I tried playing the game again after my last negative review, this time with the hintbook with the dungeon maps it came with. I understand the dungeons were made by a junior designer who wasn't that experienced yet, and they chose to go with his designs despite realizing they were too big and mazelike for almost anyone to really play, and the hintbook was their compromise. Even with the hintbook, they're still hard to navigate, but I'm glad it doesn't completely remove challenge to play this way. In fact, it became kind of interesting, because at the start, the characters are doing a job, not a quest, so the "turn at the next corner" sense you get following the maps fits the feeling, and the fact that the combat is so much more zone-out inducing than the previous game makes it feel more like paid work these characters do with less speed and chaos of the previous game, which felt a lot more like a quest of rebellion. I may return to explore more of its unique art and story ideas, but the battles, pacing, difficulty curve, and dungeons are still pretty sloppy

Reviewed on Dec 31, 2020


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