Dying Light: The Beast Review (PC)

I’ve been waiting a long time for this one. As someone who’s been hooked on the Dying Light series since the very beginning, I’ve always loved its mix of parkour freedom, tense nights, and brutal zombie-slaying. So, when Techland revealed Dying Light: The Beast, I was instantly all in. The years of delays only made the anticipation worse, especially since it started life as an expansion for Dying Light 2 before evolving into a full game. Finally, during Summer Game Fest 2025, I got the chance to play it for myself. After being teased for years, stepping into Kyle Crane’s shoes again was everything I had hoped for, and in that moment, I knew Techland had created something special.

Game Name: Dying Light: The Beast
Platform(s): PC (reviewed), PS5, Xbox Series X|S; PS4 & Xbox One (coming late 2025)
Developer(s): Techland
Publisher(s): Techland
Release Date: September 18, 2025

Dying Light: The Beast stars returning protagonist Kyle Crane. In Dying Light: The Following, players had to decide Kyle’s fate—either nuking the city he tried to save or sacrificing himself to protect Harran’s citizens. In Dying Light: The Beast, the canon ending is revealed: Kyle sacrificed himself. This choice leads to him being captured, tortured, and experimented on for the next 13 years by a figure known only as “The Baron.”

As you’d expect, years of abuse left Kyle broken and angry. When an incident finally enables him to escape, he has only one goal—revenge. The entire game is built around Kyle fighting to claim it. But before that can happen, he must grow stronger, gather allies, and collect gear, becoming a reluctant hero-for-hire. That’s where you, or in this case me, come in. Taking on quests, helping allies, or stumbling into events makes up a big part of the game. While the first few hours are slow, things pick up after about three to four hours of play.

Open World Sandbox Exploration

The game is set in a massive fictional location known as Castor Woods, which can be described as an once-thriving tourist hotspot now devastated by the outbreak that took place in Dying Light. The setting blends dense forests, swamps, and wetlands with scattered towns and landmarks, creating a mix of open wilderness and urban spaces perfect for the game’s signature parkour.

Techland has drawn inspiration from the Swiss and Polish Alps, giving the region a distinctive atmosphere that feels both scenic and haunting under the shadow of infection. This is essentially a sandbox playground where players can do almost anything. Kill hordes of zombies, drive vehicles over enemies, parkour across rooftops, climb buildings and more. This is one of those worlds where “everything you see, you can reach” is true, and I’m not kidding. Outside of the skybox and perimeter walls, which take a long time to reach, the entire map is explorable.

There’s so much to do that I spent hours simply messing around—testing parkour routes, seeing how many zombies I could run over, setting up piles of propane tanks which I could explore once I lured enough zombies over, or wandering off instead of chasing objectives. But that freedom is what makes an environment like this shine. Exploration is not wasted either. While roaming, I stumbled into areas with valuable loot and mini quests, such as rescuing survivors from zombies or humans, taking on military outposts, establishing access to locations and such. You can ignore them and continue the main story, but helping out comes with worthwhile rewards and much needed experience points to level up.

My main complaint here is with survivor AI. Sometimes I’d heal or save an NPC only to watch them immediately charge into a fight and die. Moments like that made me feel like I wasted time and resources.

Combat, Beast Mode, and Crafting

Since Kyle is not the same man we left in Dying Light: The Following, he starts back at level one. To get stronger, you’ll complete missions, gain experience, and face off against terrifying bosses known as Chimeras. These encounters are tied to the story, and taking one down grants Kyle a powerful upgrade, with some side effects I won’t spoil. Over time, Kyle unlocks Beast Mode, a devastating ability that briefly turns him into a near-unstoppable force.

Beast Mode charges as you rack up melee kills, and when triggered, Kyle becomes a whirlwind of destruction. He smashes through enemies, tosses heavy objects like toys, dashes through walls, and unleashes brutal punches. It’s pure chaos and feels like playing Punch-Out, but with a maximum dose of steroids. Rip and tear! Yeah, that’s a term better used for Kyle than that other guy.

Weapons and combat variety are huge. Knives, bats, axes, shovels, pistols, rifles, SMGs, bows, crossbows, grenades, molotov cocktails; you’ll come across them all. Blueprints allow you to craft stronger weapons and mods, while the crafting system also covers ammo, explosives, and healing items. Best of all, you can craft most things on the fly without returning to a workbench. Only blueprint weapons and modifications require a station.

Weapon durability adds tension, since every swing or shot wears gear down and there’s nothing worse than being told that your weapon has broken in the middle of fending off a zombie attack. Thankfully, you can repair in the field or scrap items for parts to build something stronger.

Stealth is an option too, with several skills supporting it, but it’s not always reliable. I tried sneaking around, only to get spotted more often than not. Luckily, the gunplay is smooth and powerful. With so many weapon types available, it’s easy to find one that fits your style, even the crossbow, which isn’t technically a gun, still feels satisfying.

Zombie swarms are relentless. Enemies respawn infinitely, and NPCs even warn you it’s impossible to kill them all. They’re not lying. As soon as I thought I cleared an area, another wave piled in. Survival means picking your battles wisely.

Story length is about 20–22 hours, while completionists will find another 10 hours of content in side missions and exploration.

Day, Night, and Weather Systems

Techland emphasized the day/night and weather systems, and after playing, I understand why. While most of the action unfolds in daylight, the game cycles into nighttime, and that’s when the true horror begins. At night, powerful zombie variants emerge, and they are terrifying to face. Sneaking past them often fails, and if they chase you, it’s nearly impossible to fight back, even when you’ve activated your beast mode, especially early in the game. Fans of Dying Light and Dying Light 2 will recognize the panic of these nighttime runs.

Weather adds even more immersion. One moment it’s bright and calm, the next it’s storming with heavy rain and whipping wind. On PC at max settings, the world looks stunning, and the shifting conditions keep the atmosphere fresh.

Multiplayer Survival Fun

Dying Light: The Beast continues Techland’s tradition of drop-in, drop-out co-op for up to four players. One player hosts the world, with story and world progression tied to their save. Guests can jump in freely to fight, explore, and complete missions. Importantly, all XP, loot, and quest progress carry over to each player’s own save. So, there’s little reason not to party up with friends, as you’ll all be able to experience the game and reap the benefits of doing so.

Unfortunately, crossplay and cross-progression aren’t available yet, meaning sessions are limited to the same platform. Hopefully Techland addresses this with a future patch.

The PC Experience – Performance and Options

Playing Dying Light: The Beast on PC was smooth and nearly flawless. No stutters, no bugs, no crashes—something rare in today’s PC landscape. Techland gave PC players a wide range of settings, making it easy to tune performance across different hardware. On my setup, the game ran at 4K max settings with DLSS (Native) enabled (without frame generation) and never dropped below 60fps.

That said, I do have two complaints. First, accessibility options are limited, which may lock out players who need more support features. Second, upscaling is mandatory. You’ll either use DLSS, FSR, XeSS, or TAAU (Temporal Anti-Aliasing Upsampling), and there’s no option to disable them. While I’ve accepted it, not every PC gamer will appreciate being locked into it.

What impressed me most was being able to play the game on my ROG Ally X (performance setting) at solid frame rates. Running at 900p/1080p with TAAU set to performance, I averaged around 50–60 FPS in areas without too many zombies. Once the hordes showed up, though, the frame rate dipped closer to 30-40 FPS. Performance likely would have been better if I were running Windows with AMD’s FSR enabled, but since I’m using Bazzite, which doesn’t support FSR (not all the time), that wasn’t an option. Even so, the experience was still perfectly playable away from my PC, and that’s what really mattered to me.

The Best Dying Light Yet

I’ve played every Dying Light title, and just when I thought Techland had abandoned the series, they announced Dying Light: The Beast. After years of delays, the wait has been worth it.

Ironically, this game started as an expansion for Dying Light 2, but it’s now the strongest entry in the franchise. The combat is intense, the sandbox world is huge and immersive, and Beast Mode is pure joy to use.

If you’ve ever enjoyed Dying Light and wanted Techland to take the series further, this is exactly what you’ve been waiting for.