The first entry in the series is one of my all-time favorites, played it close to 200 hours, so I was quite excited to try out the sequel. Unfortunately, it turned out to be quite a disappointment. The game introduces a lot of new mechanics to the series, but at the cost of dumbing down pretty much every pre-existing one, especially the combat. I originally started writing a review comparing the two games, but it turned out to be over three times the character limit allowed, so I won't get into the details on that. It also doesn't really matter, as this game primarily fails in its performance and bugginess. Although they aren't really large or complex, loading a map can take 5-10 seconds on a 5800X. Traveling like this becomes a problem by mid/late game, where you literally just run through them in 15-20 seconds, only to get hit by the next loading screen. Even on the lowest frequency setting, traveling a single node on the world map can trigger multiple encounter events (most I've seen is 3), which each can involve the loading of 1-3 maps. Between this and the limited fast travel options, I'm pretty sure I've spent 20% of my playthrough on loading screens. But where it really gets bad is the bugs, especially those involving quests. Quest objectives not spawning, completions not registering, tasks not clearing, rewards not being granted, it's all here and seemingly pretty common. As for the maps, the game literally needed two cheat mechanics built in to get around the untravellable terrain spit out by the generator. There's a lot more to be said, but I'm running out of space again. TL;DR: While I'm disappointed in it as a sequel (calling it Unexplored was a mistake), it still could be a good game, if not for the performance and bugs. I'm giving it 3 stars, but that's really a 2.1 rounded up. Development's still ongoing, so I hope that I can revisit it in a year or two and find a better game, but currently this is an early beta marketed as a released product.
