Dying Light: The Beast Review – Kyle Crane's return amidst vengeance, metamorphosis, and gameplay that recaptures the pathos of the first chapter

There always comes a moment when a saga chooses to confront its ghosts, and for Dying Light that moment coincides with the return of Kyle Crane. No longer just the agent sent to Harran, but a creature who, after the events of The Following, has transcended the boundaries of his own nature: something more than a Volatile, capable of maintaining lucidity and humanity even when fury takes hold of him. This is how we find him in The Beast, imprisoned in the hands of the Baron, a symbol of power that continues to bend mutations and pain to transform them into weapons.

This premise is not just a narrative pretext, but a clear message to the player: The Beast wants to pick up the threads left hanging, transforming the protagonist's fragility into a new starting point. If on one hand Crane carries the weight of his transformations, on the other he becomes a mirror of the series itself, which chooses to embrace its own legacy without giving up reinventing itself. It's a difficult balance, because continuity with the past must coexist with the need to surprise those who have already experienced Harran and its endless nights.

Techland decided not to veer into classic survival horror territory: no gothic, no Resident Evil Village-style jump scares. The heart of The Beast is elsewhere, in fast-paced, muscular action, built to convey the constant feeling of a world that is hostile to you and forces you to react with brutality. A philosophy that brings it closer to Dead Island 2 in terms of frenzy, while differing in tone: where the Californian adventure chooses irony and lightness, here everything is darker, more serious, more oriented towards a conflict that speaks of revenge and survival.

A return that is not nostalgia, but an act of rupture and relaunch. But will it really be the right path to bring Dying Light back into the spotlight?

The Plot of Dying Light: The Beast: A Vengeance that Slips Between Linearity and Forgettable Supporting Characters

The narrative of Dying Light: The Beast moves along a linear and unbranching path, leading you to follow Kyle Crane in his revenge against the Baron, responsible for years of experiments and suffering. Your experience will be punctuated by rather simple objectives — finding allies, striking enemy forces, advancing to the final confrontation — without moral choices or narrative forks that could alter the course of the story. This setup ensures consistency in pace, but at the same time reduces the depth of the narrative, making the entire plot feel like a partially wasted opportunity compared to the potential of the character and context.

Crane experiences his condition more as a curse than a gift: initially he tries to resist the temptation to give in to fury, but it is precisely this ability that makes him the Baron's target, who wants to bend his power to transform him into a weapon. It's surprising that the other supporting characters don't perceive him as a monster, but rather as a resource, yet even they don't truly stand out. Many secondary characters, despite having a functional role in the plot, do not present a layered or memorable background, appearing flat and uninspired, far from the more interesting faces seen in the first Dying Light.

The most obvious flaw concerns the Baron himself: conceived as the central antagonist, he appears caricatured and lacking charisma. He is a villain reminiscent of figures like Albert Wesker in the early Resident Evil games, or some one-dimensional villains from Far Cry, characterized more by an over-the-top attitude than by genuine psychological motivations. The intention is clear — to build a hated enemy — but it lacks the complexity that would have made the conflict truly memorable.

On the secondary activities front, however, the situation improves: the optional missions fit well into the context, allowing you to delve deeper into Castor Woods and its community, though without becoming memorable narrative arcs. Your main campaign, combined with some of the secondary quests, can last around 20 hours on normal difficulty: an honest longevity, but one that confirms the choice to focus more on the solidity of linearity than on the richness of branching.

The comparison with the first Dying Light is inevitable: if back then the pace was marked by growing tension and supporting characters who, despite lacking great complexity, managed to leave a mark (think of figures like Rais in the first chapter), here we find a more rigid narrative structure, devoid of plot twists capable of truly surprising. A decision that, while maintaining coherence and fluidity, will leave you with an inevitable question: how much could The Beast have gained if it had dared more with its story?

Dying Light: The Beast: When Gameplay Redefines the Boundary Between Survival and Brutality

In Dying Light: The Beast, parkour is not just a trademark, but the true cornerstone of the experience. The pre-launch patch refined animations and fluidity, restoring a sense of continuity that was missing in early builds: faster climbs, more reactive jumps, a constant flow that transforms every rooftop, ledge, and balcony into an escape opportunity. It's not an optional choice: survival depends on moving vertically, as clearly demonstrated by the central city of Castor Woods, with the town hall becoming the first true hub after the initial monastery. Here, streets are often traps, infested with infected, while from above the player builds alternative paths that make exploration safer and more efficient. It's a return to origins that evokes the spirit of the first chapter, but with greater awareness: Techland wants parkour to be not only spectacular, but indispensable.

Combat manages to maintain its own identity, especially in melee phases. Striking with a two-handed weapon provides an immediate sense of physicality, with tangible differences between a heavy hammer and a sharp blade. The damage system allows targeting limbs and torso, amplifying the feeling of control and strategy. Elemental effects, scaled down from the past, no longer activate easily and become an integral part of a system based on critical or charged hits: a way to make gameplay more balanced and avoid the abuse of altered statuses. Firearms, on the other hand, find a targeted role: used sparingly in daily exploration, they become valuable tools against bosses, when the weight of accumulated ammunition can truly turn a fight around. It's an intelligent management that rewards those who can plan rather than waste.

The Beast Mode represents a double-edged sword. In the early hours, it appears as a lifeline, to be activated only in desperation, when the bar charges and allows Crane to transform into an unstoppable fury. But it's only by progressing that the transformation takes on strategic weight: talents that extend duration, allow healing, or even grant transformation at will give the player the feeling of truly embodying a hybrid between man and monster. The risk is that at medium-low difficulty this simplifies encounters too much, but the philosophy remains consistent: The Beast pushes you to manage Crane's rage as a resource, to be carefully rationed and mastered.

Night once again becomes the most dangerous terrain, bringing the franchise back to the oppressive atmospheres of its progenitor. Darkness is not just an aesthetic change, but a threat multiplier: Volatiles pursue with more aggressive and unpredictable paths, while the density of encounters increases the feeling of precariousness. The introduction of Chimeras, failed experiments of the Baron, brings variety in the form of unique boss fights. However, they do not become dynamic presences in the open world, as was the case with some special mutants in the early chapters: this makes them memorable as events, but reduces the unpredictability of exploration. It's a choice that works halfway: it provides intense moments, but leaves the regret of not being able to encounter them freely in the game world.

Progression is balanced and rewarding: every acquired ability provides a sense of growth consistent with Crane's transformation. There are no revolutionary perks that radically change the way you play, but the path remains balanced, without slow peaks or artificial accelerations. At low difficulty, the experience becomes almost permissive, while at higher levels every mistake is costly: the difference is felt especially in prolonged encounters, where careful resource management and mastery of parkour become fundamental.

The Graphics of Castor Woods in Dying Light: The Beast, Between Successful Suggestions and Inevitable Limitations

From a visual standpoint, Dying Light: The Beast manages to build a credible and cohesive environment, even if not vast. The contained size of Castor Woods almost becomes a virtue: exploring by jeep makes traversal more dynamic, avoiding the feeling of sluggishness that would be felt on foot over long distances. It's not an immense open world, but an environment that finds its strength precisely in its scale, capable of remaining legible and functional.

Panoramas and vistas are not lacking, especially when the eye rests on the urban areas: rooftops, squares, and alleys showcase the best of the art direction, more effective than the open areas which, while evoking the Alps or Switzerland as inspiration, fail to convey the same impact. It must be said that truly diverse biomes are not present: the geographical variety is less pronounced than promised, and this limits the perception of being in a truly heterogeneous territory.

In terms of enemy design, the work is solid but not revolutionary: the Volatiles and Chimeras are convincing without, however, becoming memorable icons of the genre. Animations, on the other hand, are well integrated: parkour flows naturally, hits during combat convey weight, and dismemberment sequences have a brutality that reinforces the physicality of the experience. The light/dark effect represents one of the most successful points: the transition from day to night radically changes the perception of the environment and helps create that atmosphere of oppression that remains a hallmark of the series.

On the technical front, the results are positive but with some limitations. On a laptop with an RTX 3060, the title runs well at medium/high settings with a stable 60 fps framerate, while on an ultrawide 2K screen with an RTX 4060 Ti, the performance is excellent at high quality, but activating ray tracing drastically reduces performance, compromising fluidity. The pre-launch patch did not introduce significant changes in terms of lighting or stability, indicating that the main work had already been done during development. Overall, there are no less polished areas or performance issues that would detract from the experience.

The graphics of The Beast are therefore consistent with the project's ambitions: it does not aim to revolutionize the genre with unprecedented artistic solutions, but offers a solid and atmospheric rendition, capable of supporting the narrative and gameplay without betraying its promises.