The good 👍

It has a well-thought and executed co-op campaign. I did not think a game with choices could have co-op built in.

Combat is very interesting and complex. "Throw oil, that can be then ignited for explosion, and as you fight poisonous spiders, they will also re-ignite and explode as poison clouds are explosive" level of detail. Think Magicka in how you can mix different elements to make big booms.

Each main character has a "trait list". Like material / spiritual, obedient/independent etc. 9 pairs in total, and when we consistently exhibit a trait in dialogues we get it to be the "main". Which gives stat bonuses. Being independent gives +1 to willpower, and being spiritual gives immunity to fear. It is a nice touch to building a character.

There is a lot of lore to discover, but because the story is not interesting it doesn't feel important.

Character creation is flexible, and it's possible to make a warrior with necromancy magic, or an archer with high crafting. But in such configurations, they won't excel in either, so it will be a problem at higher difficulty. It may be fine on low difficulty to have a character with 8 in strength and intelligence (as opposed to pure warrior or mage that would end with a 12 / 5 split). But gear is stat-gated ("you must have at least 12 strength to use this sword" or "spell cooling time is 10 turns on a character with low intelligence") so it's an unviable approach where enemies hit very hard.

The bad 👎

Characters run so slow it takes ages to move around. Would not be surprised if at least 10h of my gameplay was spent waiting for characters to run across the map to where I pointed.

Equipment has endurance stat, and there is no "repair all" button. For both traders (who repair for a fee) and self-repair (for which we need to learn skills and have repair tools at hand). It is not fun to click 6 times "repair" for each 4 characters to be ready for the next few fights. The same applies to identifying equipment, everything above "junk" quality has hidden stats that need to be identified. It also requires clicking on each single item, no bulk identification is available.

Inventory management is just awful. Each character wears multiple items, and there is no fast way to compare if the new "God quality" shoes you just found are better than the "Unique" quality you have used for the past 2h across your 4-squad party. There is not even a rough indication with red/green text if the item has better stats vs the item the current active character wears.

There is no quick auto-heal after battle (sleeping bags, portable camp in a safe location). So each encounter ends with you swapping characters so they are told to eat to restore 10% health per click. Or wait a very long time for a basic healing spell to reset and be cast again.

Don't try to heal your warrior with carrots. Carrots may look innocent, but they give -1 to strength. This means all strength-requiring gear can get un-equipped. If you miss it, you end up fighting using a naked unarmed dude 😅

Default camera setting is "cinematic". This means it jumps around the battlefield, and we end up miss-clicking and walking towards the enemy instead of shooting them with an arrow.

Enemies have idle animation, which also moves their "click hitbox". The cursor was 1 pixel away due to their idle animation when you clicked? You move towards them instead of attacking from a distance. Even aiming at their "circle" below their legs is not safe.. as legs can also move. The only safe option is to remember to aim centrally at the biggest part of their model... I never before had an issue in an isometric game to miss an attack because of enemy idle animation.

Very steep difficulty spike after the tutorial.

Only 2 main characters can be respec ~3/4 into the game. You lose all abilities, and to regain them you need to find a trader with a specific skill book. Not all traders have all the books, so you may find yourself on an adventure to find the trader that has a higher-tier ability that you want.

Camera sometimes can go bonkers and zoom closely, zoom out, or just "fall" into some canyon we were looking over.

I understand this is a turn-based game. But why characters are so limited outside of combat? I unlocked a new character with a healing ability. Great, I can heal now faster post-combat! Right? Right?? Well, not really. When the mage plays long and pointless healing spell-casting animation, I can't click the other character and select their healing ability. It's locked. I need to wait for 1st character animation to end to do anything else, even if it's a different type of action like drinking a healing potion. Just ugh.

Animations are too long in general. Combat looks nice, for people who want to spend 200h in a game. But I want to click, attack, and move to the next character.

You gave a character a lot of perception, to spot those nasty mines? Great! They will shout "watch out, I spotted a trap!" right before they walk into said mine, killing your whole squad as there was an oil patch nearby that exploded after ignition.

Story is really shallow, and it's obvious after a few hours what will happen at the end of the game. And the whole "revealing hero history" trope is just an uninteresting drag. Like having a detective book pointing out who is the killer on the first pages, and then trying to create an atmosphere of mystery and "who could that be??".

Some quests just expect you to guess what needs to be done. No logical hints or backstory. I did follow Vanilla guides sometimes (they pop up first in search results), and saw devs adjusted quite a bit in the Enhanced Edition to eliminate some issues. But there is a moment near the end of the game, where I spent an hour in the inn, picking up and inspecting each possible piece of junk (chairs, cups, plates, fireplaces etc.). And would not be able to progress without a guide. And when the user who asked for a solution on Reddit asked "how did you figure out how to progress??" get "I didn't, I also found a solution somewhere else". Good work devs.

Some puzzles rely on the teleportation pyramids. Too bad that the use of it is so cumbersome. You throw the blue pyramid with he-character across the chasm, go to she-character inventory, and click to "use" on the red pyramid to teleport the whole squad to the blue pyramid. Now he-character needs to manually pick the blue pyramid, so each of the main characters "owns" one for the next time they need to be used. In theory, they can be put in quick slots, but when the pyramid is thrown out, it's un-equipped. So it would need to be put back after each use. And can't have both pyramids on one character, as some puzzles specifically require having one on each to teleport around in sequence. Or just the fact that the same character will not have both high strength to throw the pyramid far, and the perception to avoid mines that are surely found around the landing zone.

Persuasion is based on a rock-paper-scissors mini-game where AI always cheats. It's impossible to beat it, unless you have considerably higher charisma than your opponent and use the auto-outcome option. With a bit of help from F5/F9.

Shouting "When it rains, it pours" when it's raining (and it rains in game 80% of time), and "It's heating up!" when passing by the campfire. Why do characters repeat this one line endlessly, it's unnecessary and irritating.

You have a door key on one character and click doors with another. "Magic pockets are used to move the key from character x to character y and you open the door" pop-up window appears that needs confirmation. Just why?? I don't care, just open the door and "move" the item in the background if you must, due to some limitation of the Original Edition engine or something. It applies to all usable items - pick axe, shovel, runes.

Game sometimes "hangs" during combat, where it doesn't know what to do. It will move to the next enemy, show it's their turn in the queue.. and nothing. It just "thinks" for 10s or so before the enemy decides to move or attack. It doesn't actually hang, as it's still possible to move the camera around. It's just that nothing happens with combat.

Conclusion:

Predictable story without "badass companions" or any NPC. Ancient gameplay, where someone thought to move a turn-based table-top physical boardgame too directly into a PC interactive environment. And very good combat, if you don't mind lengthy animations and high tactical difficulty. I value story way more than combat, so even on the lowest difficulty level, it was an unnecessary drag for me. It is not necessary to know events from the 1st game to understand the plot in 2nd, so if you are not focused on complex combat I would skip it in favor of the sequel. It does look like devs ironed out a lot of those bad and tedious mechanics from the original game.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

It is such a disappointment! Minor spoilers ahead. Two Source Hunters (members of an ancient guild, which has a holy mission of killing black-magic-wielding mages) are sent to investigate a murder in a small town. On the suspicion that black magic was involved. It quickly turns out that the city is under siege by the undead skeletons and orcs. Not long into the story, we find a star stone, which teleports us to a historian-imp, who records the whole of history. He tells us the story: Once upon a time TWO generals stopped the Void Dragon from devouring the reality. And they became guardians of a box, in which the dragon was trapped. Our true goal is to stop the Void Dragon, the imp says. We are chosen by gods, but he has no idea why. If we fail the universe will be lost! Half of the game focuses on uncovering the story of the mighty generals while trying to have a "big revelation moment" that we are the generals. It feels so weak and shallow, that I'm surprised anyone would be shocked by the "revelation" 😐 There is some backstory of a powerful mage/villain who goes insane and tries to release the Void Dragon. But yawn. The main villain is shallow and predictable after all.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☑ Fast travel	Details: