Leveling in Gravity Rush 2 is a little opaque. While you can spend precious gems to increase certain attacks and abilities, this isn’t quite the same as leveling up. Instead, leveling happens automatically after certain major story events and increases your HP and attack power.
But when it comes to doing your own fine-tuning on Kat and her gravity abilities, it’s all about the Precious Gems. You level up in Gravity Rush 2, but all the real fun is in Powering Up.
Power Up Guide
There are six categories of Power Up in Gravity Rush 2.
- Fighting Skill
- Gravity Kick
- Stasis Field
- Evasion
- Gravity Slide
- Special Attacks
Power Up - Fighting Skill
Fighting Skill enhances combo chains you can do in ground combat. While fighting skill is useful because it doesn’t consume gravity energy, realistically you won’t be using these abilities all that often. Gravity Rush 2 combat is mostly done in the sky, with gravity energy.
Still, powering up Fighting Skill can add some fresh combos that make Gravity Rush 2’s one button ground combat system a little more robust and fun.
Rather than giving an exhaustive list of Fighting Skill Power Ups (which can be found in the “Power Up” portion of the pause menu), here are the new abilities that might make the long grind worthwhile:
Power Up 2 - Moonsault / Shower Kick / Quake Stomp
This Power Up is great because it adds an attack and new button combo. Pressing Square + X while in the air initiates a drop attack. While it’s kind of useless at this stage, it gets some pretty dramatic enhancements later on.
Cost: 350 PGs
Power Up 5 - Rolling Spike Attack / Stronger Combo Attack / Shell Cracker
This is a pretty standard combo/damage enhancer when in normal or Jupiter mode. But this power up is a little more useful in Lunar Mode, where you’ll be able to bust out a new attack by pressing Square during a Rocket Jump. Suddenly aerial combat without using any gravity power becomes a lot more plausible.
Cost: 1300 PGs
Power Up 10 - SP Recovery Boost / Shock Wave / Knockback Prevention
By this point you’ve spent 15,000 gems (though the final Power Up “only” costs 4000). The maxed out Fighting Skills really aren’t all that special. You’ll get a beefed up SP recovery that will allow you to do more special attacks (Lunar Style), an area-effect shock wave (Normal Style) and Knockback Prevention to keep enemy attacks from preventing combos (Jupiter Style).
Power Up - Gravity Kick
Okay, now we’re talking. Spending your Precious Gems on Fighting Skill will only benefit you some of the time, but Gravity Kick is the workhorse of Gravity Rush 2 combat. You’ll use this all the time, so it’s worth the substantial investment it takes to Power Up.
Generally, powering up your Gravity Kick will increase the distance a kick travels, allow for more combo chains or increase the area of effect for the Jupiter Style Surge Kick (done by holding the Square button to power up the kick). But there are a few interesting Power Up levels worth highlighting:
Power Up 5 - Warp Distance Increased / Gravity Kick Boost / Gravity Coating
Two of the effects are about what you’d expect for a Gravity Kick Power Up.
Lunar Style increases the distance a Wormhole Kick can travel. While not mind-blowing, it’s useful because the Wormhole Kick starts out severely limited in range. The Normal Style Power Up allows for more chained kicks, always a treat.
But it’s the Jupiter Style Power Up that’s really useful. “Gravity Coating” keeps enemy shots from interrupting your Surge Kick. Since the Surge Kick involves holding down Square and charging the attack, it’s a real kick in the pants every time this lengthy process is interrupted by some piddling energy blast from a Nevi.
Cost: 2000 PGs
Power Up 10 - Warp Distance Increased / Gravity Kick Boost / Surge Kick Boost
It’s a little disappointing that the terminal Power Up for the Gravity Kick is so boring. Still, there’s no denying that increased Wormhole Kick range, a 6-chain Gravity Kick combo and expanded Surge Kick area of effect will all prove useful in most Gravity Rush 2 combat scenarios.
Cost: 6000 PGs
Power Up - Stasis Field
The Stasis Field is vastly enhanced from the first Gravity Rush, so it’s worth investing Precious Gems in leveling it.
While most Stasis Field Power Up levels allow for increases the effect of the attack or raises the number of items that can be carried at once (beginning at two with a maximum of six), certain Stasis Field Power Ups add the highly useful capacity to deflect enemy attacks. Take a look:
Power Up 3 - Physical Deflect
Hell yeah. Now you can jam the Circle button to deflect physical objects. Too bad most Nevi use energy attacks. Still, this is an interesting new dimension to the primarily offensive Stasis Field ability.
Cost: 800 PGs
Power Up 7 - Energy Deflect
This makes Stasis Field powering up a worthwhile endeavor. With Energy + Physical Deflects you can bounce back most attacks launched against you. This is an optimal Power Up to pursue if you’ve never gotten into the habit of dodging.
Cost: 2100 PGs
Power Up - Evasion
This one is kind of useless. You’ll rarely have an opportunity where you need Kat to dodge multiple times in a row, which is the primary benefit to powering up Evasion. As if to acknowledge its limitations, Evasion only has 5 Power Up levels (so does Gravity Slide), compared to the 10 levels available in Gravity Kick, Fighting Skill and Stasis Field.
Still, it might be worth your while to Power Up Evasion if the first or last Power Up level appeals to you:
Power Up 1 - Butterfly Sweep / Harpoon Shot / Assault Break
While they have three different names for the three different play styles, the first Evasion Power Up offers one big bonus: the ability to counterattack in a dodge.
To dodge press in a direction with the L stick and R2. Add a press of the Square button to the end of that combo and you’ll perform a counterattack. Pretty useful.
Cost: 250 PGs
Power Up 5 - Gravity Gauge Recovery Boost
While Evasion Power Up two through four are all increases in the dodges you can chain (useless), it might be worth the Precious Gem expenditure to lock down the final Power Up. Gravity Gauge Recovery Boost means that any time you successfully dodge an attack “at the last moment” your Gravity Gauge will fully replenish, allowing you to stay in the air longer. Is it worth 2500 Precious Gems and the preceding expenditures? No, not really.
Cost: 2500 PGs
Power Up - Gravity Slide
This adds sliding attacks and jumps to your existing Gravity Slide. Your basic Gravity Slide is hard enough (and not all that useful in combat scenarios), so this Power Up is only for the true Slide Heads out there.
Power Up 1 - Sliding Attack
This transforms the Gravity Slide from a quick way to get around into a combat tactic. Now you’ll be able to press the Square button to initiate an attack in all three Styles.
Cost: 200 PGs
Power Up 2 - Sliding Evade
Now you can dodge while sliding.
Cost: 300 PGs
Power Up 4 - SP Gauge Boost
In the right hands, this Power Up could be very effective. Run into an enemy and you’ll fill your SP Gauge. This could be powerful if you like Special Attacks, enabling you to spam ground-based Nevi to quickly replenish Kat’s most powerful forms of attack.
Cost: 700 PGs
Power Up - Special Attacks
Special Attacks are activated with the Triangle button when the red SP Gauge is full and blinking. They’re great for clearing out a lot of Nevi, but unless you have a strategy for quickly filling your SP Gauge (such as a pumped up Evasion), the Special Attack is more opportunistic than a central strategy.
Powering up your Special Attacks costs a lot of gems and only incrementally improves your attacks. That means the Lunar Style Gravity Typhoon lasts longer, the Normal Style Spiraling Claw lasts longer and the Jupiter Style Micro Black Hole gets bigger. Still, it might just be worth levelling for the maxed out Power Up effect, which is really cool.
Power Up 6 - Gale Zone / Unique SP Gauge Recovery / Ultra Black Hole
Now this is a Power Up. Of course, you have to max out Special Attacks, but it’s worth it for the most powerful attacks (outside Finisher animations) in the game. Here’s what you’ll get:
- Gale Zone (Lunar Style): “Create a devastating whirlwind that hurts enemies, blocks attacks, and makes you invulnerable.”
- Unique SP Gauge Recovery (Normal Style): “Every attack that lands on an enemy recovers energy in your SP Gauge.”
- Ultra Black Hole (Jupiter Style): “Recover health based on the number of enemies absorbed.”
Cost: 7000 PGs
Power Up Summary
If you’re Precious Gem-pinching, we’d recommend focusing your Power Up expenditures on Stasis Field and Gravity Kick. Those offer the most bang for your buck. After that, it’s up to personal taste. But here’s what we’d do:
Aim to max out Stasis Field and Gravity Kick, but along the way buy the first Evasion Power Up, which allows you to add a counterattack to your dodges. Also purchase the first Gravity Slide Power Up, which will add an attack to your repertoire. Then, focus your efforts on either Fighting Skill, Gravity Slide or Special Attack, based on which of the three you’ve found most fun.
Your goals should be:
- Max out Stasis Field and Gravity Kick
- Buy early Power Ups that add button press attacks
- Focus on one “hobby” Power Up
All of this is going to cost you a lot of Precious Gems. I’ve got some bad news...
How To Get Precious Gems In ‘Gravity Rush 2’
One annoying part of Gravity Rush 2 is just how few Precious Gems you earn for Story and Side Missions. You may expect completing certain missions will reward you with a pile of Precious Gems, but that’s not really how Gravity Rush 2 operates. Instead, keep an eye out for Precious Gems in the environment, particularly on the underside of cityscapes. Get used to walking upside down to pick up the long lines of gems running along under-surfaces.
But really, you have to grind for Precious Gems. That means mining.
Talk to Misai on the Banga Mining Boat and go out to mining locations with him. Once you go out with Misai a few times he’ll offer up the choice of various mining areas. You want a high concentration of Gravity Ore and higher Mining Populations.
Then get to grinding. While punching/kicking on the ground works alright, Gravity Kicks, particularly with the Jupiter Style, will come in handy to harvest Precious Gems as quickly as possible.
Powering up is a long road in Gravity Rush 2. And the game won’t enrich you in the process of playing the main Story Missions. If you want those Power Ups, you’re going to have to work for them.
