TheDeath Stranding 2: On the Beachreviews are in, and once again,Kojima Productionshas knocked it out of the park. Reviews are still being shared, but it currently sits at 89 on Metacritic. For reference, the first game had a score of 82.
Amusingly, this isn’t really what Hideo Kojima wanted for the sequel. He has previously commented that internal reviews were more positive this time around, but that heactually wanted more controversy, not praise. As he puts it: “I’m not interested in making something that appeals to everyone.”
Sorry, Kojima, Everyone Really Likes Death Stranding 2
In our review, lead features editor Jade King gave the game a 4.5 out of 5. “Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is a hard game to quantify, with Kojima Productions eager to question our expectations and hurl curveballs at every turn,” she writes. “At its heart, it’s an experience about delivering packages and forging connections across a post-apocalyptic world, but play it for just a few hours, and you’ll see it’s so much more than that.”
Elsewhere, the game is scooping up a bunch of perfect scores. Jordan Middler fromVGCawarded Death Stranding 2: On the Beach a 5/5. “Death Stranding 2 feels like the product of everything that’s happened to Kojima since he left Konami, and it’s easily one of 2025’s very best,” he says. “With a stunning world, greatly expanded gameplay and player choice, and one of Kojima’s most compelling casts and narratives, it significantly improves on the original in virtually every way.”
We are seeing some lower scores coming in, as some critics feel that the sequel doesn’t quite reach the heights of the last game. “Hitting the end credits came with the painful realization that Death Stranding 2 can’t rekindle the novelty of its world and characters as effectively the second time around,” says Diego Nicolás Argüello from GameSpot, in a 7/10 review. “Ironically, it feels like a more ordinary experience, which makes sense as a sequel that isn’t looking to be as disruptive with new ideas as it was the last time”.
It’s been a long wait for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. The first game launched in 2019, so this sequel comes almost six years later. However, it’s understandable that there’s been a holdup, since the world was immediately hit with the Covid-19 pandemic after Death Stranding’s launch. Without the pandemic, Hideo Kojima believes thatwe would have been playing the sequel in 2023, so it certainly threw a spanner in the works.
For as well as this is performing, there might have been an even better version of the game that we never got to play. It had previously been revealed that changes were made becausesome sequences weretoowell-receivedwhen they tested them with players.
In any case, it won’t be long until you can play Death Stranding 2: On the Beach yourself. It will be available tomorrow if you’ve pre-ordered the digital deluxe edition, with a wider release on Thursday.
