The party is well and truly over, but hopefully the music is still playing a slow bluesy tune…
Decided to post my impressions here and join in the discussion.
I'm with Zloth. Keyboard and mouse works just fine for me. Movement in melee is slightly clunky which can make tactical maneuvers slightly awkward, but otherwise generally it's ok. The game runs very smoothly and thus far I've only experienced a single lock up.
I'm approximately 16 hours in and have just started chapter 2. I'm about level 25. I'm playing a pure mage, specialising in water/summoning and necromancy.
The game is mostly mediocre and reminds me of Dungeon Lords at times with the emptiness of its world. However, at least it's more fun and open to play than Arcania was, though.
One thing that struck me as a little odd was that my character with a strength of 5 is able to do more damage in melee sometimes than with spell-power (willpower of about 50), particularly when past level 20.
Perhaps my spell creation is somewhat lacking or I need to acquire more spell cards.
But then again I'm reminded that this is an action rpg and that stats only influence combat here and there. Damage is consistent, there's seemingly no invisible dice rolling, with player skill rather than character skill, playing the strongest role in deciding most outcomes.
Pro's:
- Quite attractive game world to explore and wander around in.
- Very polished, well optimised engine which performs well (on my pc). The high production values show.
- Solid plot with a couple of unexpected twists, if somewhat convoluted.
- Some nice mechanics and systems that enable player experimentation (crafting, spell creation…)
- A pleasant, reasonably effective soundtrack.
Cons:
- The lack of unique content found via exploration is a little frustrating when as others have stated, exploration is a central theme to the game.
- Melee is fairly weak and definitely inferior to Gothic 1-2 and Risen. My mage can switch to melee easily enough as described and this certainly wasn't an intention in my character build. (I have no melee skills whatsoever)
- Finding many locked doors in the world during exploration can be a disincentive, leaving the player with the feeling that the game isn't quite as open as it could be. In short, exploration doesn't feel rewarding enough.
- I've not experienced any choices and consequences so far. Choice appears similar to Bioware games, in that it merely acts as a means to give flavour to responses.
- Irritating Geralt meets JC Denton impersonating Dirty Harry voice actor for main character. There's also a rather silly nod towards the ass effect in Mass Effect at a particular romance plot point in the game.
- Very weak dungeon design. Seriously - you have to wonder if any of the designers have played pen and paper role playing games and actually experienced a well crafted dungeon, because most that I've found so far here have been sadly quite unremarkable.
Overall, the sequel isn't any where near as cheerfully chivalric to play as the first game and for me, the crafting and spell creation systems aren't quite as much fun this time around. But I'm still having some good honest fun with the game and anticipating the greater challenges to come, based on threads here at the 'Watch.
I'm still waiting for the in-game explanation for the sudden change of language and speech from the olde-english!