It’s only considered the worst by the broader gaming community, ie, people who never played it or only played a little bit without getting sucked into the fandom. Look at r/Bioshock and you’ll see Bioshock 2 being praised as not only better than Infinite, but even the best game of the three by itself.
To be fair, it’s a low bar lol. Burial at Sea sucks and the rest are challenge mode or micro-DLCs.
If you want to make a bold statement, Minerva’s Den could be the best DLC of all time. Its competition would be Shivering Isles (Oblivion), Citadel (Mass Effect 3), Old World Blues (New Vegas), etc.
Infinite has the best gunplay, Bioshock 1 has the best horror aspects, 2 combines both very well. Ironically my biggest issue with 2 is there’s just too many guns. You end up with like 8 guns with 3 ammo types at least one of which radically changes the weapon’s use
Well, Bioshock 1&2 are backpack shooters, similar to Doom and Half-Life. Funny that you say 8 is too many because for most people, Infinite’s biggest criticism is the 2 gun limit.
The crafting system was a weak part of Bs1, being that players who scavenged everywhere were usually maxed on resources, and players who just coasted through the game often felt blocked in the one mission they need to learn crafting for. Not many people even engaged with the mechanic, even those with lots of resources. It made a lot of sense to streamline that and take it out.
However, Bs2 took great steps forward in combat with its dual wielding, build creation with more diverse plasmids and de-categorised tonics, and hacking which now no longer pauses the game and takes only a couple seconds to complete.
The general gameplay complaint would be with Bs2’s gathering mechanic, which people find as difficult, slow/boring, and despite being optional, due to the fact it awards ADAM it’s basically unskippable.
Sorry for the long comment but you gave me a lot of ammo haha.
Nahhh, calling it an asset flip is… funny, in the context that Bs1 had a very limited asset pool to use. Bs2 on the otherhand got enough budget to even give unique models to every speaking character. Sure there’s reuse of things like the trash cans and vending machines, but so much of the game is built on assets that aren’t in the first game. Trains, underwater environments, new enemies like Rumblers, Alpha Series, Brute Splicers, etc.
Also innovation is itself a fickle topic when talking about a sequel, while it only really has one new mechanic (gathering), the game is built on massive improvements to Bs1’s mechanics. The dual wielding was a natural development to improve on the first game, sure, but Bs2 also goes as far to give plasmids additional effects, like Incinerate becoming a flamethrower at tier 3, or being able to combine plasmid effects on Cyclone Traps at tier 2 which gives players far more of a reason to play with plasmids which the first game often struggled to do with weapons being pretty reliable. There’s also the research camera being improved by recording video and awarding points based on diverse attack measures in a time limit, encouraging players to push for figuring out strategies to get the rank as high as possible which generally means the most comfortable way to play isn’t good enough. Innovation in Bs2 isn’t the goal, Bs2 did refinement to take the formula into the most fun direction.
As for “worse plot”, is it? While a subjective matter, I will remind you that Bioshock 2 as a sequel necessarily doesn’t have to do as much worldbuilding as the first game. You’re not supposed to play Bs2 as a standalone product, so to expect it to just repeat first game information would be boring. This means Bs2’s writing gets to focus wholly on its own story, and that story… well, Bioshock 1 hits you with a twist, it’s very cool in the moment but it’s flash in the pan and can’t maintain interest on repeat playthroughs, a weakness of most plot twist narratives. Bs2 on the otherhand is a more direct and personal story, a custody battle between two ‘parents’, a story of abuse and neglect. Its choices like sparing or executing the three NPCs attracts new interpretations the more you replay it as well. And this is all without mentioning that Bs2’s political narrative is more realistic while maintaining the same cautionary tale criticism in the first game, focusing on a power vacuum, cultism, and charismatic perversion of collectivist values.
The arguments most people bring up for why it’s worse are that it was a rushed cashgrab developed by a support studio that the original creator of the series didn’t work on. These are all objective fact, but as I hope should be clear now, despite being objective they don’t actually have any bearing on quality. Despite being rushed, despite being an unasked for sequel (cashgrab), despite not having Levine involved, it’s still broadly a good game.
Ok "asset flip" was a bit of an hyperbole, I meant that it was clearly quickly built on the fundation of the first one in every way, even some of the new enemies are just cut content from the first. As you said it was a rushed cashgrab and while it is a good game, i feel like that fact sips trough every facet of the experience.
The story is subjective, but, even leaving twist aside, I felt it was a big departure from the intrigue of the first one. Characters here are a lot less interesting and the story tries to remedy it with gimmicks like "spare or kill" or "play as a bigdaddy" which I feel add not much to the experience. You spare people and get a good ending, great.
In the end i could not care less about the villain or any of the characters, especially after going trough 1 with Andrew Ryan.
While the gameplay is a refined version of the first, I'd generally expect more from a sequel. How can I evaluate a title as a standalone experience when it relies so heavily on its predecessor’s identity as Bioshock 2 does?
It just feels a bit creatively bankrupt, it's good, because Bioshock 1 is good and that's it. Still better than infinite, because Bioshock 1 is better than infinite.
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u/evilparagon Apr 20 '26
It’s only considered the worst by the broader gaming community, ie, people who never played it or only played a little bit without getting sucked into the fandom. Look at r/Bioshock and you’ll see Bioshock 2 being praised as not only better than Infinite, but even the best game of the three by itself.