Well, here we are 12 years later. Much like the original, it's one of the best 7/10s I've ever played. This game plays wonderfully, the skills and climbing system mesh together to create a unique gameplay experience that is very fun to engage with. Once again, every vocation is overpowered in it's own way, but isn't always a one stop solution for everything, you need pawns there to help you. I finished the game around level 50, completed the postgame, and it was a good experience.

There's 2 major flaws with the game though. First up, the optimization sucks. Not a whole lot to say here, even my friends with way better PCs than mine were struggling at points. My setup rarely hit 30 fps, but that's to be expected, my GPU is the minimum recommended one. Most of the settings were Medium to Low, even then the game still looked great. The second major issue is the story, or lack thereof. I did most quests in the game, and had literally 0 idea what the story was or where it was going until the last cutscene with Phaesus before you fight the dragon. Until then all I knew was Disa was doing something to try and fake an Arisen. Also suddenly switching to helping Phaesus despite him clearly being the bad guy as soon as we get to Battahl was very odd. Why are we helping this guy who created all of our problems? You just walk up to Ambrosius and decide to help him. It's really really weird, but oh well. Postgame story is much more interesting and feels like the real 3rd act of the game, although I wish it ended with a boss fight rather than a cutscene and credits. It was kind of a let down, I think there should have been one last fucked up chimera of the Purgeners we fought or something. Oh well, good game overall but definitely not without its issues.