YMMV / The Surge 2

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack for this game is a marked improvement over the previous entry, feeling a lot more action-packed and memorable. Some standout examples include Warden Garcia's theme, with its intro setting up immense levels of hype, and Little Johnny's theme, fitting the idea of a towering multi-limbed metal monster trying to crush you flat while in a dilapidated harbor.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The GAIA Robots. Huge healthpool, incredibly damaging moves (including a continuous laser that applies Fire status), not easily staggered and almost always spawn with a shield unless they're in a nanite infested area that needs a charge attack to be broken. The only saving grace is that they're relatively easy to parry but missing just one strike can end up putting you in a world of hurt.
  • Bloodhounds return from the first game - now as an A.I.D. Warhound version they're even more dangerous due to being outfitted with a grenade launcher on top of their regular, dangerous moveset.
  • Children of the Spark cultists when they activate their Blue Sparkle implants. They go from dangerous to practically unstoppable and able to kill even a heavily-armored player in a couple of hits.
  • The Hunters in Gideon's Rock also count. Like the Children of the Spark, they have a special ability - turning invisible to strike when you're not paying attention. It can get panic-inducing when you're facing up to three, one of them disappears, then reappears to backstab you while you're occupied.
  • On The Great Wall, Technogenesis enemies. There's only a few of them, but they hit incredibly hard, can freeze you in place with a long-ranged nano trap, and split in two at half health, and will even do this while you're in the middle of a finisher. They hit so hard that the leftover damage from their attacks can still kill you even with the Emergency Reserve Injection, which normally protects you from instant death.
• Game-Breaker:
  • With the right setup, the drone can dish out ridiculous amounts of damage and its only limiter (Omni-cell reserves) can be negated by using armor sets that grant ammo on gaining a battery charge. This is even more reinforced because drone damage actually scales with Battery Efficiency anyways, plus the existence of an implant that grants energy on drone kills. Oh yeah and nothing's stopping you from attacking while the drone is doing its thing too.
  • With an implant and ability build centered around rapidly generating energy, and certain implants that give health as you regain energy or even prevent you from dying at the cost of energy, and coupled with the heaviest armor sets in the game, you can largely disregard any subtlety or evasion or blocking mechanics and just charge right into enemy groups with charged attacks, relying on your absurd energy generation to keep you alive.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The Surge 2 is far more forgiving than the original game. Basic enemies no longer kill you in two hits. Enemy placements lean less on gank squads in tight spaces. Your healing-resource is replenished by your damage-output. Your stats are increased by leveling alone which frees up your implants for more versatility. Implants themselves can be freely swapped at any time instead of being forced to change them at a Medbay. Weapon proficiency has been scrapped which means you can pick up any new weapon without penalty. Shortcuts are plentiful and parrying is more user-friendly. All of the above likely has to do with how unforgiving the original game was, as one of the biggest complaints about it was that you couldn't go more than a few steps between encounters without being mobbed to death by as little as 2 enemies, and that upgrades almost felt as if they didn't matter at all.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: On the other hand, enemies in this game come in much larger numbers and are even more aggressive. They often employ a wide range of long-range attacks, and many come with shields that demand a risky charged attack to break, but the skill ceiling drop has generally been seen as a huge improvement.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The game is almost universally agreed to be a huge improvement over its predecessor, mostly thanks to the additions to the combat system giving it more depth, varied environments, greater degree of player customization, and better balanced difficulty overall. That you don't essentially get beaten down in a hit or 2 by anything you come across regardless of what upgrades you have is a big game-changer in and of itself.
• That One Boss:
  • The Delver is when the Difficulty Spike kicks in proper, as beforehand, the game was relatively merciful and challenging but fair. But the Delver makes every other boss look like a pansy. There's the fact that it has three health bars which you have to steadily break down, all while evading its attacks. Its first phase is fairly manageable, with slow swipes, though it can be surprising when it leaps at you from the ground. Then, once you break its armor, it enters a second phase where it decides to pull out all the stops. It has a dash attack with a confusing tell that can shred your health, and it's difficult to brace and dodge in time. Plus with its red-armored forearms you'll be incentivized to use charge attacks... on a boss that's fast and hits like a truck. And if you haven't been paying attention to your stamina, you'll likely not dodge in time when you could have. All in all, this boss is a nightmare to fight, and as it's a mandatory story boss, there's no way to skip it. The only surefire ways to defeat it is to master the finicky parry system or just go for a build that has a lot of health and battery efficiency so that you can heal through the hits you inevitably take.
  • Metal Armor also counts as this. While it has only two phases compared to the Delver's three, it's still a hectic pain to deal with. The Armor itself can only take melee hits to its legs, and you have to use your drone to get its arms. All while it happily sprays fire, bullets, and lasers in your general direction, and sometimes shoots around its feet and/or sprays napalm in its vicinity to try and burn you down. And even when you empty its health, it's not over, Major General Ezra Shields leaps out to do battle with you personally. He's a Lightning Bruiser, able to rush at you and keep up the pace with nary a moment of rest, and also hit you like a freight train despite only having a copy of the very first melee weapons you get at the start of the game. Not to mention the Metal Armor is still active and occasionally cuts in with gatling gun bursts or gouts of flame. All in all, this boss is very likely to induce a Rage Quit.