If you liked the original campaign, you would probably appreciate this one too. It’s relatively short, but dense with fights and story. It has a lot of obvious flaws, the new characters could be obnoxious to someone, the main story is the most flawed in terms of writing. Thematically, it’s somewhat interesting, you deal with war and refugees of warzones, something that usually swept under the rug; the conflict itself is Good vs Good, at least on it’s surface. I appreciate the ambition the developers had for this expansion. It’s not the most graceful in execution, sometimes it’s very un-graceful, but I liked it for what it is. More of the same dungeoneering and fighting monsters. One thing I want to warn is that you can’t travel back to the earlier chapter areas. This was a bit frustrating, I had an unfinished business and the quest asked me to wait 1 day to get a quest reward. I moved forward with the story and couldn’t get it. Be warned.
It took me too many attempts to properly get into this game. The rules are obscure, I had to read the manual and Internet resources to properly figure out how the Ability Scores work (15 STR is as bad as 8 STR in this system, when it comes to fighting). I kept a notebook with all the common combat status effects and how to cure and resist the negative ones (Held, Fear, Blind, etc.). I didn’t realize until this time that round is not the same as turn, 1 turn is 10 rounds, and 1 hour is 5 turns or 5 minutes in real life. Something finally clicked, and I had a great time playing the game this time. You go exploring open areas and dungeons, and it’s all good fun. Sometimes you encounter an important character, or a tough fight, and hopefully with aid of magic potions and protection scrolls you manage to get through it – to a great satisfaction. I lost sense of time playing this game, had to force myself to take breaks, and the moment I finished the original campaign I wanted more. You can certainly replay this game and still have fun. It’s not perfect in any sense, the interface is clunky (even in the Enhanced Edition), the story and quests are rather simple – some of the side-quest givers just give you a paragraph of text and an entry in your journal to complete a small task. The reputation system is ridiculous, especially in later parts, where you fight for your life and your Good companions scold you for just trying to survive. Sometimes, the game becomes very punishing, and gives you a dungeon full of traps, very tricky enemies and obscure puzzles. But if you are willing to tolerate some poorly aged secondary mechanics, ready to learn some old systems, and have Internet to occasionally look up solutions to puzzles and annoying status effects, you could have lots of fun, as I did.
One of the most unique games to ever be released. At the time or since, only the sequels could be compared. The social stealth sections are very good. The shooting and gunfight sections are bad. This makes a game of 5 great missions and 7 mediocre missions. Still great.
There are several interesting ideas in this game, but the developers didn't polish it enough to make it an enjoyable experience. So often I would end up doing not what I was supposed to do, both in travelling around and engaging in combat. Special mention goes to the utterly annoying pursuit system, which sends guards to chase you with ridiculous commitment. Doesn't help that some of the map locations and missions don't work well for how you play it. On paper this could be a great game, but in execution it's very frustrating. The story is weak, it's full of mysterious lore, but the characters are barely there. They have some interesting themes, mainly concerning assassinations and collateral damage, but it's very surface-level, barely mentions. There are filler missions that are semi-mandatory (you have to do 40% or 60% of them to proceed with the story), and those get old quick. The cities of Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem, where the majority of the game takes place, are interesting as a background and even a little bit distinct from each other, but I came out barely knowing anything about them. Nor did I learn anything about the historical conflict taking the place. For a 'historical' game, this is a failure. P.S. The game has a weird bug where it constantly connects to a defunct internet address, causing stutter every minute. You have to look up a solution to make it go away.
A "military" action shooter with a good variety of guns and levels. Very simple mechanics, more running and gunning than thinking or strategizing. Not much variety in enemies, and the higher difficulty is frustrating. Somewhat short (around 5 hrs), but fun to replay. I miss something about how this game plays in modern shooters. It's the lack of the aiming down sights, cover mechanics, or bullet sponges, and powerful guns that let you thrash through the levels with constant fun. Bizarre story, but if you are a fan of the magazine, you might be surprised that Nazis and Apartheid South Africans get a bullet. Still very odd.
I played through the expansion main quests and the side quests, and it generally felt like more of the same: interesting and memorable characters taking you through an engaging story. You engage in story missions, which take you through quiet locations and shooting galleries. There is a lot of idle time, where you sit and gawk at your character talking to other characters. Occasionally you get to pick a response, which most of the time is flavour. Even if there is a meaningful choice, it felt superfluous. There were many sections with no combat or dialogue, but pure action movie spectacle. I wasn't overly impressed with this new expansion story. From the start, helping the president wasn't on my agenda. I was constantly frustrated that my character had to go with clearly deceitful actions of other characters, whom I didn't like most of the time. Many fun side quests too, although them pretending to be "gigs" was confusing. In the base game gigs were mostly <5 min quick combat activities. There are some here too, but they are marked as "increased criminal activity" now. Nothing as memorable as Sinnerman or Panam/Rogue/River sidequests. The combat system had a major rework after 2.0 patch. As a returning player, the first impression was that this is a completely new system. On a second glimpse, it's still mostly the same deal. I got an impression that the weaponised vehicles would be a major part of the expansion, but it's mostly cookie cutter side quest content. You can shoot from regular cars now, too, and enemies will force you to, but it isn't as fun as the ground combat. The cars still feel floaty and lightweight, despite all the reworks. Some of the other additions are very superfluous. You can now buy apartments, or take a metro line. I tried it and it was clear it's not interesting in any way. You sit on a train and stare at a window. I don't know why would I bother. The fast travel system was fine as it were.
I played this game a lot before, one time completing every quest on one save. But now this game feels utterly boring. Everything done here was done better in newer open world games. The level balancing problems are glaring, the writing is sub-par, the combat and dungeons are boring. The free world exploration is not fun. It's still a solid time killer, and you would have a blast if this is your first Bethesda game. As always, the interface is janky and the game requires some modding to be comprehensible.
Saints Row 2 is a gang violence simulator in an open world. It has main story missions, and a lot of side activities. You are a leader of the gang called the Saints, and you fight rival gangs. The latter represent bikers, Haitian Voodoo stereotypes, and Japanese stereotypes. The game frames it up as over the top, absurd action comedy. Beavis and Butthead and South Park come to mind. Beyond morality, you do tons of violence. Only that it's not clear what's the point of it beyond the mindless fun. At some point we kill a horde of homeless junkies, who turn into zombies trying to get drugs from us. We kill them, the main characters conclude that they are not human at all, and killing them doesn't matter. If it's played for laughs, it's not the ones would expect from any point of compassion. There are others. We have prostitutes, junkies, potheads, pothead girlfriends sleeping with anyone who has pot. It's all very stupid. Most of the game is like this, and then they try to take a shot at rich real estate developers trying to use militarized security and police to evict poor people from high crime areas to rise the property value. It doesn't make any point, just a short part of the cutscene. I'm unimpressed. The gameplay is fine. The game gets unfair near the end, you are easily killed by random stuff. At some point you have a fight inside a multistory shopping mall, and for some reason there are cars with enemy reinforcements driving around. That's probably the most memorable moment from this game. This is a game they show a kid play in a movie for people who never play videogames themselves. The kid plays this game and grows up to be a nihilist who can't tell a political protest from a racist riot. He spends most of the time crying how games are not good anymore, because of the woke agenda. This game is not woke at all, and it's shit.
The world of Gothic 2 is vast, but it's naturally limited by high-level monsters at first. Little-by little you orient yourself and discover more and more places where you feel comfortable. You will go back and forth to do more stuff, which will make you intimately familiar with this place. It's just a lot of running; I wish the Sprint potions were more common. This game is exceptional at making you do tasks. Not only you will do them without being hand-held by navigation markers, you will memorize places, shortcuts on how to get to them, characters that are knowledgeable about certain topics, and so on. The game also doesn't assume you will complete every task immediately. Some of the side quests require you to wait for an opportunity until later in game. The combat is a bit stiff, but it has an admirable sense of flexibility. The spell scrolls, which every character can use almost freely, can work wonders on tough enemies, and knowing their use can cleverly resolve some supposedly unbeatable encounters. Fire Rain, Ice Block, Ice Wave are my favourite. Sleep is a thief's trump card. The levelling system is steep, the amount of points you have to spend to increase the stats grows up. Combined with the tough monsters, this makes the game very hard unless you have a thorough attitude and patience. There is no autoscaling, so beating every monster you can beat and doing every quest you can feels mandatory at times of scarcity. The permanent bonus items that you find make exploration very rewarding. After finding one, you have to make a decision whether you want to use it - as using them later saves you Learning Points, indirectly. The game interface is a bit clunky, so I recommend to install several quality of life mods, like Union Advanced Inventory. I found several game breaking bugs regarding quest scripting, so I recommend making multiple save files throughout the game, if you don't want to screw your game 30 hours in. Use cheat codes if you miss something.
This game has a really fun open world that is satisfying to explore. The map is relatively small, it feels grand at the start when you don't know shortcuts and hidden trails, it has empty caves and crypts with great treasures. Eventually, you get familiar, bit by bit you clear out the forests and find various approaches to important locations. The combat is a bit clunky, and not for the odd controls that take time to get used to (tip: set up "Alternative controls" in the settings). Once you've learned the controls, the combat is still a bit odd. The blade swinging and parrying falls apart when there's more than one foe, and then it's just trading health bars against each other. The shooting mechanics feel weird, the arrows miss for odd reasons. Still, the way the damage calculates (Weapon stat + STR - Defense) makes the game feel challenging no matter what level you are on. This mechanic creates zones appropriate for your weapon, armor and level, and the armor is limited by the story chapters. Magic is also very creative, and there are some scrolls that will work even for "pure melee" builds - some of the quests require to use them. It has many characters that are memorable and go beyond "quest giver, exposition dump NPC". A rare achievement. Over the game, you'll remember Diego, Milton, Gorn, Lester, as well as others. They also made simple side quests feel fun and go beyond fetch quests. Unfortunately, much of this non-linear storytelling falls apart past Act 1. It becomes a linear story with one main quest to do and a lot of walking back and forth. I recommend getting Spine mod manager and installing Union, Gothic 1 Community Patch, Ninja, Advanced Inventory, D3D11 Renderer, Union Gothic Screen info. There is a lot of odd inventory management in this game, and it will work slightly better this way.
