So, I bought this (probably like most) based on the exceptionally food reviews on this site. It's got a 4.7 start rating currently, which is, to emphasize it, almost --perfect--. Yeah. It's good. Very good at times. But that's it. I know about the difficulty debate and it kinda makes sense to me, but more deaths and more careful planning would not change this review. It's an atmospheric shooter. The action elements are very well implemented, feel real, tons of fun. Magical Upgrades come on the form of so called artifacts, which give you special powers. They're used mostly to find more artifacts. You explore the world, kill zombies, mutants, dogs, whatever. All fine. I read somewhere there's a deep lore.. must have missed that. Cough. So, here's my problem. I expected an open world survival game where you could actually do stuff. You can't. There's nothing to do. No crafting, role-playing, and most of all no real exploration. It's a shooter first. The map, which is quite small compared to other titles, is mostly empty and, of course, ugly as hell (well, post-apocalypse, but still. You want to show ugliness, put it next to something nice). When I got to Pripyat I wandered through the city and found nothing. Empty buildings, some enemies, a new gun, mainly dogs. Went back and finished the main story. Sigh. I completed this game in 10h. I did not try to beat it this fast, and was pretty disappointed when it ended. I did as many side quests as I could without getting too bored. Go there, fetch this, kill that. People will say 'you missed so much!'. Problem is, I don't care. The quests I played do not make me want to go back for more. There are a couple of scripted sequences which are a lot of fun though. So, all that sounds very negative. But as a shooter, I really liked it. Just wasn't anywhere near the experience I had hoped for when reading these reviews..
First of, let me say that I played PoE1 and had a very good time. I don't actually remember much of it, which says a lot about memorable characters, storylines.. but spent a lot of hours playing, so that's a good sign. I played PoE2 for ~20 hrs, mainly because I kept trying to get into it, failing, getting frustrated.. and stopped playing.. so, here it goes. The huge adra guy from the last game got out of your keep and is now running around, also he has your soul or something. Ok..whatever. After the introduction to this mesmerizing story, I started to realize that the devs put the old characters back into the game..as mentioned above, not a good decision. I ditched the guy with the pipe, and later Aloth. With the first level up, I look at the skill tree.. wait, I've seen this before. Is this another DLC? I know it's still PoE, but damn..give me something new, it's a full price game. So, after my ship crash landed on this island, we get to our first "city". A couple of quests that are so boring I can't even remember it. Might be the booze, but probably the game. The only thing keeping me going here are the sarcastic speech options, as if the devs knew their writing is bland. The worst thing about this game is moving across the map which looks like it was been plucked from Anno 1602. Jesus Christ. They actually added things on the map to pick up like.. Berries. Water. Food. What? How lazy can you be? Is this a freemium game? I feel insulted playing your game, sirs. Finally, we're ready to set sail again and leave the Island of Boredom. We shouldn't have. The next Island is worse. It's one "location" (one screen with some monsters) and.. again, some item to pick up. I'm really getting angry now.. from here on, I made it to the castle of something, where I had to stop. For good. I really don't know what kept my interest while playing PoE1, because it seems the second installment is pretty similar, but without anything that makes it special.
