I love it
Nothing wrong with the game per se, it's just not for me liking. If you like GTA/FarCry sandbox type games, you are going to have a blast
I'm just going to say it. W2 is a typical late 2000/early 2010s AAA title. Form over substance, presentation over depth. Button mashing combat, unpolished fundamental gameloop coupled with bloated unnecessary mechanics. It's a typical and quite serviceable movie-game with some fanservice. If that's your type of game, than W2 can give you 30-40 hours for a bargain of a price [during sales] and will run on any toaster these days. However the question stands, is it worth playing in current day? Probably not. If you missed it years ago, you've really lost nothing of value unless you really enjoy the IP.
It's a fun game on a budget, but even if the later shows in graphical fidelity the game makes up for it in style and atmosphere. Really the only objective critique I can come up with is the sounds are not as good as thief, specifically it's harder to tell direction.
Not to hate or anything, but realistically speaking Bradley had too small of a team to pull this one off. Even if game had more polish, it still would overall lose to it's "official" brother in concept, Wizardry 8. Oh and Wizardry 7 is also probably a better title to play P.S. The game is "rough around the edges" but taking that into consideration, this GOG version ran with little to no technical issues
Decided to play for the first time since I skipped it on release somehow. Now I remember why I did. Worst let down and the begging of the end for bioware due to pursuit for the "mass market" player. Combat and progression system? MMO-esque worse version of Diablo, and literally plays itself on hard even in boss fights Quest design? here is a fetch quest, travel to a tiny location, kill everything, get reward Reactivity? almost absent outside of specific triggers. There isn't even use for stealth outside combat Level design? hope you like the same linear-path tower layout reused for levels, because you'll be seeing that a lot Writing? ..well at least it's always short, don't want to bore the midwit... akhm the average player. Here is another token "moral dilemma", in an otherwise completely linear quest, how inspired! (no.) I know this game gets a lot of praise, but it's far from deserved and only because bioware succeeded at appealing to mass-market crowd. Is it an alright game? probably. Is it a good crpg? No.
OUTRAGEOUS! This game has no business being so good for that price! The meat of the gameplay are battles, which can be surprisingly challenging even on normal and require a fair bit of micromanaging most of the time. While it might scare of some gamers not used to RPGs having challenging tactical combat, it is a godsend for the few of us that can appreciate it. There is no pre-buffing, no broken builds from youtube, no "save me" consumables. There is only the arena, the enemies, and your skill and creative use of everything at your disposal, anything it takes to win. "But WAIT! There is more!" (c) It's not only combat, another major aspect of the gameplay is exploring the giant Tower. Sidequests, treasure, hidden passages placed on masterfully designed levels all provide a better adventuring experience than some titles with a much broader budgets, scopes and giant world maps. Not only that but the writing and story of ToT puts to shame some full blown crpgs as well. Not all secrets are guaranteed to be unravel though. With each journal, note or random tidbit, another mystery is chipped away for a prying player. I didn't even expect party banter to be a part of what I suspected to be a simple hack and slash dungeon crawl, but not only it's there, it's actually quite good. And this I think is the cornerstone of why this game is so surprisingly good. Yes, it is not set to be a new milestone in RPG genre, it mostly re-iterates on ideas and mechanics already tried in other games. But it's the craftsmanship, attention to details, love for what makes rpgs good, and dedication to make all aspects of the game to be as polished as possible for the budget, that makes the game so fun.
- technical issues (gamepad refuses to work, bypassed by mapping keyboard + mouse to gamepad) - pricey for being so short and basic in terms of mechanics - wonky human controls + the WOW feeling that you get when you fly for the first time, absolutely nailed it + simple but stunning visuals + dynamic and fitting music creates great relaxing atmosphere I sure hope the people behind this will continue making great games, and maybe reiterate on their experience gained while making Aer, to produce something with the same general feeling but maybe more content and mechanics <3
The perfect little rally game. To me the only flaw of the game is that it doesn't have a native feature of saving replays.
