Warhammer Quest 2 12+

I played through this first, then went a picked up the original Warhammer Quest afterwards, and the original certainly has more to it than I thought! Magic users with spells, a fast forward button during enemy turns, more detail for the towns you visit, earning gold per kill in dungeons, just to name a few differences!

This game certainly has better graphics, but that’s the only improvement I can see from the original. They could have done so much more with this :/ still worth playing though!

Having played through both this and the original, and writing as a big fan of turn-based strategy... The original was definitely better, and I wanted to like this but found it woefully unsatisfying in a few areas. WQ2 starts to feel repetitive fast. The results of levelling are pretty dull, and it costs more gold than you accumulate, so gathering XP becomes meaningless when all your characters need gold to level up. (Sure, you can pay more cash for in-game gold, but when you pay to get the game in the first place, why should you have to?) Loot is gathered at the end of each mission regardless of what you did. So there is no incentive to explore or kill more stuff in each dungeon. I found myself stopping playing out of boredom a few times during long dungeons. Why did I come back to it each time? Well... The game looks great, and progressing the campaign stories is moderately enjoyable. The damage types and variety of items are quite cool and innovative - these are two areas where I think there are some nice ideas here. However, there’s just not enough meaty depth to it. When you find some great item combos, you are rewarded by the game becoming easy to the point of being a trivial slog-fest. There are far better games out there for similar price or free.

It’s fairly fun, and it’s gorgeous (although the “rooms” could do with a little more personal character like those from the first game, and the board game they were based on, had), but it’s a step backwards from the first game. I can see how over time the different types of weapons (and resistance to them) could lead to some tactical gameplay, but right now every character feels the same and the gameplay is just tapping to attack the nearest enemy.

Lack of magic is the worst example of the lack of individuality. The wand your sorcerer has might as well be a bow - it acts exactly like one. She has no spells at all. No buffs, no traps, no area of effect attacks, nothing - she’s just an archer, basically. I want to learn spells and have to figure out how to use them to best effect like in the first game, not just tap a target like any other grande character would. The same goes for other characters - they should be able to learn special, unique skills, with varied effects, not just attacks with different numbers.

This lack of variety and individuality also makes levelling up feel completely unrewarding. What’s the point levelling up if you don’t learn new skills?