AquaNox 2: Revelation

Remember Descent where you moved your ship in three dimensions in order to weave around shots coming at you from odd angles? You will find yourself in pretty much the same kind of situation here. This game is a futuristic sub warfare first person game. Combat can get pretty frantic and with all the lasers, torpedoes, bubbles, and stuff flying everywhere it can be a challenge sometimes to setup your shots right. The game is very fun and often overlooked. The story is alright with voice acting that is ok and the interactions between characters isn't the focus of this game. The real meat of the game is darting around in an underwater valley or between buildings in a underwater city while dodging torpedoes and lasers. You even get to customize your submarine a bit to fit the loadout and fighting style you prefer. If you enjoyed Descent and other similar games you're going to have fun with this one.

The depth is real! I haven't player the predecessors, so I might have missed some references. Anyway, I fully and absolutely enjoyed this gem of a shooter. The story is one of the greatest I have ever encountered. Although there is a heavy factor of depression and desperation dominating throughout the entire game, it somehow is replicable due to the events that the player undergoes while the playthrough. The dogfights are getting tougher and tougher the more the story proceeds and while you just needed a good weapon to triumph over the enemies at the start, the end-game is pretty though and you will need to dodge a lot to survive. The sound is not bad, some heavy metal riffs accompany you while fighting; while roaming around the station, there isn't much ambient sounds to listen to. Overall, this game scores by its professional voice-over artists, the deep, thrilling story and the demanding dogfights.

Never played this one until now, and how does it hold up? poorly Pros: - The fights can be enjoyable - The story is interesting enough - Some of the weapons are just fantastic, with room to experiment and improve your underwater tactics - bonus objectives during main missions grant juicy rewards that can give you an edge in combat (unfortunately this is also part of the cons) Cons: - Each mission takes place in huge areas that are mostly empty, just miles upon miles of underwater desert - Each main mission has bonus objectives, but you are not told what or where those objectives are so you have to scout miles upon miles of underwater desert just to find said bonus - There is no map so prepare to get lost in an uderwater desert - The main character is dumb as a rock, I'll never forget May Ling saying "take me" (in a sexual way) and William responding "you're making me nervous" , even though he previously acknowledged her interest in him while talking to another NPC. Also he is oblivious to the plot, and talks to every stranger like if they were life-long friends, you would expect better for a man that set off to see the world and have adventures. He is the main character and is the least interesting person in the story If you decide to pick up this game do yourself a favor: get a walkthrough if you want to get those bonus objectives, otherwise just forget about them and enjoy the combat and the story

After a ten year break, I picked up Aquanox 2 again and I do not recognize the game anymore. Back then, I played straight through the missions without following bonus missions on easiest difficulty. Nowadays, some thousand hours of first person shooter experience later, I try to accomplish bonus missions and play on hard difficulty. I can see now why many Aqua fans call Aquanox 2 the weakest part of the series. Following missions - even without bonus objectives - is a tedious task which is often interrupted by an overwhelming final wave of enemies at the end. This often results in restarting the mission over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over before lowering the difficulty and trying it over and over and over and ove andr over and over and over and over before lowering the difficulty again and trying it once more before desparately hitting Alt+F4 (which somehow does not work when running the game in Windows 10). Imagine it like Dark Souls but without the rewarding feeling players tell about. The story is not half as shallow as the dephts the game takes place in but it somehow provides a context for the missions. Surprisingly, the German sync of the game is better and more lively than the English one (at least from what I recall from my old CD release). Two positive things about the game are its graphics and the music. Although textures and models are outdated, they are still decent-looking and have aged pretty well. The music fits in the category of late 1990's industrial; a special taste but it fits the game. So, should you buy the game? Honestly, I say you should not. Unless you are on the OCD side of things and want to complete the Aqua series and you are willing to play the game on its lowest difficulty and to skip side quests, this game is not to be recommended.

I tried to give this game a chance many times over the years. Together with Aquanox 1 it was my very first purchase on GOG but I never really got past the first few missions. I'll be posting the same review for both games because they're extremely similar to each other, both in gameplay, as well as with how the single player campaign is constructed. The first thing that struck me about them is how much goddamned dialogue you have to sit through in between each mission. Sometimes it felt like it could go on for 10-15 minutes at a time, which is a huge issue if the missions themselves are extremely brief. It also wouldn't be such a hassle if it wasn't for the fact that the story isn't terribly interesting and the voice acting is just... bad. If you feel like you just want to click through all this yapping then playing the game feels all the more pointless, to be honest. And the missions? Well, they range from bland and formulaic to just tedious and confusing. As I mentioned, many of them are very short so the overall impression the game is giving me is utter boredom. When I fire up a shooter, I just wanna shoot stuff, and there's not much of that going on in this game, at least within the first few hours of the campaign. Finally, I'm just not feeling it when it comes to controls and combat. It doesn't really feel like you're steering a submarine, it's more like flying a spaceship and shooting other spaceships, except there's some plankton floating around instead of space dust. Rather disappointing. Overall, neither of these games were very satisfying to me and despite my best efforts, I just couldn't get into them.