Second Sun, a Dungeon-Crawler with Guns, Is Someone Else's Comfort Game

... but not mine. I found it kind of frustrating, tbh.

It’s crazy how close this is to being a game I would love. A huge open world, scavenging for craftables, an arms dealer’s amount of weapons to choose from—yet I’ve played through this game not once, but twice… and can confirm, this game does too many things wrong for me to feel alright recommending it.

The short of things is this—Second Sun has you playing as a member of a magical military squad that uses modernish weapons in a place that looks more like Earth circa 1500AD. You’ll be assigned various quests that have you venturing across a sprawling map, meeting the locals… and of course, lots of ripping and tearing, Sunny Jim. The meat and potatoes is that you want to get stronger between trips down into the dungeons where spawn rates are high and the chance of getting sandwiched between enemies is real.

Here’s the catch: If you go into this expecting it to be a polished master piece, you’ll be sorely let down. Crushed, even. However if you understand that the game isn’t ever going to reward you in any meaningful way (albeit with the story, the enemies, the repetitive weaponry) and you don’t think you’ll mind at all, then you might enjoy your time with Second Sun. I’d describe this as being someone’s comfort game. Just not mine.

What really rubs me the wrong way with this game is just how meaningless the upgrades feel. Sure, it’s got the ‘skin’ of a looter shooter—but with how linear the upgrade curve is between enemies, weapons and the gear you’ll be carrying, maintaining your inventory amount to little more than a song and dance inside a menu than any real customization extravaganza.

Also—despite screenshots making this look like a big world with lots of sidequests, the world is so empty and meaningless. It’s really just a hub for useless crafting material. Sidequests are like, four lines from an NPC then a fetch quest, else they’re a boring, ‘look inside the yellow circle and click anything shiny’.

The reason I played this game twice (and actually, wrote this review twice) is because while writing, I just started to wonder if it was my fault. If playing this game on normal meant my own, legacy skills with a mouse and keyboard carried me to victory and I chose to overlook the games upgrades mechanics. So last night, I ran through the game again on the Veteran difficulty (it’s a 5hr experience) and surprise surprise—if normal mode means you can take 8 hits from the deathclaw looking creatures before you die, Veteran mode means you can take 5 hits. I didn’t notice a single thing difference outside of that.

I tried some of the equipment mods but truth be told, I never felt like I needed them in the first place—enemies have such low health pools that adding poison to a gun felt useless. More Souls was about the only thing I carried about when reading bonuses, but even now I’m not sure if I was caring about the right thing. Souls might be HP refills when you kill enemies, but quite frankly topping off your health is never an issue if you prioritize not getting hit.

I thought this game might have been like some solo devs first big project and I was shitting all over it. Then I researched Grey Wolf Entertainment and they’re an indie studio from Portugal that’s been around for atleast 10 years. Second Sun is their latest release but looking at their socials—their bio talks about the two games they release Pre-Covid, completely excluding this one.

Okay—I think I’m ready to just move on to a different game. I bought this for $10 on sale, so if despite my criticisms you’re still interested in trying this out, give it a go. I’ve got a video of me clearing out one of the dungeons linked below!