Many armors/mods/weapons in the DLCs and a rather fun mini-story in the half-regular-zone-sized new Kraken area. The small difference between editions while on sales is worth getting the upgrade.
Played & finished the The Surge 1, I liked a lot the techno-horror atmosphere there, and the fact that by adapting at your opponents, you didn"t have to grind (only did once at the beginning of the game). The Surge 2 has lost the horror aspect, but remains techno/thriller oriented. The gameplay with the oriented parade mecanism is great (still, like everyone else, I get angry each time I miss a parade and the targeting system thinks the direction entered was for him) and finally allow heavy hitter/armored build to be damn efficient. That, plus come freaking awesome armors like the BEAST (buy the premium version of the game, not the standard one that lack lots of gears and mods), and for the first time in this genre of game, I ran a heavy BEAST build till the end and had a lot of fun with it. The 3 slots system allows you to have 3 builds instantly at hand, which is damn handy, to be ready for various situations. Again, buy the premium version, the kraken story line is short but rather fun. Like lots of side quests in the main game. Played 54h, did almost annd quests, and died 109 times. So, it is not that hard (having a boss oriented build and upgrading its gear to the max before you fight a boss in a zone is always a good idea...) (FYI, I fails at Sekiro miserably). Technically speaking: 0 issue, except some stutters with the default configuration. I had to disable Texture Streaming to fix it, as my i5 3xxxx CPU is a bit old.
1- Technically, I had like 2 or 3 CTD for ~110h of gameplay. Rather OK of a port that had a bad reputation when released on PC. 2- Recommended PC setup will allow you to play 1080p @60FPS. I have a slightly worse CPU than recommended, and it is often caused the framerate to drop to 45FPS 3- Story is nice. Dialogues are not stupid. And the game is kinda well thought: you won't make the game bug if you already killed a special machine before getting a quest that ask you to deal with it: special dialiogue lines are made for these case,s and I love it. Feel free to explore... listend to the call of the adventure, man (pun intended)! 4- Some things could have been better (like the "autopilot" of your horse), but all in all, it's refreshing to see that the game let's you play the way you want, and do not force you into a certain gameplay (hey, retarded Tomb Raider, I'm looking right at you).. 5- 110h taking my time doing all quests, and getting collectibles (there is not a shetload of them, good) because for once they are fun to get and have a use (loot!) (hello, retarded TR, again...) 6- I won't play NG+ mode, but if you are one of those, there it is.
TL;DR: it ends up being a PITA at too many occasions, totally getting you out of the story/characters drama. Which could be fixed by a rather simple update, but I doubt it will be done, concidering the age the game. Good: - Art - Tech - Voice actors Average: - Story - Gameplay (basic but some good ideas in some sequences) Bad: - Movement list restrictions through many half gameplay/half cinematic sequences (ex: can't run) - Can't pass In Game cinematics... which is infuriating after the Nth time you have seen it - Worst save system I've seen for long: it saves when you FIRST reach a FIXED location. And "see ya next location sucka". Which means if you have not picked up or done something which would start a cinematic 1 or 2 m away from this point, hell, you have to REDO it all after each reload/death... having to suffer the same cinematic or game sequence again. Welcome in "It's 2019/2020 and we don't know how to properly implement CheckPoints because nobody did before us in videogame history".
Neat game, as for technical and design aspects. But it's a weird combination: - want to feel the game, through its ambiance? Nope, it's not a 2D walking sim. You'll have to deal with not easy platform sequences, which means it's definitly not casual gamers friendly. - want a splendid but challenging platform game? Nope, the moves are quite limited and the jump/double jump feel is "old school" and stiff. Compare it to Dead Cells or Celeste (difficulty appart), their moves sets are really enjoyable. Not in Gris. Here I felt like controlling a broom (before unlocking double jump), or an stiff umbrella (after unlocking the double jump). And you're not really in position to chose your way through the artsy level design, so good luck with chasing collectibles when paths are locked after you chose a direction (without you knowing you were at a crossroad). Totally subjectively, I prefer when a story is presented to me bit by bit. Not thrown to my face. Gris is like a shouting good looking kid: "HEY WATCH ME, I HAVE SOMETHING VEEEEEERY SAAAAAAD TO SHOW YOU!". Yeah, well, sorry, but Hollow Knight got me right here taking my hand and not saying a work. You damn Gris are nice looking but after finishing it, I can tell you I felt sometimes quite annoyed by you. Still 3 stars for the effort.
I really like the level of quality achieved by the studio: - they know their story-telling. Only half-assed french translation is sometimes harming the dialogues and descriptions (the english version is perfect though) - lots of different tones (sad, humor, etc.) - lots of surprise - content is rich and good (no sentation of time wasted on any fedex style quest during 130+hours for a full quests run). - combat mechanics really good, almost perfect - multiplayer is THE freaking killing feature of the game and is perfectly executed. Cross-plateform is _working really well_, so YOU CAN PLAY WITH THESE SAD FELLOWS who rent their games from Steam too. Even the updates are timely delivered accros Steam and GOG Galaxy. - very few bugs, and continuous support of the game by the studio. I love the Larian people and their mindset. Long live to Larian Studio and keep up the good work ;)
