Shadow Warrior 2

I can't help it, but this game is what I'd call "Path of Exile" as an FPS game. Really. It borrows all the complexity of PoE. Gems, sockets, affixes, amulets, skill tree. They created an ARPG in first person with excessive complexity. In Shadow Warrior 3 they changed it back to simplify the game.

The interface in Shadow Warrior was crude, as if they were emulating brush strokes. It had its charm. In SW2 they adopted a cleaner interface. In many ways it's better. The dragon in the UI is the XP bar. I didn't notice it till the last part in the game because I went looking for guides. I don't know why they removed the depiction of powers as tatoos. What we have now are cards. The art of the cards is good, but the tatoos had a special charm.

In the first Shadow Warrior the level design was terrible with lights pointing in wrong directions and too many dead ends. They improved in this department for the sequel. In the sequel the lights were placed in a way that guides the player to the right path. They also abandoned the old design of having to find 3 keys to progress. However, now there is a problem with the Z axis and the map. The quest marker disregards the Z axis and this makes you run around trying to find the location when it's underground for example. In some areas there are floating islands and the map disregards that too. You can't fly or jump across islands and the map doesn't show you that between points A and B there is a huge gap that can't be crossed.

The environment art has evolved from the previous. No more disjointed architecture and decorations such as trees planted on rocks, houses with fire outside and no fire inside, a door that only exists outside and not inside, cabinets and lockers with no relationship with the surroundings, etc. They clearly built a world that is more cohesive than before. Despite the improvements regarding a better cohesive theme, the excessive bloom is a pain. Zilla City abused bloom to blinding levels. The diversity of environments seems to be lower than in the previous game, with a lot more repetition.

Shadow Warrior was pure hack and slash with no rewards for killing. This time around the sequel does reward you for grind. One nice addition was the ability to climb up ledges. For some reason they decided to drop that punishing mechanic that gave some monsters a power up if you abused the sword killing. I don't know why they dropped it. It was a fun mechanic. Why is Low Wang now immune to fall damage? No idea, but the level design and environment art in the previous game did create multiple cases of death from falling off heights that didn't feel quite right.

I didn't care to explore all the combinations of upgrades, gems and skills. It's just way too complex to bother with it. I noticed that the elemental resists in this game follow a reverse logic. It's more natural to say "+10% elemental resist". But in this game they say "-10% elemental vulnerability". It's confusing. There is affix crafting which is very similar to orbs in Path of Exile. I didn't care about it because I wouldn't waste time and effort in coin flipping.

It's a pity that the mythology in this game has a lot of potential that was wasted. Curses, heritage, power, conspiracy. They could have created a game with a deep world which could rival Diablo 2. But they went for a "teen humor" that I disliked. The first game was a bit better in this department. The jokes in SW2 felt somewhat excessive for me. Dick jokes overly done.

I loved how they used Asian instruments to better match the music with the environments. Warrior seems to be a rendition of "Eye of the Tiger".