The atmosphere of the game is fantastic. I really enjoyed the artistic direction of the game; the soundtrack, in-game art, and cutscenes were all perfect in my eyes, even if the cutscenes suffer from being a bit low resolution for modern standards. Aside from that there's not really much good to say. Voice acting leaves a lot to be desired, and the modern-day dialog was a bit too crass for my tastes. The story starts off strong, but the ending of the game is very sudden, and feels rushed. Clearly the game is set up for a sequel which makes it feel unfinished. Dialog is very linear, which is a big departure from the first game. Personally I prefer dialog trees as it makes the game replayable. The puzzles are mostly quite easy, but at least they are related to the story. The only hard puzzle is a stupid baking exercise that has no relevance to the game whatsoever. I wish there was more use of the detective equipment (fingerprinting, etc.) The game has some technical issues that ought to be fixed. For some reason everything but the cutscenes and audio seems to run quicker than it should. Mostly this meant that walking around was quicker (actually a bonus IMO), but it also made some of the puzzles very difficult. Particularly the door code puzzle, where I almost didn't have enough time to enter the code. The movement was also buggy, with the playable character often walking into walls because there were areas where they couldn't walk around obstacles. There were a couple of places where Victoria would get stuck on a step (e.g. the elevator), and I'd have to reload a previous save to fix it. Also worth mentioning that my game crashed multiple times when trying to watch the first two cutscenes. I didn't have any further crashes for the rest of the game up until the penultimate cutscene, which is right at the climax of the game!! I had to try watching it >10 times before I made it through without crashing.
Really fun game IMO. At first I had some weird graphical glitches but these were fixed by disabling "HW Vertex Processing" in the settings app. After that the game ran smoothly with no bugs/glitches on Linux. Pros: - The characters are all charming - Story is well written - The camera/photograph mechanic is fun and compels you to explore the whole map to take photos of all the animals - Music is top-notch - Stealth sections are fun - World design is great Cons: - Melee combat isn't good, and mostly amounts to spamming left-click whilst hoping you don't accidentally hit your teammate. The final boss fight is great though - Most of the time you get free reign with the 3rd person camera angles, but occasionally the camera moves into a fixed position (like old horror games) which can be jarring - Handling of the hovercraft is quite janky. The trick is to move your mouse slowly, and slow down if you want to make a sharp turn Overall I'd say the pros massively outweigh the cons. There isn't a massive amount of combat in the game, and the hovercraft turning is only an issue with some side-quests (the outlaw caves)
100% worth full price. The game really shines in its writing: great story; characters are well written and have great personalities; world-building is done well and information is drip-fead over the course of the game; dialogue is fantastic; choices affect the storyline; brilliant voice acting; music is also great. On the other hand the gameplay isn't so great: - Most late-game enemies spam you with stun moves so I couldn't get the chance to attack before dying. So my only choice was to pick off enemies 1-by-1 which is pretty boring. - Group combat mode stopped working properly and Geralt wouldn't build up any attack streaks even when he wasn't affected by stuns, etc. - Geralt puts the torch away every time you loot an enemy/chest. - Geralt puts his weapon away a few seconds after a fight ends. This is frustrating when you're in a crypt and pull out the torch after killing enemies, and then he puts it away again shortly after. - Geralt moves quicker with his sword out on group mode, so I suggest you activate this whenever possible. But stay away from enemies or he'll put it away when the fight ends. - *possible spoiler*: there is a house in Chapter V that has a bunch of characters you met in earlier chapters which kinda just pulls you out of the immersion. Maybe if they were in separate, random houses it would be more believable, but lumping them all in one hut felt like a cheap way of saying "Hey, remember all these people you helped?!?!?" These seem like small problems, but the first two are so common that they really dampened my experience of the game. Any combat sequence or crypt location became a real bore, and I started to wish they'd just offered the game as a visual novel instead. But I played on and I'm glad I did because ultimately the storyline/characters/dialogue is what really makes this game so great. Spent 48+ hours on my first playthough. Will play again with different choices to see the other possible storylines.
Honestly this game just isn't good. Combat: I played with an XBox controller, so I'll reference the XBox controls (e.g. X, Y, RB, RT, etc.) in my review. Very limited. Basically you just have to build up a combo by spamming the X at different enemies. If you see an enemy about to attack you, then hold down RB to block. If you were in the middle of an attack, then still hold down RB because it will turn into a counter attack. That's pretty much the entire combat system, no need to dodge, use throwing knives, etc. AI: The enemies are blind. Often I'd assassinate someone right in front of the guards, or start a fight within 10m of a guard and they wouldn't notice. Audio: - Why is Altair the only person with an American accent? It's just weird. - The audio quality of background NPCs is dreadful. Sounds like they were recorded with a Yogscast 2011 toaster mic - There were a couple of times where I couldn't hear the main person speaking simply because the background voices were too loud. Parkour controls: Not great. Altair seems to really like to jump on small ledges. Often I'd try to jump into a hay stack but instead he wanted to jump on the rim of the stack, which gave guards a chance to catch up with me. Often he'd jump off buildings in a different direction to what I'd intended, so he'd end up falling to the ground. A couple of times he'd jump off a viewpoint and fall to his death, instead of doing the swan dive. Story: Honestly who cares about the modern day story? It was such a vibe killer to go from running around rooftops and killing guards, to being forced to walk around a single room listening to some old geezer. Also what's up with cutscenes? You have to press a button at specific times just to see the cutscene from a good angle? Why? Missions: All the same. Go to region X of city Y, complete the same 6 tasks, assassinate someone, return to master. Absolutely no variation.
I found the combat to be quite lacking. There are only three basic attacks (attack, parry, stun), and two advanced moves that can be used after chaining a combo. You can also use the batarang and grappling hook to stun enemies, but using them in-combat often gives enemies time to hit you. There are also "predator" style stealth missions, where you have to eliminate a group of enemies in a room without being seen (they have guns and kill you pretty quickly if you're seen). My strategy was to hide on the gargoyles near the ceiling and take enemies out one-by-one sneakily. The game gives you floor-gratings to hide in, and walls to explode, but I found these hard to access without being seen. The first scarecrow mission was cool, but subsequent missions become boring (just a repetitive stealth mini-game). The bosses were quite lacking. On the occasion that I died, it was simply because I didn't know what to do. The death screen then explains how to defeat the enemy, and the fight is over in a few minutes. There are also challenges available from the main menu, but I didn't bother playing these. The story is decent, and features a variety of Batman's most popular villains. The ending and final fight are disappointing. The graphics and atmosphere seemed like they were cool, but I spent most of my time in detective mode looking for Riddler trophies, so I didn't really experience this much. Voice acting and music are good. Riddler trophies aren't such a big pain compared to collectibles in other games. They often lead you to references to other villains from the batman-universe which is cool. I would recommend you leave the collectibles until the very end. You need to have all of the bat-tools to find them all, so if you go search between missions you'll end up wasting your time.
The game opens with a message saying "Controller Recommended". Unfortunately the game doesn't work with my xbox 360 controller, so I was stuck with mouse and keyboard. I couldn't get past just how bad the game works with a mouse & keyboard and gave up after the second boss. Maybe if the game actually worked with controllers I would've had a better experience?
If you are a fan of the Elder Scrolls series, be aware that this game is NOT the same as the others. It's very much a linear dungeon crawler with no open world, trading, quests, etc. That isn't to say it's a bad game—personally I enjoyed it very much—but that you shouldn't expect the game to be of similar style to the rest of the series. - The story is interesting, especially for those who are already a fan of the Elder Scrolls lore. - Dialogue is humorous and 100% voice acted. You can talk to enemies, and sometimes you can convince them not to attack you! - There are 7 levels with different and interesting designs. In one level you partake in a 'hunt' and basically play through it while being chased by a horde of enemies, which I though was unique. - It's tough but IMO the challenge is what makes it fun. However, it certainly isn't perfect: - Sometimes your character will veer to the side when trying to walk forwards, which is particularly noticeable when you end up jumping in a totally different direction than you intended to, thus making you fall to your death. - The AI is very poor, and leads to enemies often zigzagging through small corridors, or getting caught on corners. Sometimes the enemy will try to use spells but hit the floor and accidentally kill themselves. - The game also crashes to DOS and restarts every time you die, which isn't a huge issue but still slightly annoying. - When the music stops there's a few seconds of silence before the track plays again, which was a little odd. - It's also worth mentioning that the manual lists skills under the wrong attributes. Despite all its quirks, I still had a great time playing it and would recommend it to anyone looking for a challenge.
