This game is a high quality tactical combat game hidden under 18 tonnes of annoying errands and cryptic tasks, running here and there, talking to people, playing with trinkets, managing inventory. I've just spent the last 2 hours trying to figure out quest actions and I'm bored stiff. I already have a job, I don't need another one on the weekends.
Beautifully produced with clever dialogue, I was nonetheless bored senseless after about 3 hours and couldn't continue. To be fair I struggle with games that are 99% story with 1% clicking because to me, if I wanted that format, I'd read a good book. If you aren't like me then maybe you'll like it. If you like tactical or strategic thinking, and story is just an added bonus, avoid this like the plague.
As one of the (hot female) characters in Witcher 2 says, sometimes we need the bare truth to penetrate our self-deception. I have some bare truth for the creators of this game. Problems are rife. Here are some examples: - You're fighting a room full of bad guys.. suddenly you enter into a killing blow animation. All the other bad guys vanish, the camera angle changes to cinematic, and neither you or your target are standing where you were standing in battle. What? - Changing running direction results in a 1 second delay while the character turns around. This makes moving about very unintuitive and laggy.. perfect for an interactive story but not for a combat game. - After fighting side-by-side with the King's men, you then go on a killing spree of those same men while the story still has them as your allies. What? - Set pieces are abysmal. In one scene, you run from a large and intimidating foe, and the entire mechanics are: run in one direction, occasionally press 1 button. The visuals are impressive but who cares? Space invaders requires you to move in 2 directions and press one button - that's 50% more engaging. To think that a team of people spend weeks on scenes like this is really disappointing. It really proves the critics have lost all credibility.. old news, I know. "Redifines expectations of the genre"? Please!! It's not all bad though.. the good: - Beautiful looking scenery and landscapes. Really rich detail in your surroundings - Satisfying spell and combat animations - Great dialogue for a game - Rich, deep characters. The king is like no other fictional king I've ever seen, and in subtle ways. - High level of visual and audio polish - When the story isn't completing shooting itself in the foot, it's actually great Should we be judging a game against it's peers and past games? Or should we also judge them against future potential? I would be really really disappointed if this is the best that CD Projekt can do, or the game industry in general. This game rocks in many ways, but some fundamentals are shaky. This game is Anna Kournikova, not Venus Williams. To score a 10, we want the best of the two.....
I sometimes wonder if people just start believing each others' hype sometimes instead of asking themselves if a game is actually fun. BG2 is quality in many ways, but I struggle to feel that strong lure that a great game has to pull me in and not let go.. to stay up all night against my better judgement. I have to force myself to play BG2 because I want to experience the whole game and see what the fuss is about but so far it's a bit boring. The story is plain, but the dialogue is quite good, with great voice acting. Combat is average, it is of course tactical in some ways but there are reams of useless spells, the UI is clunky, the pathfinding is clumsy as well with characters getting in each others way. Aesthetically it's top notch, with beautiful environments and music - no complaints there. What it really lacks is that 'just one more quest/battle' feeling. Doing things like memorising spells, cleaning your inventory and walking from A to B feel more like work than fun. Try BG2 to experience a classic but just don't expect it to be gaming nirvana.
