Tennmuerti

It is really good in general and im digging the artstyle especially, gives me that stylised Darksiders vibe. That said it has a serious pacing problem when it comes to battles atm. While the animations are really well done the glacial speed of the combat especially versus trash mobs that pose no challange starts to grate on you really quickly.

Apparently the devs are aware of this feedback and are working on a solution in a future patch.

Seriosly you'd think that a combat speed option in a game with turn based combat should be a no brainer industry standard by now. Heck even Heroes of Might and Magic games had them in the 90s.

Yea ... I've just started the new game and man it wastes no time showing it's cards. The whole intro is so hilariously bad already.

@undeadpool: Dude they barely even played the expansion :P

Who are all these folks? If you're thinking of Patrick over on Waypoint he is mostly speculating and talking out of his ass without having finished WoTC.

This expansion only hammers it home even further of what direction Xcom3 is headed in. The devs might as well have put in a road sign at the end. But I won't spoil if you haven't finished the game yet.

While I have no desire to play it myself (not a fan of platforming in general)

I have really enjoyed watching a streamer go back and beat the levels on the Expert difficulty that unlocks after you beat the game.

lol what?

Ok, never mind then. This kind of thing already speaks volumes of the effort and attention one can expect from a PC port. Considering others have also mentioned that this company has a dodgy history with PC ports. I think I will save my money and just finish up with my save on the PS4 version especially since I have all the DLCs on it anyway.

It has a lot of other new cool bells and whistles that in general make the game more varied and better overall, from the most noticeable ones you mentioned to more subtle stuff of say just tweaking some under the hood numbers to make the battles last a bit longer and therefore feel better.

Each faction also gets it's own couple significant unique mechanics as well to differentiate them more then those in TW:WH1. The world map feels way bigger (even tho math wise it's only got a few more provinces) due to the way it's designed plus the climate system enabling you to conquer more. It is also just more interestingly designed in general which adds subtle differences to the flows of your campaign, adding that little bit of variety the original was sorely lacking. The main campaign objective also changes up the flow significantly and keeps the campaign more dynamic overall, it's quite key to the whole thing, giving you more considerations of how to make use of your time and resources. The fleshed out trait system, a bit of sea exploration, events, lots more quests (at least at the start). There are also a ton of little things I am sure I'm missing just because there are so many of those little additions.

It's the sort of second game where anyone outside looking in would see very little difference from the first entry but it actually does a lot of smart stuff to improve upon the original.

That said it is also very much in the vein of a mega expansion. Think of it kind of like War of the Chosen for Xcom2. It is still at it's core the same game, just improved. There are also a couple places where they sadly did not improve enough (of what fans were asking for), such as siege battles being probably the most egregious same boring ol slop. It's also more demanding on hardware, at least at launch (it's also a little bit prettier to be fair). So it's really down to how much more TW:WH do you want? How soon do you want it? And how badly? At some point it would be smarter to recommend that people wait for a sale with the dlc bundles included for example.

Personally I am loving it. But I've also pretty much fully invested into their release ecosystem. There is a lot of stuff you get for free in various forms for getting stuff early or just together. For example I got the free Norsca faction for the first game, for getting this one, blood dlc is supposedly going to be free if you already have it in the og game, the mega campaign that unites both maps and all factions is quate a significant addition that is also free, plus they already outlined plan for a string of minor free DLCs. So I am more then happy to jump in on the action and pay for more, having already exhausted all the races campaigns in the first game. And for me it's worth it considering how much time I have spent on the first game and already have on this one. (it's put my Divinity OS2 playthrough on hold for now)

Really? Aaaaw man fuck, I have so much time invested in my PS4 version there is no way I can even think about just making a full new playthrough atm.

That game could hugely benefit from being on PC too, especially the DLCs that are more performance heavy and lower the resolution dynamically pretty heavily even on the pro to maintain frame rate. That game can look quite good with some extra horsepower behind it.

And oh man that game with cheatengine to remove the grindy parts ... mmmmmm! (come to think of it I could even then bootstrap a new save to about where I was on the PS4)

Ok, I am starting to consider double dipping, sometime with a sale or something.

On a Lone Wolf character I just don't think you can touch the effectiveness of physical dmg dealers and CC in a mixed party. Not unless something drastically changes way later into the game.

I've broken down the math in a different post already and Sweep had said pretty much the same thing here. Because of the way armor and shielding now works in this game as a damage sponge that has to be chipped past to get to be able to CC and debuff enemies, focusing on one type of damage is going to be way more effective in almost all cases. With super rare exceptions when in large fights some enemies have 0 magic armor to start with (ala the fight between the 2 main acts). Focusing on one damage type for the party is just more efficient in the long run.

At least in the first game when the magic users fell behind in damage they made up for it with incredible CC potential compared to their less intelligence inclined party friends. But now physical classes get easy access to a variety of efficient CC and debuff options at the very start of the game too!

Also because of this armor/shield system the ground effects and combos likewise become more of a gimmick then an actual threat they were in OS1. You set the oil on fire or exploded a poison cloud? Congrats you get to do a little bit more damage and if the enemy is still shielded they still don't give a fuck and won't be debuffed. One only has to look at the difference in lethality of traps in the two games to see this huge difference.

Now combine that with the fact that Larian has decided once again just like in Original Sin 1 to make spell damage not scale off your weapons like staffs or wands and instead only off of level + intelligence. Unlike all the physical melee and ranged skills of rogues, archers and warriors. This is questionable design 101. Why!?! There really is no good reason to do it this way. It only serves to create a new balancing problem that is frequently bungled as a result. Sure early game it feels like spells can keep up damage wise. But even going into the midgame I can already feel the disparity start creeping in as weapons get more and more powerful and can be runed to be made even more powerful. While adding dmg runes on wands or staffs doesn't affects spells at all.

The final nail is the spell cooldowns. You want to invest into memory for mages for them to be more useful? Great. That's points they're not spending on buffing their damage or survivability. You want to properly invest into more then one school of magic if you want to do more then support with it? Great. That's more points that are not being used to focus on damage or survivability yet again!

Sure mages are playable with a standard 4 party setup, they even do just fine on regular difficulty if you have a 2 on 2 party split. I'd even say that a 4 magic damage user party could be fun to play as, since then they will be all be able to focus on their respective schools more and also focus damage. But in the particular case of a Lone Wolf duo setup the problems with the magic users and splitting damage types gets even more prominent. And amplified even more on harder difficulties as well.

@fredchuckdave: Cool, that's even better imo, especially that they've expanded on the ninja and magic skill trees. It'll feel good to go back to my Iga set again after playing with the odachi last time through ng+.