NWN2: MoW - Reviews @ GameBanshee, Sorcerer's Place

Dhruin

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GameBanshee and Sorcerer's Place both have their Mysteries of Westgate reviews up. Here's a snip from GameBanshee, who awarded a score of 6.8/10 and called it "more disappointing and frustrating than it is bad":
The campaign structure in Mysteries of Westgate is disappointingly similar to the campaign structure of Storm of Zehir. That is, there isn’t much going on with the main storyline (you don’t really learn anything about the cursed mask until the very end of the game); you just need to complete a bunch of side quests on your way to the parade of final boss battles. The side quests are fun enough, and they involve vampires, pirates, spiders, and of course hamsters, but they’re all short, and they only rarely have anything to do with the main storyline or your companions. They just felt like random filler to me, which is sort of sad coming from a developer who likes to mention Baldur’s Gate, which linked together characters, quests and plot as well as any game ever.
Sorcerer's Place is much more positive, calling it a "joy to play" and awarding 8/10:
The plot itself is derivative of several well established cinematic genres. This reflects a deliberate effort to steer away from truly high fantasy, and instead achieve a remarkably successful realism in the setting. You won’t find any Mary Sues and Marty Stus in Westgate. Indeed, more than one criminal faction is vying for power, while agents of good-aligned deities have an apparent interest in containing the chaos, or even benefiting from it. Everybody in this town is looking out for number one, even the ones who are ostensibly on the side of law and good. The degrees and specifics by which everyone’s self-interest finds expression is what sets them apart from each other. In a sense, this pervasive sense on literally being on your own against a hard-bitten world made me compare some of the story arcs to classic crime dramas like Heat, the French Connection, and The Corruptor.
In other MoW news, Ossian has a new look for their website.
More information.
 
Joined
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It's nice to have different opinions. All the reviews I've read so far was positive ones and I guess I need something like GameBanshee's. Too much expectation is not a good thing. I'm guessing here but it seems that the level of the writing may be something around BG, which I found O.K.

Hamsters???
I guess it is something to do with that giant space bla bla bla... Well, even Mask of the Betrayer has something like that, so, I guess/hope it's O.K.
 
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Jul 20, 2007
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Quite enjoying it so far, the city feels more active than most cities do in games (even if most of the people are just background) and the writing & characters have been solid so far. I've found myself thinking a bit about quests & options too which is always good.

My one gripe - I'm playing a rogue and had expected that the city would afford me many opportunities for breaking, entering & robbery to make the most of my thievery skills, but thus far every single locked door on the city maps requires a specific key to open so my skills are all but useless. I'm sure that there'll be lots of backtracking and in time the purposes of all the doors will be revealed as part of actual plot lines, but I would have liked a few houses to be open for me to just break into and stumble into a plot / treasure / fight / traps / trouble with the watch / complete waste of time / slight feeling of guilt etc.
 
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