DLCState of Decay 2 Two-Disc SoundtrackLoading store offers
State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition
State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition makes scavenging and base-building part of a survival story shaped by your recruitment choices. At ≈ $3.42 from 
GAMIVO, you can take on the zombie threat solo or in co-op, depending on whether you want to manage a community alone or with friends. If you are not ready to jump in, the next announced Steam sale window, Dec 17, 2026 – Jan 4, 2027, is another possible opportunity, though participation and discounts are not guaranteed. At $29.99 on Steam, you can compare the offer at GAMIVO directly with Steam's current price.
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $0.002023-08Current Low Across Stores~ $25.99Steam
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
DLC
01About State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition
In an open world after the zombie apocalypse, gather survivors, scavenge for supplies, and build a community. Choose recruits, a place to settle, how to develop your base, and how to deal with other groups. On Steam PC, 83% of player reviews are positive across 59,463 reviews.
Credits
Developer
Undead Labs
Publisher
Xbox Game Studios
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$0.002023-08-12 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 5 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish-Latin America | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22
02Before you buy
Play modes
The Steam PC version offers single-player, co-op, and multiplayer. The description says you can visit friends' communities and help them.
Controls
Full controller support is listed. Keyboard-and-mouse input and most controller buttons can be remapped.
Language
English full audio is listed, along with interface support for English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, and Simplified Chinese.
03Frequently asked questions
What do you do in the game?
Recruit survivors, scavenge for supplies, choose where your community settles, and build up its base in a post-apocalyptic open world.
How do communities differ?
Survivors have distinct skills and traits, while recruitment choices and decisions shape the challenges you face.
What other modes are included?
The description mentions a full narrative campaign and a four-player siege-defense mode.
7.0
Overall Score
Graphics5
Audio6.5
Gameplay8
Story6.5
Content7
“A great fit for players who love nurturing a settlement over time; the scavenge-build-permadeath loop runs deep, but do not expect a strong story or sharp action feel.”
Our Verdict
Is State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition worth dozens of hours? Yes, provided you are buying it for the right reasons. Not for a powerful story, and not for a sharp, satisfying action feel. You have to accept that its center of gravity has always rested on the single question of how the community keeps living: how resources get split, how people get rotated, when to take a risk, and when to pull back. If you have an appetite for that, the game will steal your time with alarming ease.
What makes it special
Its rarest quality is the way it twists scavenging, building, risk, and permanent loss into one taut rope. In a lot of games, the survival systems are merely seasoning. Here they are not. They are the main course. That is precisely why its appeal is so selective. Some players will feel they are doing repetitive labor, while others will be completely hooked on the "just one more run and then home" rhythm. Both reactions are entirely reasonable, and which camp you land in says more about your taste than about the game's quality.
The strong Steam standing, with a positive rating around 83 percent across tens of thousands of recommendations, reflects a loyal and sticky community that has stuck with it despite the rough edges. That is a meaningful signal. People do not log those hours for a game they merely tolerate; they log them because the loop has its hooks in them. And that loyalty is durable in a way that launch-window enthusiasm rarely is; the community that remains years later is one that has internalized exactly what the game is and decided it is worth returning to, rough edges and all.
The weight of its years
Seen today, the marks of five-plus years on the market are very visible. The visuals are no advantage, repetitive missions and bugs cost it some crispness, and the main narrative is nowhere near top-tier. None of that is hidden, and an honest recommendation has to put it on the table. This is not a showcase of modern production values, and it does not pretend to be.
And yet the skeleton of its apocalyptic community simulation still has a flavor that its peers find hard to replicate. Set against the quick thrills of a cooperative shooter and the high-pressure decision-making of a tactical squad game, it stands in the middle ground: not as exhilarating, not as precise, but carrying an extra layer of "this is the home of my group of survivors." That sense of stewardship is the thing competitors keep failing to bottle. Plenty of survival games can simulate scarcity, and plenty of cooperative games can manufacture a tense escape, but very few make you feel responsible for a specific set of named people whose loss is permanent and whose continuity is yours to protect. That emotional through-line is the load-bearing wall of the whole design, and it is why the game outlives its technical shortcomings in the memory.
How to approach it
So do not treat it as a roller-coaster of back-to-back peaks. Treat it as a long act of survival. It rewards settling in, building a history with a handful of imperfect people, and caring about whether they make it through the night. Played that way, with friends along for the ride, the repetition softens and the continuity becomes the point. Approached as a campaign to clear, it will tire you out; approached as a place to live, it holds up far longer than its age would suggest.
The verdict, then, is conditional in the most honest sense. This is not a game that argues for itself in a trailer or a screenshot, and it will lose a side-by-side comparison on almost every surface metric: it looks plainer than its rivals, its action is less satisfying, and its story is the least of its parts. What it offers instead is depth of attachment, a slow accumulation of stakes that no single mechanic carries but that the whole system produces. If that is the experience you are after, few games deliver it as completely, and the Juggernaut Edition is the most complete and convenient way to have it. If it is not, no amount of patient settling will convert you, and that is fine. The game knows exactly what it is, has known for years, and has built a loyal following precisely by not trying to be anything else. Buy in for the right reasons and it will reward you with one of the more quietly absorbing survival experiences on the platform.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
Why are my survivors always pissed off? If you're hungry go find your own food. I'm not your Daddy.Show moreShow less
1.8 hours at review529 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
Got like 500h+ on Epic but switched to Steam. This Game is by far the best zombie survival game out there i've played and i looked around a lot for those games. This Game is the one wich comes closest to a "Walking Dead" feeling. It only got one big Con in my Opinion. "Multiplayer" if u can even call it Multiplayer extremly sucks. Others can only join you and help you with a mission like a npc, they can't collect anything or change weapons or anything else and they need to use their own resources. This Game got insane potential for a great Multiplayer where u can build a base and collect stuff in a challenging Zombie Envoironment with your Friends it would make the Game 100 times better and more fun. I don't understand why it was never implemented. Even tough i love this Game i will give a thumbs down so people who read "Multiplayer" can read my Review so they won't get missleaded.Show moreShow less
13.2 hours at review1,392 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
It's a flawed game, and while I enjoy it I can't help but see the areas in which it fell short of its forebear. This game isn't going to convert anyone; the same people who liked/hated State of Decay 1 will like/hate its sequel. They took a lot of good ideas from the community, but can't escape a general bugginess and overall janky feeling that its systems give. BREAKDOWN: Base Management- Fantastic. Far more detailed than the prequel, and with a noise system to give tactical weight to large populations and construction-rushing. Outposts no longer blow up hordes, but they give personalized bonuses depending on type (power stations drain fuel to give your base power more efficiently than generators, houses give extra beds, restaurants/doctor's offices give food/meds per day, etc). Survivor Management- Phenomenal. Specializations can be taken for every skill- including non-combat ones like construction- and are more interesting than before. Survivors also give individual pluses and minuses to morale, giving you a reason to exile people. You also can't just indefinitely push off sleep anymore. Scavenging- Improved. Buildings no longer runneth over with rucksacks, giving a better feeling of scarcity and desperation. The items you find tend to be more varied, and weapons you find are broken down by stats with very few just being straight upgrades of each other. Zombies- Faster, although still never faster than player sprint speed. This makes them an actual threat again. Plague zombies have also been added, suddenly adding an ACTUAL threat of survivors being zombified, that can nonetheless be avoided if players are lucky or planned ahead (and move quickly). Bloaters are more insidious, Screamers have just a fraction more time to be interrupted while also acting a little bit like sentries to throw spanners into your stealth runs, and armored zeds feel less game-y to fight. Ferals and Juggernauts have been changed for the worse, though, with both now feeling like overlong healthbars that cheese game systems to purposely screw you about. Combat- Pared down. Stealth feels more tactical (takedowns are a little longer, making them more easily interrupted by nearby zeds without feeling too long), but combat took a massive hit with the removal of the shove/kick button. For non-heavy weapons, you mostly just hack, slash, dodge, and execute. For heavy weapons, you realize you can't predict whether a swing will move you forward or backward, realize your range is inexcusably short for that windup time, regret specializing in powerhouse to do it, and go back to other weapons. Attacking also seems scripted, for lack of a better word. Your survivor gets into range to do the attack, then goes through the entire pre-swing checklist as though they had been caught by surprise, like an amateur actor unsubtly following stage directions. This frequently gets me hit by zombies, which wouldn't be such a big deal except for the plague zombies that infect you more and more with every hit, suddenly shifting the blood plague from "This is my fault, I shouldn't have gotten near them" to "I wish the game hadn't screwed me." Difficulty- Much improved. You have three options from normal to nightmare, and even the normal difficulty proves intense once the tutorial period's grace has worn off. It does make the death spiral infuriatingly difficult to break out of, though, as even if you try to just focus on your base and building yourself back up, the infestations are only getting worse, your people are upset you're not hunting down more plague hearts, and the missions you're ignoring for lack of time or resources are having an effect on your group's morale. Exploration- Excellent. Cars have fuel gauges now, and both fuel and damage can be restored with items that can be carried on your person or in the trunk. Getting overly damaged or running out of fuel on a long trip leads to fantastic organic gameplay as you stop what you're doing to scavenge more. Missions- The missions are great; varied and less frustrating than SoD 1. The invisible timer on picking up missions, however, is entirely too short and I have missed some because one of those fantastic organic moments was busy happening on the other side of the map. It's made more frustrating when missing missions can lower morale or cause entire enclaves to declare they're taking their ball and going home to never be seen again. The game also seems to take a railroad-ey view of missions; in many cases, it seems to have already decided the way a mission will start and/or end, and you will find the rug pulled out from under you regardless of effort. The game wants your mission to end in failure, so you return to watch a horde of plague zombies spawn one-by-one outside the door of your target, who break inside and turn them all in three-to-five hits. A survivor needs an infestation to clear, so rather than waiting for an infestation to spawn naturally, the game spawns one regardless (and treats it as though you let the infestation happen, infuratingly)- in one case spawning an infestation inside an allied enclave's home, INSIDE THE SAFE ZONE OF A NEIGHBORING OUTPOST. In all of these cases, the game persists in trying to blame you for this, which never fails to annoy. NPCs- The AI is awful some of the time, but not all of the time. I posit this is worse than the alternative, as it suckers you in just long enough to get reliant on it before a follower gets killed because he was stuck running into a wall, or you miss a zombie horde because your passenger decided he didn't want to open his door to hit them this time. There is also special mention for the AI's reaction to plague zombies, in that it does not have one; the AI will persist in all its normal routines, oblivious to the fact that it is charging into a plague zombie horde while nearly infected. Enclaves- Interaction with other survivors outside your base is much improved. Outside the same "you're the only one who seems to be willing to help these neighbors out" issue from SoD 1, you also have the ability to fight and kill humans. You can threaten enclaves to make them give you what you want, and several missions have grey moral choices that can result in you slaughtering your fellow man so they can't pose a threat again or trying to forgive and forget. Your morality can range from the usual messiah to a standard Walking Dead villain. Polish- The game is buggy, but with the addition of an Unstuck command in the radio menu, it was never gamebreaking in-and-of itself. Zombie hordes have a bad habit of spawning in rocks and interfering with AI, as in one case where I couldn't speak with a survivor to continue a mission I was on because she was busily trying to flank three unreachable zombies just outside my base. And while I cannot prove it, I SUSPECT the devs tied durability to framerate. My cars and weapons seem to be far more tissue paper than steel. Spawning- The BIG issue. The devs switched to spawning zeds in a bubble around you, with pacing dictated by a L4D-style AI director. What this means is that zeds become tedious and routine as you can always count on a few being around regardless of your surroundings, unless you've just cleared an area. Even then, the game will frequently spawn more zeds in areas you've just cleared once your back is turned, as noise no longer just attracts existing zombies, but also SPAWNS NEW ONES BEHIND OUT OF YOUR VIEW, meaning you can't even plan to clear an area out and expect it to be safe while the marker is telling you it's still safe. In all, they improved more than they backslid, but the things they backslid on are things impacting more moment-to-moment issues. The combat is a constant factor, while the glorious basebuilding is an infrequent pleasure. These all combine to make a product roughly on-par with its forebear. This is a very iffy recommendation, but a recommendation nonetheless.Show moreShow less
19.1 hours at review486 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Please do note : Do not buy this game only for the co-op or the multiplayer. First of all, the port...well... lets say it just another XBOX thing. And well, it is not really multiplayer. You can't build your friend's base or modify it, you can't profit from the time spent at you friend's base (just some worthless items...), you can't heal or craft anything wihtout having the required ressources back at your base, etc... The game is just not meant to be played with friends. I bought so I could play with my friends, and well, it sucks.Show moreShow less
3 hours at review1,146 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
About This Game: About the negetive reviews it's getting, people are having crash issues and most importantly people are furious about them signing in to Xbox Live account despite being the game on Steam. Every game that has their own store front by the publisher, needs to log in to their own services no matter where you buy the game. Rockstar Launcher, Origin, Uplay has been doing it for years. Only difference is Microsoft releases their game on Steam despite the fact that they have their own store front, other companies or publishers stopped releasing games on Steam entirely. So signing in to Xbox Live or not, kudos to Microsoft to start bringing their games on Steam again. P.S: It was clearly stated on the Steam store page that you'll be needing a free third-party Xbox Live account in order to play this game. I've played the Microsoft Store version when it was released by borrowing a friend's account and finished the whole game alone and been waiting to own it for myself and now I got it Compared to the first one, SoD2 was great with more story driven gameplay and community building mechanism. Narrative is very good and the maps has many places to explore. Graphics are improved as well. In the Juggernaut Edition they improved the graphics more specially the lighting and they empathized learning how to play the game properly for new players. And also many quality of life improvements as well. After 3 hours of playthrough, I've found some texture bugs which isn't game breaking. A simple restart of the game fixed the issues I faced. About The Story: This is not a direct sequal to the first one but the story is very character focused. Narratives are well written but the voice acting could be better. About Multiplayer: This game has multiplayer co-op where you can play with 3 more players. The multiplayer progression is bind to the host of the game who invited to their session that means if you invite your friends to play on your session, their progression will not go further if they play with you. Pros & Cons: (In few words) Pros: Immersive open-world with three different maps with different story line Huge map to explore Great day and night cycle Different varrients of weapons are available Base building feels good Combat is easy to master Driving physics are good Graphics are better specially lighting and they've added fog Well written narrative and story Good music Cons: There are few bugs Co-op has some disconnection issues Harder to play alone Save games and communities didn't go over to the Steam version from Microsoft Store version Overall Performance On My System: Video Settings: Resolution: 1920x1080(p) All Settings: Ultra I get constant 70-80fps and sometimes it dips to around 50-60fps when there's fog or in the jungle. My System: CPU: Intel Core i7 4770k @3.9GHz RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB (16GB) DDR3 1.6GHz GPU: Gigabyte G1 GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 250GB SSD (Windows 10) SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 500GB (Games) Important Note: *The above views and reviews are totally personal* *I'll add/edit more experiences of mine as well as my friends about the game in the coming days* *The performance of the game may vary system to system and also many people faced crash issues, so if your planning to buy this game, I'd suggest borrow it from a friend and run it on your PC first* *Excuse my English because it's not my first language*Show moreShow less
3.1 hours at review469 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This is an in-depth review, It will take you more than a minute to read, but will give you as good an understanding as I am able to give to you about this game, Thank you for reading. First I would like to start with what is great about this game even though I do have to give it an overall down thumb, if it could be done with stars I would give it a 2 out of 5. The Great: It truly is an open world sandbox zombie survival that lets you play the game they way you wish to play it, you can play as an aggressive warlord, lawful sheriff, a trader who makes friends, a builder, or anything in-between to what suites you the best. The different options in difficulty let you play as hard or easy as you want giving everyone from casual gamers to hardcore survival gamers something to look forward to. Secondly, The Good The actions you do in the game have effects that can hurt your relations with different groups, though all the time sometimes gifts that get dropped as rewards like supply sacks when picked up get counted as "theft" and will turn a group hostile to you. The missions given to you by your own survivors and enclaves vary some, but after a while it begins to feel like the same type of missions over and over again, get supplies, guard while I search, clear nests, ect... The amount of zombies in the game itself is great, sometimes there are comforting luls in the chaos allowing you to look around and enjoy the scenery, but expect it to be destroyed by a random home siege even if your noise production is extremely low, or some random zombies that somehow spawned inside of the temporary "safezone" you created after searching and clearing a building. The Meh Don't expect the AI you bring along with you to dodge explosives you throw, or help you kill zombies, or hostile humans, or be anything other than a pack mule. I understand programming them to not be hyper aggressive so they don't start unneeded fights, but they will just stand there and watch you die sometimes. They will also leave the gates to your base open, and they WILL NOT close if an AI opened it. Removed features, if you are like me you ran the first game into the ground playing it, there are 2 features which I personally loved that are now gone, hiding in bushes does nothing, and you can no longer board windows up. Instead of the devs improving these features to give them more of a highlight, like giving your base window upgrades can reduce noise via creating sound barriers, and bushes being able to be used to sneak up on infected easier, so people would use them more often than in the first game, they opted to be a little lazy and just remove it. Your characters animations, inputs, and other animations feel really clunky and forced, you can get combat locked onto a zombie thats on the ground 2 feet away instead of the zombie your camera is pointed toward i.e probably that screamer thats summoning some more friends while you swing aimlessly at the air. Fuel and vehical repair, even with a 30% reduction in fuel usage via special buildings at your base, expect to have to always carry 2 extra tanks with you, driving 1km will run your fuel 3/4 the way down on most cases, and unless your hitting every zombie with your door, or dodging them like an indie game, your vehical will be run down by the end of your trips. Zombie spawn patterns, sometimes if feels a little odd that in the middle of a city you can run into maybe 20-30 zombies while clearing out whole blocks, while running on the country side you will run into consistent hordes of about 15-20 so maybe a little balancing needs to be done there. The Really Bad Bugs, there are plenty of bugs in the game that mess with you, from clipping into the ground, to vehicals flying off for an adventure, there is a radio command to unstick you, but after being out for so long more of these bugs should have been squashed considering online through nexus modding community you can find some that have been created just to squash bugs. If modders who make no money can fix the bugs in your game, you can to end of story. If there is a group fight going on between you and other survivors, unless you learn the dodging mechanic, that the game doesn't tell you in the basic tutorial it's C by the way, expect to be stun locked by an AI perma swinging that tiny axe they all carry. The game first informed me of the dodging mechanic 6-hrs into the game. Also, if you are melee fighting survivors expect to have to knock them down 3 or 4 times before they die due to not being able to execute them, or if you are supposed to be able to I have never had that option. If there is a bunch of zombies and survivors fighting, you will get animation run locked if you just try to swing your weapon, where you will run in place for anywhere from 3-5 seconds letting zombies hit you for free. Special Infected, for these zombies to be special there shouldn't be as many of them spawning as there are, in some cases you might get all of them spawning on top of each other meaning you basically cannot go to an area because killing them all might be just to much of a pain for newer players. AI enclaves have a habit of spawning on-top of zombie nests, meaning when you visit you could end up potentially having to fight infected and hostile survivors at the same time. The AI across the board is mediocre at best, and dreadful to deal with at worst, survivors you bring along are normally just cannon fodder or pack mules, they get stuck on doors, doorways, perma jumping in and out of windows/walls, running in infinite circles, or sometimes even shooting you even when allied or friendly. UPDATE: Since the AI update I have only played the game an extra few hours just to test out what was changed on them, they don't randomly jump over walls/through windows anymore or attack a heart when you're near it if you're sneaking which is really nice. BUT they now have this weird tendency to stare at the sky with their gun pointed to it, and now they don't attack back when zombies are hitting them they just kind of run around them until they die or you kill the zombies hitting them. They will also randomly walk outside the walls of your base and get merced by zombies for a bit before the other AI react to help or you go help them as well. So i still recommend just leaving them in base to hoard the good hero stats you like but don't stay to long to them now randomly leaving base and taking a bunch of damage for zero reason. Supply moving is a hassle, if you have a car full of stuff that you want to transport parked in a parking spot, expect to make a bunch of trips in and out of your car even with an option exisiting allowing you to move supplies into your car, but not out of your car into the stockpile. Edit: The Game Will show you eventually that T will auto move stuff from your car to storage, took 20 hours for that tool tip to show. Your Backpack alone will most likely always weigh more than what you're actually carrying inside it, a large pack will weigh 16 pounds alone, so unless you have the backpacking cardio skill, for most of your characters it will be useless due to the complete drain on your stamina. Hearts effects: The effects of destroying hearts do not seem to be as much as really needed, it would be more interesting as the more hearts your destroyed the less special infected spawn and larger groups spawned in the wild, but instead they more focused around the areas closer to the hearts giving the game some more sense of destroying the hearts being beneficial in some areas where there is no heart present but more disastrous in area where they are present still. Thank you to all who read all the way through this long review/post, some of the information is purely personal preference, while other stuff is generic that will probably bother you as well at some point. Signed, The NewtShow moreShow less
15.7 hours at review781 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Please follow United Critics for quality reviews State of Decay 2 Juggernaut Edition Factors Rating Description 🎮Gameplay 8 Decent survival mechanics and content availability. 📷Graphics 8.5 Some areas are pure delight, and some are just fine. 🎧Narration/Audio 7.5 Not really emphasizing even though there’s a good variety. 😮Variety 7 At a certain amount of time, it all becomes repetitive. 🎰Re-playability 8 Maybe if you play with a friend again or change maps and difficulty. 💲Price 8 Wait for a sale. 🎮Gameplay: State of Decay 2 is a community survival that divides playstyles with the help of introducing character attributes. After selecting the campaign mode, you jump into an optional tutorial that makes you familiar with the basic game mechanics and the story plot. Now instead of selecting a single character, you need to choose a duo. Yes, you can only control one character at a time, but you can switch between them whenever you want from the required facility. The tutorial feels weird, as you are not familiar with that FOV, but after you finish the tutorial and enter the base camp, you will get an idea of what to work for and what to preserve. During this period, you will get to know about the plague zombies, which are immensely deadly, and their bite rapidly affects the patient. To detox this virus, you need various plague samples to treat the patient. Base camp/facility Base camp acts as a safe zone where you manage the survival stats of your community. This is not a plague simulator with pre-available sizeable communities. Here you start from a duo and increase the number of community members by joining hands with allies/survivors. Each surviving community relies on multiple basic needs, be it Medical and Food supplies or Shelter and Power Generators. So, to nourish the ongoing situation, it requires you to set up facilities on the base camp that the community can use. Now, this might look like a straightforward task, but the materials required to establish a facility aren’t easy to collect. You can also climb the base camp tower and use your weapon scope to analyze the visible locations and search for loot. Exploration The actual hunt starts when you leave your base camp, as it packs the entire map with deadly zombies lurking everywhere. If you are playing alone, then all the loot and resources are yours to grab, which is utterly easy and fun. But if you are in a multiplayer session, the real downgrade just starts. Not only the loot has restricted accessibility for each player, but the host has the most loot too. First of all, the story progress only counts for the session host, as all the other players are boosting his community. But dividing the loot to ease this ideology is a failure in execution. Imagine you and your crew visited a loot location with 10 crates, and session host can access 6 of them, and it divides the rest 4 among the other 2 players. Now the last player travelled all this distance just to see inaccessible crates that are not meant for him. Ok, we get it, survival can be done together only. So, it doesn’t matter who gets the loot, as everyone is surviving for the same cause. But not all loot directly feeds the community. Some resources are vital for your own survival too, like weaponry and meds. Not only that, you can’t even go far from the host. Otherwise, you will respawn back near him. So, the exploration part for the multiplayer segment is just dead. Progression Surviving is the primary goal, along with looting resources, nourishing members, building facilities, joining allies; all become a vital part of the process, and that’s where most missions are scattered in. You will have main campaign missions with optional objectives and a huge load of random popping help missions that increases your influence among the community. The more you contribute, the more your character stats and status will increase. Remember, this is not a single protagonist game. You are required to train at least 2-3 characters. Even if you try to speedrun with one character, it’s not beneficial because your character will feel sleepy after 1-2 nights. If you solely focus on story missions, then the game provides a wonderful variety and survivable encounters. But these random popping help requests are a pain in the a**. They have long dialogues and sometimes require you to traverse to the opposite corner of the map. Ignoring them is not an option too, as they will decrease some influence. My experience We started off as a group of 4, but soon after playing a couple of hours, two of my friends called it a quit as the multiplayer loot divide system is utter BS. As I was the session leader, my friend could not see the build facility options or interactions related to the primary mission. At that moment, we had nothing else to play. So, we just kept on playing the SOD2 game by doing multiple side missions first and then shifting to the main ones at the end. Even though we completed the primary campaign, there was no sense of satisfaction. After he went to sleep, I started the Heartland mode, which is an additional DLC recommended for people who completed the campaign. And let me tell you, the Heartland DLC was better than the main campaign. It was fiercer and challenging and had a better map. So, sadly, I suggest you complete that mediocre campaign, just to enjoy the Heartland DLC, which can be counted as the true game potential. Please don’t play in a lobby of over 2 players. 📷Graphics: Graphics are very calming, thanks to the cosy sun flare. But it gets frightening during nights. If a game is imposing emotions just by its graphics, this means they have succeeded in the graphics section. Yes, they don’t look realistic nor show any never seen before creativity. But they are put together efficiently and somehow ease the portrait. And the selection of 4 maps to continue the same campaign shows they worked hard to set up the graphic system. 📝Main Pros and Cons: Pros- Multiple maps. Third person community survival. A lot of looting available. Controls are smooth. Availability of Base building and Resource management. Better than the previous title. Multiple custom difficulty options. Cons- Multiplayer system sucks. Sometimes feel like a walking simulator. Plague zombies are sometimes OP. Annoying popping help missions. Pointless dialogues. No dynamic weather. Hard to establish a connection with any character. Multiple bugs. ✉️Miscellaneous Information: Heartland- Heartland is a special story-focused experience designed for players who are already experienced with the main campaign. It’s more fearsome and challenging. Plague Heart- Plague heart is the infestation for the Blood Plague disease in the game. They are the primary target of every community to eliminate. When finishing all the hearts on a map, the red zombies are less frequent. 😇Honest Rating: The game is not really mesmerizing, but it’s good enough to enjoy for some time. There are multiple cons about it, and multiplayer is a total failure. It can be fun for a wide variety and total crap for the other half too. It was able to make me interested for some hours but killed the fun factor pretty quick. Wait for a good sale. Rating: 7/10Show moreShow less
14.9 hours at review319 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
Devastated. My wife and I wanted to play this together. Not only is the netcode so broken that she cannot even enter a vehicle or walk properly, but its design is so bad as to be genuinely shocking. You cannot participate in the same community, and even when she brings characters from her own, she can't interact with anything: Can't talk to people, can't even get in a vehicle without her character bugging out or the doors staying perpetually open and breaking off. The loot system -- which divides loot between the players automatically, and can't be toggled -- sometimes just doesn't let either of us loot containers. As this is the most fundamental mechanic of the game, it can render the experience unplayable. I have been looking forward to this game, particularly the multiplayer aspect, since its first announcement. I am appalled at the shoddy, thoughtless lack of effort displayed here. Moreso, however, I am just disappointed. We would have spent so much time on this game. Now we'll be asking for refunds. Developers, please consider a true cooperative mode. In the interim, fix the one that's already there. And more importantly? Finish a game before you charge people for it. I'm not your QA employee, I'm a paying customer. Or, well, I was one. Now I'm just here with a warning for other people who might get duped into the promise of an experience that quite simply does not exist. ------------- EDIT: I posted this in the Steam forums for the game, but I wanted to add some thoughts about where we go from here, on the off chance Undead Labs is listening. If you agree, please add your voice in the community! ------------- Undead Labs has a lot of work ahead to make the experience more generally enjoyable for its fans, and I have little confidence they have any intention of doing it. The fixes are simple on the surface, but almost certainly systemic. As identified by the broader community, what we need to see is: > OPTIONS (high priority) --- Toggle the extremely broken looting system. People playing with friends or partners don't need the overaggressive anti-griefing measures, and those measures do not work consistently. --- Toggle whether a joining player can control community members, and/or affect its management. --- Massive netcode optimization, especially for same-platform play. This is so bog-standard in the industry that it is difficult to imagine it being released in the state it was to begin with. > FIXES (emergency) --- Technical issues abound. This game has been out for a year. It shouldn't still be hard crashing, freezing, or otherwise becoming unplayable so frequently that half the community is regularly experiencing it. > IMPROVEMENTS (long-term) --- AI pathing --- Weather --- UI Design --- Traits, personalities, etc A true cooperative experience is so close that it is frankly shocking how hard UL and Microsoft dropped the proverbial ball. This is fixable. It should have already been done. Now we just wait to see how much they care about their community.Show moreShow less
2.5 hours at review657 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
If you enjoyed the first game, odds are you will enjoy this too. The graphical upgrade is very noticeable from the old version. There are things that both games have done right, and things they've done wrong. Combat is slightly slower in the second game, meaning zeds are a bit more threatening when alone The guns feel SOOO much nicer, they are loud and give a nice kick making them feel more powerful. Base system is much more explored and you're able to customize to your hearts content Inventory is more or less the same Blood plague adds an extra challenge, but can be unreasonable at times Overall, everything feels much nicer. I don't understand the bad reviews, this is a well put together game! Undead Labs has a tendency to outdo themselves, they love their fans and it shows.Show moreShow less
3 hours at review313 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
State of Decay 2 is basically a slightly revamped State of Decay with more maps and a few new gameplay features. Sadly they introduced a few gameplay elements, which make the whole game extremely annoying: 1. Zombies respawn almost immediately. You are always surrounded by zombies, there is no point in trying to clean out the surroundings of an objective, as you'll face an endless wave of zombies shambling towards you. 2. Missions are tied to survivors. You will automatically start a mission by switching to a survivor. Switching back to another cancels the mission. 3. Inventory system... Your backpack has a certain number of slots. In each slot goes one item type. Which means, that a simple sticky note will take up the same amount of place like 3 jugs of ethanol... or 2 screws. 4. Plague Hearts. Plague hearts are basically zombie hotspots which will block the player from claiming outposts or facilities. So risk / reward decisions like in the first game, are taken away from the player. 5. Constant popping up of missions, requests from other enclaves and whatnot. 6. No unique characters. All playable characters are random amalgamations of preset traits and story snippets. All in all the game feels just bland, annoying and strangely artifical. There is no gameplay flow, no real reward, no goal to work towards. It's a diffuse, grindy mess which lacks relatable characters to latch onto.Show moreShow less
12.7 hours at review647 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.