BrianOTarth

A remake that actually understands what made the original **** extremely faithful remake. I played the original as a kid, and precisely because this stays so close to the original in its mechanics, "that old feeling" comes right back. Simply **** graphics are an absolute knockout — the level design, the textures, the forests, and in places even the faces and robes are incredibly well done. It's also great how dense the world feels; there's no wasted space.When I see that the press average on Metacritic sits somewhere in the 70s, it confirms something I've noticed for a while now: there's a gap between how I perceive and experience games and how the gaming press does. What could have been done better:Not every bug needed to be preserved. The unfinished arena-tournament idea in the Old Camp is still there, and I keep reading about quests that don't fire properly — though I didn't run into those issues much myself. Magic gameplay also doesn't quite work for me yet. I never feel like a powerful mage. In certain situations I have to swap armor, and then enemies are suddenly immune to spells that are supposedly devastating. Ball Lightning from Circle 2 ends up being literally the best spell in the game, while Firestorm or Breath of Death get me nowhere in a lot of fights. It's just weird. The same goes for how the world reacts to you. I can walk around as an all-powerful mage and people still tell me to get lost, or don't respond any differently after I've dealt with the ore heap. That hurts the sense of a living world, and it didn't need to be carried over so faithfully. With the graphics, the developers clearly decided to fix the limitations of the era — they could have done the same for world reactivity and maybe some of the dialogue. Speaking of dialogue: the German narrator/voice direction doesn't land well, something went wrong in the booth. The guest dub by the YouTuber HandOfBlood doesn't work either. That only affects the German version, though.