The game is a must for the people that loved the first one, but my playthrough was over in only 5 hours!! The fights are a bit repetitive, and some sequences are a bit over the top (is this Star Wars or Dragon Ball?), but man do you feel strong in the Force!!!! Buy it on sale, and only if you loved the first one.
The game keeps in with the atmosphere of the Witcher series, and delivers that in a completely different format: a nice combination of moving around making decisions and playing Gwent-like minigames. A large portion of these games do not follow the standard 2-out-of-3 rule of Gwent, but rather require you to perform a certain task in a 1-round game by playing a certain sequence of special cards. If you like brain-teasers and Gwent this is definitely for you. The only thing I did not appreciate was the waste of effort on looking for chests: they do not contain loot for you current campaign, but eye-candy to be used in the multiplayer.. That said, I had too much of a good time for this small detail to cause and drop in rating
The only reason I had to remove a star is because of the annoying machine freezes this game causes. Quality assurance should not be optional... That said, the game is an ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE! You are a nameless one, on a self-discovery/self-loathing journey, there is a case to solve, lots of quirkiness, factions to join with dubious views on the world, a world that can be strongly affected by beliefs.. if all this rings a bell you are probably a fan of Planescape, and you will probably love this game. The game is not for everybody, there is a lot to read (or listen), and it may be more enjoyable if you are into politics, intellectually stimulating discussions, and are not bothered by extreme non-political-correct. Being a lover of lost causes may also help. You are constantly pushed in both reasonable and crazy directions by the different parts of your damaged brain talking to you and you may find yourself saying things you'd never dare (literally because your brain told you so). It was also able to surprise me several times. My playthrough was only 17h, way less then my usual RPGs, and still it felt completely right this way.
- 230h of play time (turn based mode) and thoroughly loved 99% of it (the exception being only the extremely sharp difficulty spike on the last map -- but nothing tuning down the difficulty setting cannot fix) - Lots of BG2 and Planescape Torment vibes and references - none of the stupid timers that are still preventing me to start a second playthrough on Kingmaker - even being fresh from the gigantic campaign, I am already looking forward to several other playthroughs: the 10 Mythic Paths alone promise to provide a significant different experience, and from what I can see Good/Evil/Ultraevil, Chaos/Law, plenty of class choices also contribute to replayability - RPGs for me are all about the party: I haven't felt such a connection to my companions since BG2 and Planescape, they even made me enjoy the company of a Paladin! - Crusade management is also an improvement respect to Kingmaker: if you have ever played King's Bounty, most of the crusade is fought in that fashion, which provides nice breaks between your dungeon adventures
The campaign has a great atmosphere, the secluded mysterious valley setting is lovely, and the factions this time are actually meaningful (oppressor, oppressed, political rivals, business people.. ) and you will have to take side. I had a few laptop freezes, even on minimal settings, and the campaign could use some polishing (if a certain giant sends you to a certain facility and you come back to report with an additional friend you made there, why would that make him angry?). That is why I give it only 5 star instead of 7 :) I usually avoid DLCs as the plague, but this is not some overpriced eye-candy, it is a new campaign with a fair price.
For Spiderweb fans like me: just get it, do not worry about how unpleasant may be the outdated graphics and user interface, less than a hour in and you'll have adapted. I can't believe I replayed bazillion times every other Spiderweb game, before giving this pearl a chance. For everyone else: if you have never played the Avernum series before, play that first and then come back to this if you enjoyed it. The game is great but it is old (forget about clicking a NPC to initiate combat or dialogue...), so you may want to try something very similar but a bit more user friendly. The story is nice, the turn-based combat system is fun, the writing is excellent. 50h of playthrough, zero of which spent in loading times (old man ranting about modern day customs here...)
I played this after all the other Arkham series games, and absolutely loved it. The story is good, the combat system looks even better than the other games, the fight with Deathstroke is the best of all the series for me, there is no bat-tank nonsense (sorry AK). Perhaps a bit short with 20h of game time (but I gave up on collecting all of the Riddler datapads). P.S. Xmas Gotham is lovely.
I would give it 7 stars because of: - the initials - that feeling of being involved in greater machinations (have I ever heard before of an evil god leaving unpleasant things in his wake....?) - building up on solid tradition but adding new elements (new universe, new thief mechanics, clerics being able to cleanse cursed items so that they become good wearables..) I would then remove 1 star because, at that price point, I would expect some more polishing (e.g. the look on the character wearing equipment is quite rudimentary) I would then drop 3 more stars because the "loading screen" thing completely ruins the experience: even with little budget there are always no excuses for badly written software. Just to give you an idea of how bad it is: the last savegame before the final battle happens before a change in map, that means that when you get wiped by the boss you have to wait for the load of the previous map, then click on the exit, then wait again for the load of the boss map (and go through a cutscene, just in case you weren't bored enough). Even worse, whenever you reload in other occasions, even with no change of map, you have to wait to reload the same map (what is the thing even doing, mining Bitcoins?). If you can get over the annoying waiting times, the game is well worth playing. Maybe get it on sale to reduce the frustration.
There is so much that they got wrong in this game: 1) are they targeting RPG players with what often feels like a FPS version of GTA instead? 2) Melee in first person is atrocious, I gave up after the first attempt at fist fighting, and stared sadly at the katanas in my backpack afterward... 3) Actually the whole 1st person thing is terrible, why would they even do that, when they had the beautiful 3rd person engine from the Witcher at their disposal?!? 4) The awkward pauses between lines in the dialogues are just as unforgivable as they sound unnatural, and to make it worse, if you instead take more than a nanosecond to read through the possible answers the NPCs start nagging you about it... 5) Driving a car is nearly impossible (do yourself a favor and ride a motorbike instead) 6) Who are all those weirdos that keep calling me at the phone (or cyberimplant or whatever)? 7) You make me customize my character's genitals and then he showers in underpants?!? 8) I was so disturbed by the gameplay that I skipped almost all the sidequests and went straight for the main story (really a bad sign). All these things really make me think about a 1-star review and still... the relationship with Keanu Reeves' Johnny is worth exploring, the romance I pursued led to an interesting event, V's personal drama and your intimate view on it provide a great experience... in the end there is enough good for me to pump up that 1 star to 3, a real shame that it could not go higher than that
The good first: 160h of play, great turn-based combat experience (haven't tried real-time), epic journey from simple mercenary to legend, lovely characters, good writing. lots of BG vibe. Not a fan of kingdom management, but I must say it kinda makes sense in this game. The bad now: it is absolutely impossible to have a smooth experience without constant googling: when the journal is telling you "Wait for stuff to happen", it is imperative that you google what needs to be done to avoid a game over due to (sometimes hidden) timers. Had to reload a couple of times (loosing a day of playing) because a timer shows up and it turns out there is no way I am gonna make it (that long kingdom project wasn't optional after all!). Even worse, you are supposed to explore a lot to figure out where to go, which would be normally great except that exploring itself requires time (in-game-days) and takes you closer to the impending gameover. Overall this turns an excellent game into a stressful experience. It also goes without saying, a lot of optional content cannot actually be accessed, because if you go after that, well, game over. That said, the core game does deserve to be played, especially if it has been a while since you last cast high level spells like "Horrid wilting"... If you decide to give it a try, I suggest to turn the kingdom to invincible in the options, but do not turn kingdom management off.
