Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy

OK, first things first: the game had a very rough launch, specially on GoG. There were tons of bugs and crashes, and GoG didn't receive patches adequately for the first few days, which made it even worse for us. However, the game has come a long way in the month and a half since release. There are certainly a couple bugs here and there, but the developers did a pretty good job not only in ironing them out, but also in listening to the community and putting some QoL features that were requested. So, with that out of the way, let's talk about the gameplay, the devs intentions with the game, and what it actually provides. The game is about traveling, and it does that somewhat well. You have to keep track of travel gear and protect yourself from the weather to avoid losing your will to keep living. Losing Hope, a meter that's linked to some of your special traits, including your willingness to eat, can be more dangerous than losing Health, and it's harder to recover too. You'll also find about clues and rumours that will point you to interesting locations where you can find loot or things that'll help in your journey. Combat is deliberately unrewarding. Enemies don't drop loot, and don't give XP. You level up by doing gret deeds. That makes it compelling to avoid fights (by sneaking or talking instead). The experience is pretty neat, and the whole idea and intention is awesome. It still fails a bit short due to some balancing problems (you become too powerful and unstopable pretty early, even in the "Wayfarer" difficulty). All in all, I think the game deserves a chance, even if just for the novelty of it. And hopefully the devs manage to solve not just the bugs that are still there, but also the few gameplay issues that can hinder the experience in the later half of the game.

The first entry in the series is one of my all-time favorites, played it close to 200 hours, so I was quite excited to try out the sequel. Unfortunately, it turned out to be quite a disappointment. The game introduces a lot of new mechanics to the series, but at the cost of dumbing down pretty much every pre-existing one, especially the combat. I originally started writing a review comparing the two games, but it turned out to be over three times the character limit allowed, so I won't get into the details on that. It also doesn't really matter, as this game primarily fails in its performance and bugginess. Although they aren't really large or complex, loading a map can take 5-10 seconds on a 5800X. Traveling like this becomes a problem by mid/late game, where you literally just run through them in 15-20 seconds, only to get hit by the next loading screen. Even on the lowest frequency setting, traveling a single node on the world map can trigger multiple encounter events (most I've seen is 3), which each can involve the loading of 1-3 maps. Between this and the limited fast travel options, I'm pretty sure I've spent 20% of my playthrough on loading screens. But where it really gets bad is the bugs, especially those involving quests. Quest objectives not spawning, completions not registering, tasks not clearing, rewards not being granted, it's all here and seemingly pretty common. As for the maps, the game literally needed two cheat mechanics built in to get around the untravellable terrain spit out by the generator. There's a lot more to be said, but I'm running out of space again. TL;DR: While I'm disappointed in it as a sequel (calling it Unexplored was a mistake), it still could be a good game, if not for the performance and bugs. I'm giving it 3 stars, but that's really a 2.1 rounded up. Development's still ongoing, so I hope that I can revisit it in a year or two and find a better game, but currently this is an early beta marketed as a released product.

Steam and Epic store got a patch to version 1.04 on 28/05/2022. GOG version is stuck on 1.03 as of now, on 30/05/2022. Fix that BIG SUGAR!!! And maybe I'll change my rate.

this game is a sad case...all it does is freeze every 10 seconds. not to mention the price. beware if you purchase this garbage.