It received generally favorable reviews, with praise directed at the combat, parkour system, and open world, but criticism for the story.

Dying Light 2 is an action role-playing survival horror video game featuring a zombie apocalyptic-themed open world.

Set 22 years after Dying Light, it stars a new protagonist named Aiden Caldwell (voiced by Jonah Scott), who has various parkour skills.

Players can perform actions such as climbing ledges, sliding, leaping off from edges, and wall running to quickly navigate the city.

[8] Players meet different factions and have to make decisions that fundamentally change the state of the game's world and how non-playable characters view Aiden.

By 2036, fifteen years after the Fall, much of the world's population has been wiped out, human civilization has been reduced to a handful of scattered settlements, with the fictional walled European city of Villedor being one of the largest.

The main protagonist Aiden Caldwell is a Pilgrim: an individual brave enough to make the dangerous trek between human settlements.

Aiden, a 20 year old survivor of the Fall and a Pilgrim—a brave traveler who delivers goods and information between settlements—has been making his way to the city of Villedor.

After being told by Spike how to contact a man named Dylan who knows the whereabouts of Vincent Waltz, a doctor who experimented on Aiden and his sister Mia when they were children to find a cure for THV, but were separated due to a terrible incident in the lab, Aiden contacts Dylan over the radio & meets with him.

Aiden eventually finds his way to the Bazaar, a large settlement in old Villedor run by a group of people called Survivors.

Hakon helps Aiden obtain a biomarker and tries to smuggle him into Villedor's Central loop, where the Fish Eye is located.

After making his way to an abandoned GRE tunnel, Aiden is met by Aitor, who may be either angry or friendly depending on the player's choices.

Waltz suddenly appears in the tunnel & confronts Aiden, demonstrating superhuman abilities as he steals the GRE key from him, and kills all of the Peacekeepers except for Aitor.

Lawan pulls Aiden from the debris, and he warns her that Waltz's experiments on him means he will inevitably fully succumb to the infection.

Not wanting to see Villedor destroyed, Williams tells Aiden to head for the X13 lab to confront Waltz and stop the missiles.

Aiden and Lawan enter the complex and are shocked to find that X13 was supposed to be a survival shelter for GRE officials, with massive stockpiles of food, water, and basic necessities.

Waltz refuses to abort the missile launches, as that would require shutting down X13, whose facilities are necessary to cure Mia, forcing Aiden to battle him.

[2] When creating the city, the team utilized an internal technology named CityBuilder, which can assemble different building parts like ledges and windows with minimal input from the level designers.

To make the world feel believable and authentic, the team took inspiration from real-world issues and political ideologies and had to drop gameplay ideas that were deemed too unrealistic.

Therefore, the team recruited Avellone as well as writers who worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a game widely praised for its writing and story.

[11] Zombies, instead of being the main enemy like in the last game, become a narrative device that pressurize other non-playable characters to induce interesting drama and themes.

[17] As part of the settlement, he received a seven-figure payout, and his accusers publicly retracted their statements, admitting they had misrepresented the situation.

[21] In May 2021, a digital event was held and a 7 December 2021 release date was revealed, alongside the game's title adding the subtitle of Stay Human.

[31] The Beast has quickly become the most-wishlisted game in the Dying Light franchise, surpassing one million wishlists just ten weeks after its announcement.

[32] Techland will be offering The Beast at no extra cost to current owners of the Dying Light 2 Ultimate Edition, delivering a full standalone instead of the planned second story downloadable content.

[53] While criticizing the narrative's exposition-heavy dialogue, Polygon enjoyed the melee combat, saying that "With a smartly balanced fatigue meter governing attacks and movements, Dying Light 2 makes me think about, and use, all the tactics available to me, especially in boss and sub-boss fights".

[55] Rock Paper Shotgun felt the changes to nighttime made it less dangerous and more routine "Come night, you simply avoid the horde by sticking to the rooftops... Interiors are barebones stealth sections, with all too obvious routes to sneak by sleepers...

[62] The PlayStation 4 version of Dying Light 2 was the second bestselling retail game during its first week of release in Japan, with 24,160 physical copies being sold.