Video Game / Shadow Warrior 2

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Spoilers for Shadow Warrior (2013) will be left unmarked. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.

Shadow Warrior 2 is a First-Person Shooter game developed by Flying Wild Hog. It was announced on June 10, 2015 by publisher Devolver Digital, with an announcement trailer following suit, and released on PC in October 2016, and on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in May 2017. It's the third game in the Shadow Warrior series, and the follow-up to Shadow Warrior (2013).

Five years have passed since Lo Wang shattered the alliance between his deceitful former boss and the ancient gods of the shadow realm. Despite noble intentions, Lo Wang's efforts to annihilate the darkness corrupted the world, creating a strange and savage new order where humans and demons live side by side. Now surviving as a reclusive mercenary on the edge of a corrupted world, the formidable warrior must again wield a devastating combination of guns, blades, magic and wit to strike down the demonic legions overwhelming the world.

The game is unique in the series due to its emphasis on Procedural Generation; almost every level sans a certain few are always randomized, adding new paths to familiar terrain. It also contains elements of the Looter Shooter genre, with weapons having multiple variations and the ability to equip modifiers (gems) on them for different purposes such as elemental damage or extra properties to make them more useful. Lo Wang can battle alongside his fellow ninja buddies online in four-player Cooperative Multiplayer, or go it alone in spectacular procedurally-generated landscapes to complete daring missions and collect powerful new weapons, armor, and arcane relics of legend.

Two additional DLC packs were released for the game:

• The Way of the Wang: The first DLC pack, announced on December 1st, 2016 and released a week later. It features four trials that are unlocked after both winning the previous one and a main story condition. It adds the Fist of Gozu weapon.
• Bounty Hunt: The second DLC pack, a two-part series of 27 sidequests, each of which reward zillyen (the game's in-game currency), and skill points. The DLC also adds the "Death Cheater", "Shared Pain", "Sword Master", "Backstabber", "Revenge" and "Demolition Man" skills and the EX-GF01, TBSM, Medusa Ray and Chill Factor weapons. Part 1 launched on March 16, 2017, while part 2 was released on August 22, 2017.
• Mr. Wang, Please Save The Christmas!: The third DLC piece, composed of a single mission ("Wang in the Box") that adds two weapons (the Nobitsura Ka-Ge and the bonus boss-tied Blizzard). Released on December 21, 2017.

Followed by Shadow Warrior 3.

The game provides examples of:

• A.K.A.-47: Several of the guns (those which are nor divine/demonic weapons neither Zilla-made futuristic guns) are based on real weapons:
  • The Devolver Anaconda is a Colt Anaconda.
  • The Point Five-O is a Desert Eagle.
  • The Swift & Messon is a Smith & Wesson Model 6904.
  • The Sidekick is a heavily customized MAC-10.
  • The AR-53 is a Heckler & Koch G36K.
  • The AMCAR Rifle is a Colt 727, a carbine variant of the M16A2 assault rifle.
  • The MG Triple-6 is a gold-plated M60.
  • The One-Trick Pony is a M79 grenade launcher.
• All There in the Manual: There's a surprising depth of information and backstory that can be collected as Random Drops and stored in the Wanglopedia, ranging from news reports and eyewitness documents about the state of the world, to lab notes regarding Orochi Zilla's experiments, to journals and diaries regarding nearly every supporting and background character in the game.
• Anti-Advice: Invoked by the trailer for the Collector's Edition, where gameplay footage is intercut with blurbs and scores from positive reviews like IGN's 8.6/10 and US Gamer's 4.5/5, but halfway through, it proudly includes Polygon's 5/10.
• Apocalypse How: Planetary. The existence of demons and their being unleashed on the world sparked a devastating war between humanity and demonkind, leading to heavy casualties, mutations of local wildlife from demonic energy and multiple cities overrun. Exactly how bad it is is hard to say, but the world is radically different now.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age:
  • Downplayed in the description of the AR-53 Assault Rifle, which says the weapon was "state of the art" a few years ago, but the advent of Chi energy turned it into a relic.
  • The description of the "Arm of Orochi" katana is an inversion. In a Shout-Out to Star Wars, it outright tells it's "An elegant weapon for an entirely uncivilized age".
• Arrow Cam: In the Launch trailer, Wang is seen shooting an arrow from his bow. The camera follows the arrow in slow-motion while it passes through a ninja that takes a selfie while killing a demon, a dead demon's big hole, and finally reaches Zilla's cigar. Zilla being the Old Master that he is, catches the arrow before it hits him (but not before it pulverizes his cigar).
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The final boss fight is set to "Warrior" by Stan Bush. It's an original piece created by Stan specifically for this game, and specifically themed after his signature work "The Touch.".
• Awesome, but Impractical: The weapons and upgrades absolutely brim with flash, but some of them simply aren't practical:
  • The Raven. A heavy minigun that does absolutely monstrous single-target DPS, but it slows you to a crawl just by carrying it, has awful accuracy, takes a second to spin-up between refiring (which, factoring in increased enemy mobility, often makes it a choice between holding the trigger and wasting ammo as you try to track the target, or else wasting time waiting for it to spin back up while you try to get a steady shot), and chews through ammo like it's going out of style. While these traits are present in ALL the heavy machinegun type weapons, they're so pronounced on the Raven that it's hard to justify using it (and it's a money-only weapon, which will wipe out most of your savings when it's available). Its Demon counterpart has the bonus of reloading a tad faster and firing much more accurately, the King Skeletor does more damage per shot, and the Triple-Six has no warm-up time and reloads much quicker.
  • Chainsaws. Massive DPS, can nearly-stunlock its victim, and oh-so-satisfying to use, but they effectively lock you in place while sawing into a target (in a game where standing still on higher difficulties for any length of time is almost certain death), the target CAN recover and knock you away or otherwise attack you, and most heavier/rarer enemies are resistant or immune to the stunning effect outright. They can be a VERY powerful workhouse, but heavy caution should be used for when to employ them.
  • Several alternate fire mods fall into the category:
    • Charged shot mods. In exchange for a significant reduction to fire rate, you can charge up a weapon's shot over several seconds to get a damage multiplier. On the right weapons this can lead to an absolutely devastating Alpha Strike, but the drastically reduced fire rate means that that shot had better count, because you won't be using that weapon as a run-and-gun workhorse anymore.
    • Multi-barrel mods. Fires multiple shots from the clip at once, with a total damage boost to boot. Like above, absolutely amazing damage output, with a much more reasonable reduction in fire rate, but a hefty accuracy penalty as well...and worst of all, the weapon will overheat almost every shot (whereas for most weapons, this is only a risk if you fire nonstop for several seconds), leading to even heftier cooldown periods before it can even be reloaded. It's extremely pronounced with lower-level mods on double-barrel-style shotguns, where the reloads are often more than five seconds, and the charge shot puts on a cooldown and doubles that reload time.
    • Doubleshot mods. Each pull of the trigger consumes two bullets for increased damage out. This is the automatic counterpart to the semi-auto multibarrel, and you'll see a significant increase in DPS; however, while it lacks the overheating, accuracy, or fire rate problems, the increase in damage is MUCH less, considering two bullets are being consumed at a time, resulting in burning your ammo supply twice as fast for a 40-50% increase in DPS.
    • Rapid-fire mods. Usable on revolvers and bows, on the former they increase the otherwise-slow fire rate, and cause Wang to fire the gun fan-the-hammer style, but the weapon suffers a not-insignificant damage penalty, turning it from a precise, high-damage Sniper Pistol into a weaker semi-auto mid-range weapon that are, more often than not, completely outclassed by actual sub-machine guns or the assault rifles. On top of that, the clip size and reload speed aren't modified, so expect to spend as much time reloading as you do shooting. It's even worse on bows, which lose their chargeable shots, great range and high damage in exchange for a fairly-weak quickdraw shot that isn't nearly fast, powerful, or long-ranged enough to justify the speed of ammo consumption (which, again, isn't modified.)
  • The Heavy Metal medallion allows you to finally dual-wield Assault Rifles. The issue is, there's another Medallion that ups most Firearm damage, and chances are, you use weapons other than the assault rifle to deal with other threats.
• Bag of Spilling: Wang loses all of his weapons and powers from the first game save for two of his sword abilities and the ability to heal. There's no real explanation (with one very specific exception that ends up being the focus of a series of early sidequests.)
• Bait-and-Switch Comment:
  • When Wang reunites with Mamushi Heika at the end of "All in a Day's Work", the introductory mission, he notices his mentor Smith Masamune in the place. Wang asks Smith "What are you doing here? You work for this bi... nice lady, too?"
  • One of Wang's taunts towards a defeated demon is "Today's a good day to die... for you!"
• Be Yourself: Invoked in one of the Fortune Cookie messages:
  "'Be yourself. Everybody else is already taken.' - Oscar Wilde"
• Big Bad Ensemble: Orochi Zilla is, obviously, The Heavy of this game, being the main instigator behind the first half of the plot. Halfway through the plot, Ameonna takes over as the main threat, forcing Zilla and Wang to join forces.
• Blacksmith Upgrade Service: The game allows sacrificing three gems at the anvil in order to create a more powerful gem. If you have the Way of the Wang DLC, there are also six trials that add additional crafting options — infusing orbs into weapons to improve their stats, embedding a gem into a fourth slot, and removing a negative stat modifier from a gem. The unlocked trials require Masamune orbs, obtained either from quests or trials.
• Blamed for Being Railroaded:
  • Mamushi Heika gives a sidequest, "The Cookery", where Wang is tasked (in ambiguous terms: "give a message") to take care of a (independent) drug dealer operating on her turf. Wang interprets it as the order to kill the dealer, and that's indeed the only way to complete the quest (particularly since when Wang finds him, the dealer has gone demon as a result of using too much of his own Shade). When Wang goes back to Mamushi Heika to receive his reward, she chews Wang out because she actually wanted to recruit the dealer, not to kill him.^note Wang does protest that the state he found the dealer in made communications impossible but promptly gets ignored.
  • You don't get the chance to spare Ameonna after battling her. Thus, you get complaints from everyone, from Mezu saying that he hoped that killing you would solve anything to Zilla calling you out for being a reckless fool.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Thanks to the team increasing in size, this allows the game to grant more satisfying kills with a new damage system, such as blowing holes through beasts, slicing or blowing them into chunks, or with some weapons, tearing their organs out messily.
• Bookends:
  • The game begins with Lo Wang retrieving an amulet which later turns out to be a soul well that preserves Smith Masamune's spirit before he died. The game ends with a boss battle in a soul well, and Kamiko's soul being used to re-seal the Outer Gates... to no avail.
  • A song by Stan Bush opens and ends the game. In the opening side, in a Call-Back to the previous game, it's "The Touch" being used at the beginning of the game while Wang travels with his car. In the ending side, "Warrior", a piece commissioned specifically for the game, plays during the boss battle with Ameonna.
  • The game begins with Lo Wang asking in the Yakuza mansion if the situation was "a party or was there a toxic spill", later revealed to be Kamiko being kidnapped by Zilla. The game ends with Xing wondering "Is this a party or a funeral? Why the long faces?" after the battle against Ameonna ended with her dead at Wang's hands.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: During the "Demon Trafficking" sidequest, where Lo Wang rescues some demons from Yakuza sex traffickers, Larry, Lo Wang's demon gun dealer, tells him that the Yakuza sex traffickers are holed up in a compound that requires a retinal scan. Which naturally means:
  Lo Wang: You mean the entrance fee is one dead Yakuza head?
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: During the intro to "Flirty Fishing - Part 1", Gozu asks Lo Wang if everything for him is about the money, to which Wang retorts that it isn't always about the money. Sometimes it's about the sex, and some other times is about the sexy money, capping off the joke by telling Gozu that he expects to be paid in sexy money instead of "Ben Franklins", as he "looks like a potato in a wig".
• Cassette Futurism: The game has a quite '80s aesthetic to the cyberpunk part of the setting. There's one major mission where you have to stop a paparazzo from releasing sex tapes of Ameonna by destroying vending machines selling VHS tapes, which would definitely not be enough in this Internet-connected age.
• Chainsaw Good: Several different varieties! Ranging from a longsword-styled cyber chainsaw, a buzzsaw fused with a demon that eats other demons, a plain ol' chainsaw, and the pre-order bonus chainsword, among other.
• Company Cameo:
  • Your starting revolver is called Devolver Anaconda.
  • The secret at Mezu's mansion in "Chapter 5: Seepage Problem" has the Devolver logo all around it.
  • The Wang Cave has a secret developers room: Behind the stage there's an inscription "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain". Next to it there's a fake closed door. It leads directly into a room with a photo of the Flying Wild Hog developers.
• Continuity Nod: Towards the 2013 game:
  • The game menu images and the card image for the skills Lo Wang can learn are all taken from the art cutscenes from the first game.
  • The Yari Type-24 Rocket Launcher is present in the game with the name "Monsoon", obtained by killing the bonus boss of "Chapter 4: Industrial Espionage". It also contains the phrase "Hail to the King, baby" in its description, the same phrase Wang proclaimed when he picked up the weapon back in Chapter 10.
  • When Wang gets into his car in order to do the main quest "Hot Blooded", Kamiko materializes in front of his eyes introducing him to the Fast Travel mechanic in-universe. The whole thing is similar to the end of Chapter 1, when Hoji materializes in Wang's car.
  • After you find out Kamiko is, by bloodline, Hoji's niece, she tells Lo Wang that Hoji might be able to talk through the sword that Ameonna forged his ashes with. Lo Wang asks if it's true, and Kamiko suddenly hears the sound... of gullibility. A very similar exchange happened between Hoji and Lo Wang at the end of Chapter 1. The sword in question is called "Blade of Exile", after Hoji's banishment, and that there's only one word on the sword: Hoji.
  • Xing is STILL headless... bodiless, rather. When he meets with Wang during the main mission "Industrial Espionage", they remember when Wang killed off Xing's body at the very end of the game.
  • Lo Wang still can't get the Dirty Harry quote right, and doesn't even bother with trying to, anymore - he replaces 'punk' with various OTHER words.
  • The "Arm of Orochi" sword is basically the fully upgraded Nobitsura Kage, with its ability to spam Force Slashes/Winds of Crane with total impunity. And just like in the previous game, it's used to kill an immortal god in a cutscene.
  • The achievement for unlocking all the achievements is called "I'm a Collector Myself", Wang's intro line when talking to Mr. Mizayaki in the prologue.
  • Mamushi Heika 4 in the Wanglopedia echoes the phrase "Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir" from the 2013 game, only instead of "Sir", it's Daddy.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: As said by Lo Wang himself in the announcement trailer, he brought some friends along this time around. You can battle through the expansive campaign alone or team up as a four-player typhoon of destruction online in campaign co-op mode. Each co-op player experiences the game from Lo Wang's perspective and see other players as his ninja buddies.
• Crapsack World: Thanks to Wang's actions in the previous game, the world became a mess. The mortal world has been corrupted by malevolent forces, basically a sort of inter-dimensional hernia. This means that it is constantly changing, and occasionally demons will leak out into the world and attack people. There are some Cyberpunk "Safe Cities" where the demons can't go, but this safety comes at a price: living in them throws you at the mercy of Zilla Zaibatsu, which runs them and will control just about every aspect of your life and exploit you for profit. According to Lo Wang in the announcement trailer, "the world doesn't want to be saved, it wants to eat you alive", the presence of demons having brought out all of mankind's worst aspects which they now revel in.
• Critical Existence Failure: Played completely straight for Wang himself. You can fight just fine whether you're at 1 or 100 health, but as soon as that last hitpoint falls (provided you don't invest in the right skills), you're toast.
• Crutch Character: The chainsaw. In easier modes it can reliably be used early game to sweep up enemies with high damage and stun. On harder difficulties it will instead lock you in place where you can get attacked much easier and the higher damage enemies means you might not be able to secure the kill before you go down.
• Cursed with Awesome: High-level gems tend to come with drawbacks such as penalties on damage, movement speed and other stats. However, gems with certain penalties can have said penalties be nulllfied, provided they are used in the right weapon or weapon class:
  • Meleé weapons can use gems with penalties in ranged weapons such as ammo saving chance, fire rate, miss rate, clip size or reload speed. This also nullifies the advantages on these areas, however.
  • Ranged weapons can use gems with penalties in meleé weapons such as meleé damage.
  • Single-clip weapons such as the Stick of Doom shotgun can still use gems with penalties on clip size.
  • All weapons that aren't Shotguns or Grenade/Rocket Launchers can still use gems with penalties on damage radius.
• Cyberpunk: Zilla Enterprises has created neon drenched "Safe Cities" for those who don't want to live in the wildlands amongst demons (an understandable desire). These cities are filled to the brim with technology three centuries ahead of their time, including short-range teleportation and competent radio broadcasting. Unfortunately, Zilla holds an iron grip on the populace through his cybernetically-enslaved supersoldiers. Anyone who questions his rule is directed to a "reeducation chamber" for brainwashing and/or death.
  Lo Wang: Welcome to the shiny happy future. Heh. One out of three ain't bad.
• Despite the Plan: Double Subverted in the three-part "Heisenberg" sidequest. Lo Wang decides to poison the Kyokagami twins with Cyanide in the mix of Shade he provided them, as he now works with Mezu. The Kyokagami twins flipped the trade and tried to kill him out of their own spite, allowing Wang to out-backstab them and kill them anyway. On the return to Mezu, the twins turned out to be alive in their own hideout, but not until they began to choke on their own drugs since Kamiko slipped a doped product while Lo Wang was cooking said Shade.
• Disc-One Nuke: Previously, the King Skeletor machine gun, which does about 100 DPS when your other weapons hover around 60-70 DPS in the early game. It can be found on the second floor of the Kobadera Ninja Shop and is locked until the end of "Big Trouble in Calamity", but you could grab it through the window with a bit of platforming as soon as you get to Dragon Mountain. This was confirmed to be a bug and was later patched out. Even after the patch, though, it does much more damage than the cybernetic and human counterparts (the Zweihander and Triple-Six, respectively, which you get after the King Skeletor) and works well with double-ammo and damage modifiers.
• Dual Wielding: Some melee weapons come paired by default. Predictably, they have high attack speed but lower damage in return. Most of them are pairs of swords or sabres, but there's also the True Patriot, which consists in a tomahawk and a knife.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Inverted!
  "This difficulty level is for people who don't feel like they need to prove anything to themselves or anyone else. Playing Shadow Warrior 2 on easy is perfectly fine, if by the end of an exhausting day all you need is to feel like a goddamn superhero."
• Egopolis: Zilla City, named after Lo Wang's part-time enemy, part-time nemesis Orochi Zilla, the head of Zilla Enterprise/Zilla Zaibatsu. It's a futuristic, heavily monitored city, with Zilla Enterprise's logo being splattered all over the city. The city exists as a "safe haven" of sorts, considering that both Earth and the Shadow Realm were merged after the events of Shadow Warrior (2013), an event that not only made demons more present in everyday's life, but also acted as a breeding ground for the resurgence of the Yakuza. By the time of Shadow Warrior 3, however, the released Evildoing Dragon consumed most of Earth and the Shadow Realm, including the city itself.
• Eldritch Location:
  • The in-game justification for the game's Procedural Generation is that Earth's landscape is constantly in flux.
  • Everything beyond the Gates. Mezu describes it as the antithesis of everything known.
• Elemental Weapon: Gems can imbue weapons with fire, lightning, ice, or toxic. This is especially important in later levels, where many enemies start resisting pure physical damage but have weaknesses against one of the elements.
• Elite Mooks: Superior and their bigger brothers, the Elite enemies. Bigger, beefier, tougher versions of enemies that often come with physical resistance and/or elemental auras.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Like in the 2013 game, one of the Fortune Cookie messages outright warns about this to the player:
  "Pro tip: many things are trying to kill you. Kill them before they do."
• Evil Versus Oblivion:
  • The backstory of the game, as seen in the Wanglopedia, has the Human-Demon War. On one hand, you have the tandem Zilla-Yakuza, one of the biggest Mega Corps of the world and one of the biggest criminal organizations in the world. On the other, you have the invading Shadow Realm, composed of demons hellbent on destroying anything that isn't yours.
  • As for the game itself, there's the evil Zilla Zaibatsu, the only MegaCorp in the post-Collision world, against Ameonna's death cult, whose leader wants to bring The End of the World as We Know It by way of destroying the Outer Gates.
• Excalibur in the Rust: The Nobitsura Kage returns here as part of the "Ninja'd Scrolls" quest chain. However, prolonged use of it made the sword too small and unwieldy (as the sword shrinks if too much of its power is used at once.) Lo Wang implies only intelligent demon mice can wield it now. After Smith Masamune found the scrolls needed to reforge the weapon, he turned it into a medallion instead, much to Lo Wang's surprise and frustration. Smith even points out that while the weapon would never live up to its potential again regardless of what he did, at least in its current form, he can put it to work in another Infinity +1 Sword (as it boosts the damage of melee weapons by a not-insubstantial amount).
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • In the Wanglopedia entries for both Kamiko and Orochi Zilla, this is how Kamiko ended as she ended at the beginning of the story: a rogue laundry ticket giving away her Yakuza ties.
  • In the story proper, Ameonna never thought that Lo Wang would be willing to not use the path of violence against Mezu, thus foiling Ameonna's plans to rid the world of Kamiko's existence, requiring more drastic measures... that eventually ended up with her death.
• Fantastic Drug: Compound 61 was created in a laboratory, designed to give people insightful visions. It was later "cut" with other drugs and sold on the streets as Shade, which is known to cause euphoria, mild hallucinations, anxiety release and dependency. Since Shade's main ingredient is the supernatural "Crude" from the Collision between the human and the demon worlds, it also has other side effects, such as turning you into a demon if you use it too much.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At the end of "Industrial Espionage", after Wang delivers Kamiko's fake notebooks to Mamushi Heika, Wang mentions that one of them may contain her "dream journal", with Heika being horrified at the very thought of what those dreams may be. This is a hint about Kamiko's true nature as a Half-Human Hybrid.
  • During the sidequest "Flirty Fishing - Part 3", Kamiko says "And I thought my family was weird" after the antics of Xing and Ameonna. Since the mission cannot be completed once "All in the Family" begins, it's safe to say that Kamiko has no idea how on the spot her statement was, considering her half-Ancient lineage.
• Gainax Ending: The last scene: Kamiko decides to sacrifice her soul to the otherworld to reforge the demonic gate into a gateway, and then a dragon appears (to which Xing proclaims "That's my girl!") and reaches for the camera, apparently devouring Lo Wang.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • If you return to Zilla City for any side mission or story mission set after "My Hero", you can still see Kamiko's twitching body in the operating table, despite said body being canonically at Masamune's, and Kamiko's soul being with Wang.
  • During the game, Lo Wang is able to teleport directly to his missions' location thanks to Kamiko. The story ends with Kamiko's soul leaving his body, but if you keep playing after the end of the last story mission, Lo Wang is still able to teleport.
• Genre Shift: From a linear first person shooter with light RPG Elements and Hack and Slash elements to a (optionally) co-operative Looter Shooter with Hack and Slash elements.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: In the side mission "The Cookery", Lo Wang is asked to deal with a local Shade operation that is being run without Mamushi Heika's permission. When Lo Wang finally tracks down the one behind the operation, he learns that the dealer in question has become a gigantic demon called a Talon as a result of using too much of his own Shade and has to be put down. As Wang is a Pop-Cultured Badass, he immediately references Biggie, having to spell it out for Kamiko.
• Guns Akimbo: An option for pistols and SMGs (and assault rifles with the Heavy Metal amulet). By slotting a Geminate gem, you can get another copy of the gun in your off-hand. This also imposes hefty damage, accuracy, and reload speed penalty, but the significant increase in close-range DPS is well worth it.
• Hand Cannon: Nearly the entire Pistol category of weapons, save the Colt 1911, which even points out how small it is. They might come in revolving, semi-automatic, or energy varieties, but all of them deal huge damage per shot and emphasize accuracy over fire rate, culminating in The Triad, a tri-barreled, huge-caliber beast that would tear people's arms off, if it weren't for Chi magic making the recoil a little bit manageable, and Jigoku, a Desert Eagle with the souls of 12 demons trapped inside and clamoring for more.
• Happiness in Slavery: In addition to Xing being comfortable working at Zilla's TV Station, one of the Fortune Cookie messages deals with this:
  "'People can be slave-ships in shoes.' - Zora Neale Hurston"
• Heroic Second Wind: The skill Second Chance allows Wang to revive if he kills anything within a short time after taking fatal damage. It does have a time limit (without a specific Amulet equipped).
• Hired by the Oppressor: During most of the game, Lo Wang faces two factions that fill all the spots for the role of oppressors: the Yakuza and Zilla Enterprises with the Cult of Ameonna replacing them as the main threat after the events of Chapter 8. At several points, both factions require of his services:
  • For the Yakuza, its leader, Mamushi Heika, gives him the story missions "Industrial Espionage" and "Seepage Problem", as well as the sidemission "The Cookery". If the Bounty Hunt DLC is installed, a new set of missions one of which ("Attack onYakuza's Mansion") is given by Heika's butler after she committed seppuku is given as well.
  • For Zilla, once Wang and Kamiko escape to the Palace of the Ancients, if Bounty Hunt is installed, Xing gives the bounties "Missing in Action" and "Monster Hunter".
• Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: Some of the Zilla-made collectible documents are dated after the demonic invasion.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Some of the Fortune Cookie messages are quotes that deal with this theme. Fitting considering how much of a Crapsack World the Shadow Warrior world became after the Collision:
  "'Gods always behave like the people who make them.' - Zora Neale Hurston"
  "'A man is an angel that has gone deranged.' - Philip K. Dick"
  "'The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.' - Joseph Conrad"
  "'There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils the man does of his own free will.' - Agatha Christie"
• Hyperspace Arsenal: You can have up to 8 weapons on your active slots, which you can freely swap with whatever you have in your inventory. This is even demonstrated in the opening credits, where Wang and his pals freely pull weapons from thin air on-screen.
• I Call It "Vera": During two missions that require the use of explosives, Wang calls the dynamite packs "my old pal, Tri-Ni/Mr. Trotulene" ("Ancestral Ties") and "Mr. Dynamite" ("Flirty Fishing - Part 3").
• Ice-Cream Koan: In addition to the presence of Fortune Cookies, there's a parody of the trope during the briefing for the mission "My Hero", given to you by Yakuza leader Mamushi Heika: at one point she makes a threat to Wang where his fingers will be picked up as flowers for weeks if Kamiko doesn't return alive. Smith Masamune retorts that "Intimidation is the tool of the fearful heart", to which Wang replies "Beats being the fool of the tearful fart". Smith's answer is that Wang's retort is "deeply stupid".
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Much like the 1997 game: "Tiny Grasshopper" (Easy), "I Have No Fear" (Medium), "Who Wants Wang" (Hard) and "No Pain No Gain" (Harder Than Hard).
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Proper ally health bars always show as green with no modifiers. When you run into an NPC with a green bar but a laundry list of status effects and elemental auras underneath, you know they will, without fail, attack 10 seconds later after you finish talking to their leader.
  • For every mission^note the only exception are the two first story missions you can check the exact reward (skill, money, items) in the quest menu. Seeing the rewards for the penultimate story mission, "Violent Takeover", sounds like this, but actually turns into a subversion, as the actual context is a plot twist. The mission is set in Zilla's labs and the reward is a sword named "Arm of Orochi", which implies the mission ends with Wang killing Zilla. While the mission's climax is a bossfight against Zilla, Zilla survives the fight and then decides to ally with Wang in order to fight Ameonna's plan to trigger the end of the world. Wang receives Zilla's sword as a gift to seal their alliance.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Properly upgraded and slotted, any of the higher-tier weapons could qualify, but two, in particular, stand out for being picked up near the end of the first playthrough:
  • The Arm of Orochi - received after establishing an Enemy Mine alliance with Orochi Zilla, this cyberpunk Chi-katana produces energy waves with each slash like other Chi-blade weapons...only in this case, they don't use up any Plasma ammo. In addition, the Arm of Orochi and its beam waves can't be blocked, making it useful against foes with formidable defenses like the "Geisha" enemy types.
  • The Ryuken, implied to be the sword that Smith Masamune forged from his grandfather's ashes. You get it after vanquishing Ameonna. While it only accepts white and blue quality upgrades, its formidable damage and special traits — a chance to restore all your Fury after a kill with a special attack, and casting Chi Blast on every critical hit — more than make up for that.
• Invisibility: "Vanish", one of Lo Wang's new powers, allowing you to sneak past enemies, and to perform a vicious Sneak Attack. It wears off after one attack or if the time runs out, although it's especially devastating combined with the Power Slash (which charges for less time compared to the Vanish time limit).
• Item Crafting: After returning from the Palace of the Ancients, right after defeating Corrupted Kamiko's first form and speaking with Ameonna, you get access to Smith Masamune's anvil. It allows you to fuse three gems in order to get a more powerful gem. If you have the The Way of the Wang DLC installed, you can clear the first six of the eight trials in order to gain the ability to further improve your weapons by infusing gems onto it, being able to add a fourth gem, and remove negative stats from gems.
• Jack up with Phlebotinum: Much of the action revolves around Shade, a drug distilled from Crude which comes from the Shadow Realm. Humans who use it for too long or who use too much of it end up turning into demons.
• Jump Scare: Early in the game, Wang finds an amulet that he needs to retrieve for Mamushi Heika, but it falls between the legs of a bigger monster. It gives Wang a light scare which serves only to piss him off.
  Wang: Fuck off! I hate when they do that!
• King Mook: In each level, there is a larger variant of a Mook who serves as a boss fight and drops a unique weapon or skill when defeated.
• Ladder Physics: While climbing any climbable surface, you cannot use weapons or even look around until you get off it at the top or bottom.
• Level-Map Display: Due to its nature as a procedurally-generated Looter Shooter, missions take place in changing areas, so a map is in place to help with the navigation.
• Limit Break: The game has the Shadow Fury meter, unlocked after finishing "Chapter 6: Big Trouble in Calamity". This meter is filled by killing enemies or collecting Fury spheres. Once done, when pressing the associated button, protagonist Lo Wang enters a Super Mode where his offensive and defensive stats get a significant boost, the world is painted red with all enemies marked on white, and time dramatically slows down for the monsters. Since this mode is unlocked right after Smith Masamune is killed after a raid on Dragon Mountain by Zilla's forces^note though eventually revealed to not be ZillaCorps themselves but the corrupted, rampaging body of Kamiko, this is most likely Lo Wang's way of dealing with the grief of losing a person he cared so much.
• Ludicrous Gibs: The amount of gibs in this game is still as generous as ever, especially if you use powerful attacks.
• MegaCorp: Zilla Enterprises gets an upgrade to this in this game, setting up "safe cities" under Zilla's control where people can live without fear of being torn apart by the demons, but at the price of having to work for Zilla with everything this entails.
• Money, Dear Boy: Invoked by one of the Fortune Cookie messages:
  "'When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.' - Oscar Wilde"
• More Dakka: Each of the three weapon "classes" (Demon, Human, Zilla) have their own take on the machinegun. The Demon Minigun deserves special mention.
• Mythology Gag: Towards the 1997 game:
  • The difficulty levels are named "Tiny Grasshopper", "I Have No Fear", "Who Wants Wang" and "No Pain No Gain".
  • The Sepukku Station theme plays whenever you enter Larry's shop.
  • Master Leep's daughters appear quite a lot throughout the game:
    • One of them, the one who's crying near Leep's corpse, is found in an easter egg room during "My Hero".
    • Another one is found in a secret area in Dragon Mountain near one of the locked gates. Reaching them leads to a secret passage where a sprite of one of Master Leep's daughters can be found.
    • When you return to Dragon Mountain for the mission "Big Trouble in Calamity", a dying Smith asks you to retrieve the very amulet you picked up for him at the beginning of the game. Said amulet turns out to be a Soul Well. After picking it up, turning around reveals a room with one of Master Leep's daughters from the 1997 game, more specifically the one who's found crying at Leep's corpse. It's also a subtle Five-Second Foreshadowing, as Smith Masamune doesn't survive the events of the game, dying immediately afterwards.
  • The Zilla Mechanoid Orochi Zilla pilots is a nod to the battles with Zilla, where Zilla is fought piloting a giant mech.
  • The achievement for discovering 100 secrets is called "Ancient Chinese Secret".
• Neglected Sidequest Consequence:
  • Doing the main quest "Seepage Problem" locks you out of the sidequests "Chi-ters", "The Cookery" and all three parts of "Ninja'd Scrolls" due to the death of Smith Masamune at the end of "Big Trouble in Calamity", which takes place after it. Among other things, this means missing the Firestarter^note A passive skill that improves your Fire-type attacks., Grip of Darkness^note An active skill that summons black spikes that penetrate opponents and temporarily immobilizes them., Force Slash^note The equivalent to the previous game's Wind of Crane, i.e. a passive skill that gives a ranged attack to your melee weapons, Energy Pouch^note Passive skill that increases your carried energy and plasma ammo, Sub-Zero^note A passive skill that improves your Ice-type attacks., Killer Instinct^note A passive skill that improves your attacks when on the verge of death., Arcane Mastery^note A passive skill that allows Chi-Blast and Grip of Darkness to work on tougher enemies. and Intoxication^note A passive skill that improves your Poison-type attacks. skills, the DeVolt, Emperor's Touch, The Duke and Talon's Arm weapons and some free skill points.
  • Doing the main quest "All in the Family" locks you out of the sidequests "Demon Trafficking", "Monster Tea Party" and all three parts of "Flirty Fishing" due to Ameonna's betrayal and Gozu siding with her. Among other things, this means missing the Auto-Reload^note Automatically reloads your weapons every 100 seconds, with upgrades lowering the threshold time to 20 seconds and Second Chance^note An Heroic Second Wind that triggers when your health is zero and you hit the foe that "killed you", restoring your health to 30% on success and bonuses increasing the amount to 50%, the threshold to 8.0 seconds and the damage bonus to 500%. skills; the The Beast^note A small blade-class weapon with a chance to cast Grip of Darkness on a target., Stapler^note A Nail Gun with elevated critical bonus, and a chance to restore ammo in clip on kill, Kazaguruma^note A small blade shaped after the Haladie that has a very small Critical chance, The Triad^note Revolver that increases your fire rate by 25% on weakspot kill, the The Last Kiss Goodbye Rocket Launcher, the MG Triple-6 Machine Gun, the fire-locked Feuerfaust Power Gauntlet^note Whose DPS increases with continuous weapon fire and Saw Blade^note A poor man's Razorback with the ability to restore Chi on hit. weapons and lots of Orbs of Masamune.
• Nerds Are Virgins: One of the collectible Fortune Cookies has a message in a "Confucius says" pseudoquote form.
  "Confucius says a great comic book collection is nature's birth control."
• Nerf: The first patch to the game powered down some game breaking weapons and skills, mainly the Arm of Orochi, which was overpowered due to its unlimited 100% force slash. Maximum Base Chi Regeneration has dropped from 10/s to 4/s, and auto-reload requires quadruple the time.
• No Man Should Have This Power: At the height of "Industrial Espionage", Wang and Kamiko stumble upon the latter's actual research notebook. She outright tells Wang to destroy it, fearing of anything that can happen should that research fall into the wrong hands.
• Noodle Incident: At the beginning of the game, Larry gives Lo Wang a Plot Coupon (for free) to thank him for getting him out of trouble with the Yakuzas prior to the events of the game (no much information is given).
• No Yay: In-universe: After Lo Wang defeats Zilla again at the end of "Violent Takeover", Ameonna appears and is utterly convinced they have the hots for each other, and to just kiss already, because the universe is ending soon. Zilla is disgusted, and Lo Wang is bemused, but being Lo Wang, goes along with it to annoy him some more.
• Number of the Beast: The Demon variation of the Minigun is named "Triple-Six".
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • The specific way to gain several of the weapons is to kill the Optional Boss found in several main missions and side missions' map. While side missions and some main missions can be replayed after completion, not all main missions are replayable. Notably, the Sheng-Long grenade launcher can only be gained from the loot dropped by the Lord Destroyer unique boss from the story mission "All in the Family", which isn't replayable.^note Though the New Game + feature makes no weapon truely missable
  • Several side missions become inaccessible if you advance too far in the main storyline before attending to them. The game gives you a warning when you are about to take on a quest that will make certain side missions inaccessible, such as "Seepage Problem", which ends with Masamune Smith being killed, and "All in the Family", with Ameonna's betrayal.
• Photo Mode: With free camera, a lot of image settings and an unpause feature, with notable thing being that Wang is always invisible.
• Placeholder Repeat Collectible: All areas and levels have secret items called Money Statues. These statues can be collected multiple times, however they grant a big amount of Zillyen (between 9000 and 15000) and count for the "Shiny!", "My Precious" and "Ancient Chinese Secret" achievements only on the first pick. Afterwards picking the same one grants a very low sum of money (above 1000 but no more than 2500) and nothing else, to the point regular Zillyen drops tend to cost more than these statues.
• Post-End Game Content:
  • Beating the game nets you the Ryuken sword, which drains life, casts Chi Blast on critical hit, and has a chance to recharge the full Shadow Fury bar. On the downside, it only allows Rare and Common gems.
  • If you have the Bounty Hunt DLC, you get access to the quest "Danger Zone at Outer Gates", which nets you the Dark Wanderer skill^note Decreases the requirements to cast Shadow Fury.
• Post Modern Magick: Humans and Demons have started to co-exist partially thanks to Kamiko's research, leading to a fair bit of humanoid demons going native. Wang's gun salesman is a demon by the name of Larry who got the name from a video game.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: A man in the trailer injects himself with Shade to transform into a big beast once Lo Wang comes for him. He's turned into a Talon.
• Procedural Generation: The breach between the human and demon realms created an interdimensional hernia resulting in constant shifts to the world. This is used to justify levels being randomly generated, with landscapes and paths bring new twists and turns to once familiar terrain and routine missions.
• Pun: Several of the Fortune Cookie messages are dick jokes, others are Toilet Humor. And then there are these:
  "Confucius says dressing like a nun is just a matter of getting back in the habit."
  "Once a Wang, always a Wang."
  "When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Preferably to dinner."
  "Life is a Wang way street."
• Quest Giver: In addition to the examples found in the Character sheets, the Bounty Hunt DLC introduces some more givers:
  • Shigeru Mizayaki gives you "Missing Yakuza" and "Attack of the Drones".
  • Kikuchiyo the Butler gives you "Attack on Yakuza Mansion".
  • High Priest Zenin gives you "A Delicate Subject" and "The Butchers of Onishima".
  • Mochizuki gives you "Merciless Captain", "Toxic Avengers", "Infernal Affairs", "High Voltage!" and "Cold Play".
• Random Drops: Killed enemies can drop Wanglopedia bits, Upgrade gems, ammo of any class and/or health packs.
• Randomly Generated Loot: The game has randomized upgrade gems and medallions that alter weapon/player stats and add special effects to spells and weapons, the latter of which remain fixed and consistent throughout the game apart from directly (and permanently) upgrading their base stats with Masamune Orbs.
• Retcon: Further expands again, considering that the expansions from the original count as "sequels":
  • In the 1997 game's Wanton Destruction expansion, Zilla fights in a mech and dies once the mech is destroyed. In 2, not only does Zilla survive the crash in somewhat good condition after the mech is destroyed, but knowing the situation, he teams up with Lo Wang, putting their differences aside.
  • Like the 2013 game, instead of Zilla wanting Lo Wang dead, both Lo Wang and Zilla are pitted against each other by a god. This time, it's Ameonna.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Encouraged with the new open map design and parkour. Leaping from roof to roof is a great way to evade swordsmen and also prevents heavy enemies from getting too close for comfort. The Calamity Town mapset especially encourages this.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: In Cooperative Multiplayer mode, every player sees themselves as Lo Wang and every other player as a nameless mercenary.
• Scenery Porn: The game is adept at pulling this off despite the randomly generated levels; Dragon Mountain in particular looks gorgeous, especially with the different weather effects that can occur, and the missions themselves all manage to look and feel like beautiful, handcrafted maps despite being randomly generated.
• Sequel Hook:
  • Smith Masamune's soul is contained to a Soul Jar.
  • Zilla, Xing and Mezu are still alive despite the gritty tension with Lo Wang.
  • The final cutscene of the game has Wang being eaten alive by an extra-dimensional dragon, followed by a Smash to Black. Shadow Warrior 3 follows on this by showing that Wang survived the encounter, at the cost of suffering Survivor's Guilt.
• Sharing a Body: The plot of the game has Wang winding up with a girl named Kamiko in his head as a result of Smith Masamune having to get her soul out of her body after the latter is corrupted by Zilla's demonic drug Shade. The two seek to purify Kamiko's body so she can be put back into it, but things go straight to hell when Kamiko's body takes on a demonic life of its own and Smith is killed by Zilla's men, forcing Lo Wang to seek the assistance of the Demon World to get them out of this mess.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Now in pump-action, automatic, and double/multi-barreled variants! They're pretty good against group of enemies, what with their high single-shot damage and high knockdown chance, but their single-target DPS is inferior to most other weapons, save for the autoshotguns. You can also mod the multi-barrel ones to fire all their shells at once for even more damage at the cost of accuracy, fire rate, and reloading.
• Shout-Out: Shares a page with the rest of the series.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • The Special Melee attacks all qualify: Sting (the game's version of "Divider of Heavens" from the 2013 game) is a devastating forward thrust that can pierce through multiple enemies, Vortex ("Circle of Iron") is a full 360-degree spin that hits everyone around you (and can be angled based on your reticle, allowing you to perform non-horizontal spins), and Force Slash ("Wind of Crane") lets you fire off a Sword Beam that can pierce through enemies and walls. All of them cost absolutely nothing and have no real drawbacks, save needing to briefly charge them to full power and not reaching their full potential until upgraded.
  • Even better, you can use these moves with the Razorback and the Chain-katana, and they inherit the saw-through-enemies property. Sting will do massive DPS to everything in front of you, Vortex will tear through enemies around you one-by-one, and Force Slash will deal multiple tics of damage to enemies as they pass through. With damage upgrades on the weapons and the skills fully-upgraded, it's possible for these weapons to one-shot Elites.
• Socketed Equipment: Similar to Diablo, weapons come with up to three slots for gems that give the weapon additional properties. Unlike said game, you are free to remove the socketed gems and put them into another weapon. The Way of the Wang has a trial that adds a fourth gem slot.
• Stat Overflow: The Overheal skill, obtained by defeating an Elite or The Toxitor during the main story mission "Stop the Ooze", allows Wang to, well, heal beyond the cap specified by the "Life Mastery" skill. It begins with a +25HP overheal and can reach up to +100HP.
• Stuck Items: Several weapons come with a gem, usually elemental, that can be removed. Five weapons, however, have an elemental gem locked onto them, making it impossible to remove it and leaving only two slots for other two gems. These are the base game's Emperor's Touch, the Feuerfaust, the Medusa Ray, the Chill Factor, and the Blizzard dual swords from the Christmas DLC.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Zilla Zaibatsu has analyzed The Corruption and turned it into a viable energy source / intelligence booster, greatly advancing scientific progress while integrating implant circuitry with Chi-bending to develop artificial combat magic. Unfortunately for Zilla, the corruption is also analyzing them.
• Sword Beam:
  • The "Force Slash" skill allows you to do slashes much like the "Wind of Crane" skill back in the previous game with any standard melee weapon, and can be charged for more power.
  • Chi-tech melee weapons such as the Bladez of Zaibatsu can throw slashes around with their default attacks, though they're weaker than the charged version and use ammo.
  • If you upgrade Shadow Fury enough, you can even unleash Force Slashes with your melee weapon while in this mode like you could with the Nobitsura Kage from the first game.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: Once Ameonna reveals her true colors and leaves them to die at the hands of Ameonna's Acolytes in the Palace of the Ancients, Lo Wang and Kamiko seek for a way to get past the Chi seals, eventually finding the Blade of Exile, a sword crafted from Hoji's ashes. Wang picks it up and Kamiko makes her Chi flow through it in order to undo the seals. The sword's stats are nothing to scoff at: high DPS and a chance to cast Vanish on special attack hit.
• Take That, Critics!: The trailer for the Collector's Edition shows off various positive review scores, with the exception of a 5/10 from Polygon declaring that the game was "Unfunny".
• Taking You with Me: The "Revenge" skill (which activates if you take lethal or fail to achieve a Second Chance) allows the player to do this. Wang will die after his last seconds expires, but you can try to kill whatever is in your sights with a potentially huge damage boost.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Played with. Wang's perfectly willing to tell people about the time he killed a bunch of gods and saved/broke the universe... but nobody seems to quite believe him. This is probably because everyone who knows Wang knows he likes to run his mouth, and of the three people besides Wang who actually know the full extent of what happened with Enra, two are dead and the other one is running a doom cult.
• Unbroken First-Person Perspective: After the introduction cutscene, the game and all cutscenes are entirely in first person.
• Unorthodox Reload: Not even physics can stop Lo Wang and his ninja buddies from reloading in some impossibly cool ways, such as catching shotgun shells with the gun's chamber, or tossing magazines into the air and swatting them into an Uzi's stock.
• Weak Turret Gun: Certain gems allows you to put down machineguns, rocket launchers, and grenade launchers as turrets. Unfortunately, said gems also massively decrease the weapon's DPS and reload speed, tend to have lousy accuracy and range, and the turrets have limited duration AND must be reloaded manually. While it's novel, and can be handy to have a second gun firing at the same time, it's so massively inefficient even at the higher levels/rarities that it's oftentimes a waste more than anything.
• When Dimensions Collide: The Shadow Realm merged with the human world as a result of Lo Wang's actions in Shadow Warrior (2013), with the wildlands constantly changing, creating a strange and savage new order where humans and demons live side by side.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: The Bladez of Zaibatsu, a pair of swords.
• Yakuza: With the breakdown of normal modern society, the Yakuza have returned with a vengeance. They will protect the towns under their watch with ferocity... for a price, of course. At the start of the game Lo Wang is an enforcer for a countryside Yakuza clan. Yakuza thugs are also encountered as enemies.