Injustice™ 2 Review Summary

Satisfying combat, top-tier graphics, and an entertaining story are let down by broken multiplayer, frequent crashes, and severe performance issues.

Combat is satisfying and deep: Multiple reviews highlight the combat as fun, satisfying, and playable with more content than the first generation. The controls are tight, combos work, and meter burns add depth, making it a solid core fighting experience without team-ups.

Graphics and presentation are top-tier: The game is praised for its phenomenal gameplay, story, and graphics. Good effects, animations, sound, music, and voice acting contribute to a top-tier presentation with beautiful graphics and top-tier animations.

Story is entertaining and good: The story is consistently praised as quite nice, entertaining, super cool, excellent, and good. It is a standout feature that players enjoy.

Characters are fun and iconic: Characters are described as fun, badass, and appealing, with a stacked roster of iconic DC characters. Female characters are also noted as appealing.

Single player offers good value: The single-player campaign is considered worth it at the price point or sale price, and is described as fun. This indicates good value for solo players.

Broken multiplayer experience: Multiplayer is severely broken with constant desync errors, disconnections, and incompatibility with Windows 11. This makes online play nearly impossible.

Frequent random crashes: The game crashes frequently and randomly, making it unplayable for many users. This is a high-priority issue due to its frequency and severity.

Worse than MK11: Players compare this game unfavorably to Mortal Kombat 11, saying it is worse. This suggests a decline in quality.

Intrusive Denuvo DRM: Denuvo DRM is intrusive, causes performance issues, and is still present after 8 years. This frustrates players who expect it to be removed.

Security certificate popup: A persistent security certificate expired popup annoys players. This is a technical issue that needs fixing.

Fighting mechanics and comparisons: The game is described as a fighting game similar to Mortal Kombat, Tekken, KOF, and Street Fighter, with mechanics like blocking, pre-input combos, and fast-paced combat. However, it lacks hit-confirm and requires frame-perfect blocks, making it feel like a button masher.

AI difficulty and balance issues: The AI is aggressive and spams attacks, with difficulty balancing issues even on normal difficulty. Bosses, including the final boss, are particularly challenging, and there are character balance disparities and power scaling problems.

Gear and loot box system: The game features a gear system with cosmetic loadouts and loot boxes for gear attributes and costumes. Premium skins are available, but the Legendary Edition does not include all skins, leading to a grind for equipment.

Story and multiverse modes: There is a story mode and a Legendary Multiverse mode, allowing players to replay chapters with different characters.

Online multiplayer with rollback: The game includes an online multiplayer mode with rollback netcode, which is a positive feature for competitive play.

Severe performance and stuttering: Multiple players report severe performance issues including lag, stuttering, and low FPS, making the game unplayable even on high-end hardware like Ryzen 5600 and RTX 4060.

Frequent and random crashes: The game crashes frequently during startup, level selection, randomly, and even during AI matches, rendering it unplayable for many users.

Online and server issues: Online features suffer from server connectivity issues, desync, hit-or-miss netcode, login problems, and security certificate errors.

Alt-tab and resolution problems: Alt-tabbing causes crashes or system freezes, and resolution issues force players to use borderless windowed mode.

Audio issues and sync problems: Audio issues include sound driver problems on launch, audio sync issues, and general audio being broken.

Strongly not recommended: Many players strongly advise against purchasing the game, citing it as a waste of money and time. They express regret and recommend avoiding it entirely.

Technical issues abound: The game has various technical problems including desync on Windows 11, certificate issues, inconsistent ultrawide support, and general optimization issues. Players recommend testing immediately for refund.

For fighting game fans only: The game is primarily recommended for fighting game enthusiasts or those who enjoy a challenge. Casual players or non-fighting game fans may not enjoy it.

Only worth on sale: Some players suggest the game is only worth buying at a heavy discount or in a bundle. They feel the full price is not justified.

Story and graphics praised: A minority of players recommend the game for its story, graphics, or single-player content, especially at a discount. It may appeal to fans of the first game.

Community fair range: $5.00 - $15.00.

Story completion: 5.5h.

Injustice 2 offers immediate fun through its story mode and casual play with friends, but many players experience initial friction from its complex mechanics and gear grind, after which the game becomes highly addictive and enjoyable.

Friction: daunting number of mechanics and learning curve; gear grind and loot box system that feels tedious; AI cheating on higher difficulties; multiplayer connectivity issues and dead player base on PC; lack of local multiplayer functionality (bugged).

Unlock drivers: completing the in-depth tutorial; practicing and learning character moves; playing with friends in local or casual matches; engaging with the story mode.

Story-Driven DC Enthusiast: Plays through story mode, may dabble in single-player multiverse, avoids competitive multiplayer. Motivation: Experiencing the narrative and DC universe. Stance: sale.

Competitive Purist: Practices combos, plays ranked, seeks balanced matches, avoids gear-dependent modes. Motivation: Mastering mechanics and competing on equal footing. Stance: no buy.

Casual Customizer / Grinder: Grinds multiverse mode, farms gear, levels characters, may use AI farming to reduce grind. Motivation: Progression, customization, and completion. Stance: sale.

Lower VRAM hardware reports severe optimization issues, while higher VRAM hardware experiences only minor lag in specific scenes.

Windows <8GB VRAM: negative. Users report very poor optimization despite recommending the game.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: positive. Users report minor lag in cutscenes and super moves, but overall performance is good.

Steam Deck: Injustice 2 on Steam Deck suffers from frequent crashes, black screen issues (especially at high resolutions), and Denuvo-related performance problems. Sound may be missing, and users often need to try different Proton versions. While some report it runs well, the prevalence of stability bugs pushes the experience into the 'Broken' category.

Linux and Proton: The game appears to work well on Steam Deck for at least one user, but another user encountered issues requiring Proton version switching and file verification. This suggests minor tweaks may be needed for some Linux/Proton setups, but the game is generally playable.

Monetization: The game is a full-price title that additionally implements pay-to-win gear mechanics, real-money lootboxes (Mother Boxes), premium currency obfuscation, and aggressive DLC marketing. Multiple reviews confirm that spending real money provides direct gameplay advantages, placing it in the predatory monetization category.

External guides: The primary user complaints are about technical bugs and crashes, which align with TIER 4 (The Tourist) – Spatial Data Dependency. Users need external data to fix game-breaking issues like crashes on alt-tab, audio failures, and graphics card recognition problems. No evidence of farming, inventory, or learning-related dependencies was found.