. (On the contrary, if you search for a “pvp” like gameplay style, go for it!)

The game is on the right path and has improved a lot since its launch so if you like zombies, crafting and survival in hostile and desolate territory, buy it, you’ll enjoy the journey. And of course, with friends. The more, the merrier! (With the notable exception of your resources.)

As a fan of How To Survive 1, I am enjoying this sequel. There are quite a few changes from the first game. Less linear play, more of an open world feel that you can explore with tons of quest-dungeons you can do with several NPCs along the way, and repeat if you feel the need to. The food and water system can make it incredibly difficult when you first start, until you realize there is an abundance of food on the map when you figure out where to look (it's not nearly as bad as some make it out as far as food availability, exploring the camp map after the first 2 quests can prove very fruitful early on). I wouldn't say HTS2 is harder than HTS1, not by a long shot, but you can adjust some of the difficulty by choosing to do quest dungeons 5 levels above you and there is far more to do. Some weapons can be a bit OP with the right combination of ammunition. And lots of crafting/camp building to occupy your time.

So what are the cons? There are a couple for me that stand out like a sore thumb.

First and foremost, no camera rotation, for the life of me I don't understand anyone making a top-down perspective game doesn't think camera rotation is mandatory. This creates many scenarios where you have a very short angle on your field of vision, unless you happen to be moving in a direction where the camera is following your back. These guys aught to be flogged for this. I have never played a top-down sandbox without the ability to do so.

Inability to pause single player game. This is pretty silly, you cannot step away from the game without either quitting to the main menu or suspending the process in your resource monitor. If you do, you continue to consume food and water and risk the chance of being attacked. Now if you are just hanging around in camp, that's fine, you can just quit to the menu then restart, nothing is lost. However if you are in the middle of a quest/dungeon mission, you will lose your progress and need to start over. Really guys, no pause?

Resources are really plentiful, dare I say too plentiful. That and quest replayability makes it fairly easy to get whatever you need with a very little bit of elbow grease. Ammunition is pretty easy to manufacture once you have a few levels on your armory. Arrows are reuseable if you collect them. You should never struggle for resources in this game. This lends itself to making the game easier than it should be.

But overall, I think it has some decent replayability. And Kovac, as always, makes for great apocalyptian company. It's still a fun zombie RPG hack and slash, albeit not as challenging as it could be. And if you've ever wanted a bow that shoots like a semi-automatic, this is it. Pick up the dynamite DLC too. Also important to note: To play in fullscreen (as you will not see the option) open the launch configuration and select it there before starting the game.



Now, what is up with all the pink toilet paper? And why lock all the bathroom doors?!

I honestly really like this game, even as Early Access.

Updates are coming out regularly, and the game is getting better and better as it's fleshed out more.

• Zombie games
  
• Top down shooters
  
• Diablo-style games
  
• Crafting!
  
• Base building
  
• Base defense
  
• The fun of actually having to work to get better gear!
  
• Running away from massive zombie hordes you accidentally aggro'd because you forgot to attach a silencer to your gun
  
• ZOMBIE DEER OH GOD WHY

I'm not gonna lie the first one was more interesting and more of a story driven adventure, this one goes for a sort of psuedo sandbox setup that at times seems neat.

There are plenty of things to do and if you are ok with mostly guiding your own adventure or if you have a group that helps to keep things interesting.

If that sounds good to you then this game can actually be a good bit of fun, otherwise I would recommend trying the first game.

So after playing a few hours alone, I can say I like it! And so begins the list of why

PROS AND CONS

-Much better graphics than the first game, and much bigger areas to explore. No more claustrophobia or "Why cant i mount this ledge or move past this thing" Anything that sensibly could be traversed in reality can now be mounted or jumped off. While inside buildings, you see through a "Hole cut" system where the forground disappears, which is great because now the game can have interiors and other sequences the first didnt have, these all lead to super pleasing environments.
-Every mission has its own environments and you can replay them all for loot or fun
-Much more "Walking dead" and much less "Dead island' feel to this game, the forests and cities are much more friendly to my idea of what a zombie game should be like. Night no longer brings creepy lunatics who are afraid of light (At least not constantly, they however can occasionally appear), clearing cities at night is spooky and can make you jump, the amount of zombies is reduced from 1 but they are more lethal and you have to play smarter, which I prefer. In the first game it was always a "How many times can you empty the clip on your nerf gun" feeling, wheras in this one its like "Pick and choose your targets and sneak, and be ready for a zombie behind every door"
-Kovac.... Just... Kovac
-After playing till i got a gun, i can confirm they are no longer air powered, long story short, they are handmade guns that sound like guns and take bullets and hurt things, not a supersoaker that magically shoots bolts and nails. and yes, they are loud and will attract walkers, very Walking dead feel to using your gun in this game. The guns are all homemade and as such have "Interesting" appearances, but not "Silly" anymore. The other weapons, bows and such, also got a sexy new look and upgrade that I love.

Now, on to what I DO NOT like so far.

-The menus are an utterly horrendous mess, hopefully this will be fixed later, you have a seperate menu on seperate keys for every single menu you can access, this needs to be replaced with hotkeys to parts of a central menu with subsections.
-The camp system is cheesy and feels really pointless considering you are camping about 4 feet from Kovac's massive safe bunker, This could really use some expansion and more "Reason" to do it rather than because kovac told you to do it and wont share his bunker, Id prefer having environments to choose from rather than just putting it up in the generic woods you start in, give us options to use that dont make it so its a 20-mile jog to kovacs bunker and by proxy literally 90% of the quests.
-Farming for materials is what will be the death of this game, the monotomy is toxic, enter mission, look for random drops, find 1 or 2 of your item, redo mission, repeat. This needs to be made more fun.

And Last, what I want to see develop as the game moves out of early access.

-The customization menu needs to be much more comprehensive and have many more options. Instead of having "male body A" and "Male body B" have the same look but different pants (I assume this is planned anyway)
-While I love the fact every mission environment is now its own Cell and you dont have to walk to each of them, having more places to explore when not in missions would be nice, the forest is beautiful but it has like, 4 landmarks to explore.
-A menu to select already done quests so you dont have to remember/run to the guy who gave it every time you want to redo it for materials.
-If more areas are added in the future, instead of making us build near the bunker entrances, just let us place one in the environment?
-Current finishing moves have three choices, 1 and 2 are generic and dont care about the weapon, and 3 is weapon specific (Some weapons have more, such as the bat) but expanding on these and making it so the weapon finishers happen more would be nice! Also, I cant get my arrows back when i use my bow in a finisher, i assume this is a bug.
-In a game like this, modding support seems like it could be both possible and potentially amazing, Id love to see this happen with custom missions and gear. (I assume this would be possible because the Cells you do missions in Feel like they were created by a mapmaker type software, instead of each being "hand made")
-I really REALLY like the creepiness some of the night missions give, adding a thicker more terrifying horror element to these missions would be amazing. Im not talking H2S style "Creepers in the dark" Im talking somethat that legitimately will make you sit in a building and not want to open a door, or go back outside or things of that nature. (All the pictures of slenderman on the walls help with the mood!)

All in all this game is an improvement on the first in almost every regard, and is supposed to just get much better, I look forward to seeing where it goes! Im gonna hop into the beta branch and Put what I find below and try to update it

BETA INFO
-TO BE LOGGED-

ARGUEMENT ADDRESSING SECTION THAT WILL MAKE WHINERS MAD

Opposing Arguement
-The first one actually had a plot! This one doesnt! BLAH, this one also looks worse!

My arguement
-What H2S did you play exactly? I remember running around on islands that all look the same doing quests that had no points with the general goal of leaving at some point. All the quests were "Go get A, bring it to B" in the first and most in the second are similar, except all the quests in 1 were confined to each island wheras in 2 they each have a custom made Cell to pursue them in. This game also has fricken gorgeous environments by comparison to the endless sand of 1.

Opposing Arguement
-This game is so buggy, ive got stuck on X,Y, and Z objects a thousand times!

My arguement
-I have not gotten stuck on a single thing once in all my playtime, cant really help ya there, this game is surprisingly bug free.


If I see other opposing arguements in reviews, I will gladly address them here, also feel free to ask about anything in the comments if you need more data before you buy!

Devs didn't change the button marks yet. So if you're using keyboard & mouse, it could be a little ambiguous when you first start the game. Just remind these keys below, then you won't have any significant problem during the play.

X - Open Crafting & Inventory Menu
C - Open Construction Menu
SPACE - 'Next' in Dialogue
ESC - 'Skip' in Dialogue

I saw some negative reviews here, so I was a bit unsure whether I should purchase this game or not. However, most of the reviews are about miscellaneous minor bugs. I don't mind much about them because I believe Devs will try their best to fix those bugs as they did in HTS1.

I had to purchase the game only based on HTS1, and my concern was mainly about the quality of the content itself. As of the moment, I think this game is fairly worth to invest.

Now in HTS2, you can explore 2nd, 3rd story buildings in the field. You can make various weapons, armors, modules, portions, foods, and many more. And these items can be obtained only in Foundry, Chemistry Lab, Workshop, and etc, which all comprise the whole level system. There are some new types of animals using different moves which forces you to use different tactics. Also the way of proceeding quest lines has completely changed.

HTS2 has some unique essentials, and they didn't just duplicate the former version of the game. They know what they are doing, and I feel somewhat obligated to support them. I just want to see how the next 3rd, 4th HTS goes. Most people who enjoyed HTS1 will understand what I mean.

Do you like : Zombies ? Survival games ? Camp construction and defense ? Crafting weapons or armors ? Having fun with your friends ? Kovac ? Evolving with a character in an apocalyptic world ? If you answered "yes" to the previous questions, you should definitely play How to Survive 2.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=816482052

Unlike the first game, there isn't a storyline or an open world : it's a limited area of modest size full of zombies, wild animals and resources, where you can build and enhance your camp. Then you'll run accross several NPC who'll give you various kind of quests in instances : find resources and items, rescue people, kill infected, investigate, etc. As in any self-respecting RPG, you'll get experience to improve your character, the camp and your skills. There are melee and ranged weapons and you have the possibility to craft food, potions or gear. You'll have to be cautious though, pay attention to your health, hunger, thirst and ammunition. As in the first game, you'll have to manage to craft everything you need by yourself, assisted by Kovac himself of course !

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775274215

How to Survive 2 is a very fun apocalyptic game to play alone or preferably with friends and has hours of gameplay to offer. I regret the lack of chain saw or flame thrower and want to point out that sometimes the game can be repetitive or almost boring if you have to farm resources or experience. There are various DLCs offering special weapons, skins or additional quests.

So, I definitely do reccomend this game. but not to everyone.
And. this review will have informaton, but expect it to be all over the place. GOOD LUCK!!

So, this game is fairly expensive, for what it is. You will NOT get what you paid for in the combat department of this game. yes there are a fair amount of ways to fight. and a small collection of weapon families to all keep it a little fresh. but other than those, combat should stay the same the whole game. with you deciding how to play it out against the kind of enemies you are currently up against.

In the line of weapons. it is the kind of game where, you have your few kinds. example being, you have your sword, your mace, you shield. and you take those along the line of their family tree of weapons. each level will get the job done, and as you progress. you need the next one in line to keep that reliability.

So yeah. Don't come into this game expecting the combat to make you fall in love. you will mostly just strive to be able to one hit headshot all the zombies. which isn't a bad idea.

The content side of it. not bad. really, you have alot to do. It may be repetitive. but honestly almost every game is like that.

But the game has alot in it. mission after mission will fall onto your lap to keep you busy. and this happens all game. with some different events in between.

in this game, you level your world. because your character levels cap is whatever your worlds level is. but, the zombies will scale with you. actually, before you! they go up with the world level. but you need to do this levelling. missions also start to get restricted off of level. so you have advance. just about eveything in this game is locked by level.

you reached a new level! go craft that new item!- but wait.
you cant craft that. your building isn't a high enough level.
you cant level your building. your camp isn't high enough level.
you cant level up your camp, because that Russian man decided he wants to test how strong you are every ten levels!
at least you get your own personal horde spawning device. right? just activate a large wave of zombies on your friends. they should be fine.

So, really, the game constantly hands you your next objective. keeping you going. and by god it will keep you going. unnlleessss you are playing with a friend. once they aren't online. Don't progress. or they will come online and get slapped by that zombie he swore he could one hit the night before.

instead, spend that time to try and prepare for progress. collect exp, items. and learn mission maps and different farming styles.

like running around the map for a whole hour to collect wood, while you miss every single shot on the rabbits that will bolt the second their spidy senses notice you came in their proximity, even though you are behind them- evolution treated those little things well.

but hey. multiplayer is also where alot of this games fun comes in. when you get downed, that just sucks. but when your friend goes down, it is suddenly one of the most entertaining things in the world. and your head begins flooding with jokes you can taunt them with.

or, you will just have your little dlc bird, running to the downed friend, saying 'I need healing' from the popular first person shooter TF2's character Genji. then instanty revive them. because you will quickly learn that the DLC in this game is OP AF. ranging from giving you a pack themed helmet, to the pet and the weapon that will be all the more useful.

that giant hammer? it sure does hit hard. go run into a horde with your confidence, then give a polite thank you to your friend that revived you. or a ♥♥♥♥ you, depending if their head was as full of jokes as yours!

it's fine though. just after they call you bad, you accidentally shot that exploding zombie that they were standing near. hey, they forgot to heal.

but. try to keep your toxicity to a minimum. and your world to private! friends and randoms alike will gladly gank all the loot from your public chest. if you can have a trust system in order. and keep a secure world from randoms. feel free to drop everything into that public chest and enjoy the ever so convenient crafting it brings.

Maybe I should more things that matter. controls! find out yourself-
they are your basic wasd for movement, unless you decide to use controller. then that's on you man.
movements can sometimes be a problem. sometimes you can glide across the ground gracefully by spamming your aim key in the direction of where you are moving.

other times you just wated to turn around. but you're so damn eager you hit sprint and send yourself into the enemies so fast you cant escape. or you start vaulting all the counters in the world, because hey, your feet can pick up items too. I think. not that is matters.

melee hitreg can sometimes be a problem. the way the camera is makes you think you will smack something, but you may smack two. OR you will miss. and be the one to get slapped. but once you get the hang of it, you can enjoy the very under rated, and entertaining style of melee combat.

guns will lock onto an enemy, if you keep your mouse close enough to them. and after a few moments it will charge a headshot. and you can watch your friend stagger the same enemy they was so damn sure they could headshot last night. and then they will panic. because you can only shoot your gun when you are actually aiming down the sights. and when a zombie is so fast that it catches your hand off guard and runs out of the cursor. making your shot hit NOT ITS HEAD. you will have that same enemy on your hands. just alot closer

NPC's are cool. they all have their personalities. I think. if I was ever to read what they said. The only one you will really come to respect is that Stereotypical Russian in his not so shining armor.
or most of the time. until he yoinks your controls away to tell you that you should really eat. while you continue to be smacked by that zombie because you cant exit the menu despite your panicked clicking. AT LEAST YOU TRIED! hope fully that mission wasn't Elite. because if so. back to the start! or. you will hear something about needing healing as the mystical blue bird approached you. but wait. someone is carrying it? psshh- nah. that peasent is just its caretaker. we all know the one with the revival bird doesn't have feelings.

Well. I don't know what else to ramble about! I hope this gave you a little insight to not only some of what the game has to offer. but what to expect player wise. if you are interested, buy it and enjoy!. if not, I hope this was somewhat entertaining to read!

Here's my pros and cons;

Pros:

• Online coop multiplayer expanded to 4 players (16 if there's 4 local players each client)
  
• Online multiplayer, players does not need to be on the "same place/screen" like on the first game.
  
• Lots of places to explore
  
• Lots of quests
  
• New enemies
  
• Lots of items to craft
  
• Camp system (very nice)
  
• The aliens!
  
• References to the first game

Cons:

• Quests on "raid" system it's a crap
  
• DOES NOT HAVE A CHAT SYSTEM (a simple texting, come on...), if you want to communicate with your friend you will have to open up the steam chat box. If you are not friends with the other players, you're ****.
  
• Craft system aren't so nice as the first game was
  
• Too boring to level up things and craft items, as you have to play quests over and over again, and then the quests start to bore you. This way collecting items aren't so natural as it was in the first game.

It's a very nice game to play with your friends. I recommend it (not in the full price tho)

You start out as a surviver, a surviver that has been given an opportunity to be helped by another, that has a good bit of knowledge of surviving in this horrible apocalyptic wasteland that once was a beautiful world we call Earth. This strange man gives you tasks to help him help you and along the way you will find loot such as weapons, gear, armor, food and items to craft with. Set up a camp to help you store your unused items that are only weighing you down to continue forth and gather more materials to help you survive against terrifying zombies that are hoarding areas and building all for themselves. Build the best weapon to create the most devastating hits, and clear out your path to get to you objective safely.

> Great wasteland/broken down villages and buildings
> Crafting your own items from looting killed zombies or just things laying around
> Play the story with a friend
> Free roaming is just as fun as the story
> Different weapons and armor stats increase or decrease
> Brutal devastating hits
> Break doors down to get inside houses
> Gives a cool old school retro aspect of the year your in
> Intense sistuations

++ Pros
+ Great graphics
+ Co-op
+ Free roam
+ Customization
+ Detailed story
+ Gore
+ Easy controls
+ Realistic
+ Suspenseful
+ Controller compatible

-- Cons
- User interface is uneasy to control (learn)
- Slow at times

You are a surviver that gets help from another surviver that knows a lot about how to survive and guides you through missions and quests. He teaches you how to get things done. Along the way while doing these tasks or even just free roaming, you may find loot. You can find loot just about everywhere. Find items to help you craft better weapons and armor and increase your stats to help you survive longer. You can also craft a camp to help you store away items that you don’t need right away. Items have weight and can weigh you down and make you slower. Being over encumbered and becoming slower will greatly increase your percentage of death. Zombies may seem slow but do not take them for advantage, they will come from all directions, around corners and in hordes. You must make common decisions whether or not you should just stay and fight them off so you can reach your objective or quickly run and hide it out or find a safer way. This is not, just your usual zombie game where you can just plow your way though 100‘s of pounds of rotting meat. This game is realistic when it come to violence and you must proceed with caution. Be very strategic about you go about killing these monsters if you do not have the right medical equipment on hand.

This is a great game and will be getting more to play with friends! The great graphics and story line are amazing and cant wait to live the zombie struggle in co-op mode! It makes it a hundred times better that I can craft my own camp that I can share with my friends and store away items that I don’t need that moment. The fact that its a free roam add to that great feeling of abandonment and the only way to survive is craft eat and drink! This is one of those good wasteland survival games but with a whole different view and great compatibility with the users.

I deffenetly recommend this game to others! This game is great to play with friends so you may destroy countless zombies together and achieve survival with your buddy! I rate this game 8.5 mainly because the menus are a little hard to control and not many options to optimize your game. Not a big fan of the birds eye view, which they did a fantastic job of doing by the way, but makes it a little...distracting at first. I did not find a lot of cons about this game. Overall it just mainly needs a user friendly interface to let the user get in and out of the menus easier and quicker.


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