As others have said, this is better than the first game. Absolutely happy to be back in this world with even better dungeon design and detail. Stat system is not too complicated but IMO play the game on Hard difficulty. I am playing on Hard and I almost regret not going to Insane difficulty. The music is awesome and just screams Might and Magic: World of Xeen. I love it. Great QoL features like the pawn shop and an excellent map note system are really a nice touch. No crashes or performance issues, everything just works. I would have paid more for this game. This is an absolutely top-flight offering in the retro blobber arena. If you like these types of games, this is a no-brainer.
I've got about 10 hours into the game so far and it has been pretty much everything I expected from a WL game. There has been some good expansion on abilities and I have found some good perk synergies with some of the Strike specials. I had read on other reviews about it being too easy/watered down so I bumped up to Ranger right away and combat has been satisfyingly challenging. I recommend that to any veteran of the series. Like WL2, it pays to build a team that has 3-4 skills per character so you can disarm/repair/lockpick/medic/anything early on in the game. The attribute point system seems revised so you get way more attribute points, though, so it's easy to build up intelligence stat to get skill points even if you didn't load up on it at character creation. I personally have had 0 load time issues that other people have reported, and my SSD is 3 years old. Not sure what to say but loading save games and areas takes no more than 20-30 seconds. I have experienced no crashes at all so far, but there do seem to be some potential performance issues as combat wears on in larger fights where I have occasionally experienced the game lagging as you try to just edge scroll around the map during combat. The only bugs I've seen are minor UI glitches in labeling. The writing and humorous references are pretty good. If you are beyond the age of like, 28, there's a lot of funny references. I won't give spoilers though. I haven't been able to put the game down since I bought it yesterday and it just feels like an updated, flashier (bigger?) WL2. I love it.
