Thea 2: The Shattering

A very challenger and diferent strategy/RPG game

Never played thea 1, I don't like card games that much usually, but happened to test this one since gog offered it... Well the graphics are nice, but the interface is sometimes counter intuitive, it took me quite a while to understand that these grayed items shown on the crafting screen are not all the required elements to craft, but rather the ones you can choose from (3 elements at max, in 3 categories, primary secondary, and 3rd, and the same element can sometimes be used in more than 1 category !). Also once you succeed to build your village, your group is stuck inside, how do you select people you want to go out ? Also the resources : they tell you there is a button close to the mini map to display them. But it's not to display them on the mini map, it's to display them in the 3d view, and it works only if you already visited the area, if not then you need to go very close to this area to see the resources appear. And to make things worse, you can see only resources you have "researched", if not they just remain invisible. Luckily you are given a few researched ones at the start of the game... Even that was not explained... ! There are 3 small tutorials but they don't help that much, it's just for the very basic stuff. The writing is quite good, there is not one big story/quest, it's rather some random events but well written, and which succeed at building something coherent... Everything is decided through a card game. It doesn't work so badly for physical encounters, but they also added "skill challenges" which are totally different, usually you don't know how it will go before trying it. In summary : if you feel a little depressed and need a slow game to relieve your spirit, it's not a bad choice, but it's not a perfect game, the card game is not really interesting, the interface is sometimes confusing when it should not, so just something to spend some time far from the fury of our world... ! I had to cut some text, too long for gog... !

Game is little bit RNG oriented. Worth it for that, because it makes game replayable and almost all RNG options are worthy of reloading just for funny outcome. Game is unbelievably pretty. Worthy of such a amazing gameplay In this game only fools play with the one save. Customize your difficulty guys. Easy is actually hard. Anything above is for challenge gods.

Some intriguing concepts for a story-telling game. Good art. Game is stable but needs a lot of development work. Would classify it as an early beta. (However I have my doubts about the development team after looking at some of the scripts in the event editor.)

I don't know why they went in such a different direction compared to Thea 1. Too many ideas, none of it cohesive. Really dissapointing sequel.