The same feeling of increased developer attention to detail that is evident in the quest and encounter design, is prevalent in the area design as well. The designers seem to have sensed one of the complaints I personally had regarding scripted encounters, and the text now gives the player hints of what skill/attribute will be tested before he or she has to choose a character to preform an action. Talking about "hand-crafted", the number of scripted interactions, and their complexity have both been increased, and they feel better than ever. There is meaning to pretty much every combat encounter, and you can see someone made a deliberate decision how many enemies to put there, what type, what class, etc. Nothing feels arbitrary, nothing feels like "filler". On every level, the game left me with the feeling I'm playing the kind of hand-crafted adventure, which I hoped PoE would have been at release. If reactivity is one thing that stands out when describing TWM2, I think "variance" and "hand-crafted" are the other major descriptors. This is a huge thing for me, as influencing the main plot is something rarely seen in RPGs in general, so I really appreciated being given multiple approaches to solving problems which affected the story, even if just on the TWM2 level.Īnd it's not just the main quest either - the player can influence the outcome and resolution of smaller quests - what's the future of Stalwart's economy going to be, it's trade relationship with Defiance Bay, the fate of a miner accused of murder, there are too many such things to list everything. Even quests that are part of the main TWM2 story can be solved in radically different ways, depending on player choice. I think it was great how this was woven into the main quest and the ability was not simply thrown at the player with some "magic" explanation, but also the fact that it was optional.Īnother improvement in TWM2 is the increased amount of meaningful reactivity, which provides a lot of opportunities for role-playing, for playing out both minor and major quests differently, and adds replay value. The most prominent example of this is how, early in TWM2, depending on the way you handle a certain quest, you may get the ability to call long-range artillery on targets, and potentially make your life easier later on. In my book, this is always a good sign for the attention to detail and the resources a development team was able to spare. One way you can tell you are playing a quality game is when you see the developers being "generous" with content - giving you custom-made mechanics and content to play around with, which can't be easily reused somewhere else. I even enjoyed it more than TWM which was already very, very good. Worth your money a couple of times over, and at least as many playthroughs, TWM2 is a vast improvement in quality to the base game, in every aspect. Basically the horrid encounter design just wears down a man's will. I have a lot more fun with the early game when my guys are swinging swords and there aren't 30 different buffs/debuffs and battlefield conditions to pause-hump around. Large battles such as these were a lot of fun for me in BG2 for example, not exactly sure why they are such a drag in PoE. The more interesting fights, such as the huge clusterfuck bounty encounters, devolve into throwing all of the AoE I have at the group and hoping to come out on top. Unpopulated areas where I can enjoy exploring the map without being constantly badgered by stationary packs of 12 randomly assorted ghosts are refreshing and, somehow, more enjoyable lately. However, after tackling a handful of these nigh-identical fights in a row, I just feel incredibly discouraged to sneak around the corner only to find another of these nigh-identical fights ahead of me. None of the new areas are too challenging and the difficulty for each encounter feels 'right' if you take them on at the appropriate level.
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