Recent reviews by sрy

remember, he's a burger

gameplay: 10/10 - stealth is very, very well-made, reminds me a lot of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which is my all-time favorite game
graphics: 8/10 - animations are great, graphics in general are great, except for distant land, which sometimes looks like crap
performance: 10/10
sounds: no idea/10
mission variety: 2/10 - side ops are the exact same thing (EXTRACT PRISONER, EXTRACT PERSON, EXTRACT ANOTHER PRISONER, ALSO KILL OR EXTRACT THESE 2 GUYS, AFTER THAT EXTRACT ANOTHER GUY), re-use the same locations multiple times for the exact same mission

if this game had more variety, I would recommend it, but doing the exact same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing over and over again for a 60$ pricetag? no

even the majority of main story line missions are like side-ops, what the hell

the mini-game involving cubes is absolute garbage, I have no idea what the devs were thinking
the story is great and if you don't pay attention to the surrounding area (ie. you don't read various stuff around the yurt) nor pay attention to what the robot woman is saying, you won't understand what's going on during the ending of the game

the main character's voice acting is weak, and honestly, it feels a bit out of place and breaks immersion, would have been better without it imo

still a great game - buy it if you're looking for a game with a good story

it's a pretty good thing to waste an hour or two on after a stressful day and is actually pretty fun

beyond that, there's nothing much to this game

now you need to pay $9.99 for a new weapon (not the skins)

starts out well, and keeps getting better, only to get really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by the end game

do I recommend this? yes for the gameplay and the very nice build up and no for the clear rushed content of the last half of the game

this game is much worse than i remember it

the combat design is very poor - if in gothic 1 you could spend 10 learning points to improve your weapon proficiency and another 20 to become as good as you could get (with the proficiency increasing your crit strike chance to 10% and 15% respectively), then in gothic 2 you need to spend 120 learning points (you get 10 LP per level) just to have a 100% chance of dealing 100% of your weapon's damage.

ok, so for you to understand in the first game your weapon proficiency influenced how fast you could attack and the chance of a critical strike.
a crit would cause 10x damage, and you could be the only person that could strike a crit - these were nice as they could potentially turn a fight to your favor and you went into combat NOT relying on the off-chance you get a crit - this made combat largely predictable in a good way (you always do 100% damage, with a very slim chance to deal 1000% damage).

in the second game you deal 1/10th of your regular damage unless you crit - you read that right.

you need to spend learning points into increasing your chance to deal 100% of the damage your weapon ought to do.
this change alone makes combat an unpredictable chore - in early game, when you are incredibly weak and everyone is far stronger than you are, you can't rely on your weapon damage anymore.
instead you have to rely on the random number generator that determines whether you'll deal 10% of your damage, or the full 100% damage... this is awful game design.

the developers cushion this with a backwards dodge which grants you invincibility frames throughout it's duration, but this turns the combat into this stupid "strike once/twice, then block or back-dodge to avoid damage" back-and-forth.
not to mention the blocking or dodging is ridiculously unresponsive and unreliable because there is no queuing in place for these actions.
swung your sword and didn't time your block/dodge button press right? TOO BAD. it won't get queued and you have to spam it to be able to block/dodge.
I could've sworn the game did have queuing for blocks and dodging, but having replayed the game that is not the case, which makes the combat an even bigger chore.

this wouldn't have been such a bad thing, but humanoid enemies do NOT telegraph when they'll strike more than once either, so combat turns into this guessing game, requiring near-perfect timing from you (if you strike more than once and press the attack button too early - you fail the combo and are forced into a cooldown), with no idea what to expect

aside from that, the strength attribute doesn't seem to actually increase damage like it did in the first game, only allows you to wield better weapons... which again makes combat an even bigger chore, since not only do you have to rely on RNG to deal 100% damage, but you can also dump as many learning points (of which you get only 10 per level) into strength and not see a difference in combat unless you get a better weapon lol

this game is very poor in terms of game design and i believe the only reason i had such fond memories of it is because back when it first came out there were not many games like it (open world action rpg)
but coming back to it... it's just really bad

if they had just kept the damage model and critical strike system from the first game and added queuing for blocks and dodges, the game would've been so, so much better...
instead you've got a terrible, unresponsive combat system, - perhaps one of the most important parts of an action RPG, - with far too much reliance on RNG for proper damage output.
seriously, just typing that out makes me question who thought it was a good idea to change critical strikes to "chance to deal full damage"? ridiculous

so having gotten to act 3 in the game's story on my replay i dropped it.
when the most important part of it, - the gameplay, - is so poorly designed, I can not recommend it.

great game, makes dying light 2 look like an imitation made by a bunch of amateurs, which is ironic

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome
bang for your buck scale: 100/10

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