/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5842929
Yeah, the plot was actually halfway decent, and though there's gaps and issues, particularly with Lo Wang himself, the story with Hoji and Ameonna was pretty good.

And then Shadow Warrior 2 takes a big fat shit on all of that, on top of being a VASTLY less fun game with shit enemies and shit maps, devolving into a cutrate Borderlands clone, a fucking blase lootershooter.
Lo Wang's new support character was intended as a morality pet, which I think has to be the absolute worst and misguided idea you could actually apply to a character like Lo Wang, especially given that the base idea is that he'll grow into the vicious and sadistic one man mercenary warlord that he is in the original game.
Hoji worked so well because he was a similar kind of foul playing bastard to Lo Wang (and also because he took every opportunity to mock him and make fun of him for being an idiot).
Even if Lo Wang wasn't intended to be evil, like Caleb, he was never a goody two shoes kind of protagonist.
I think the cherry on top of the shit sundae is that the cool sword the first game centers around is made a joke out of and turned into a complete shit and generic powerup item, and you at best can unlock a mediocre replica of it through a DLC that can't do any of the magic and is gold plated for no reason.

>>5241868
I'd be more offended by the Asian stereotype shtick when I was younger, but these days I could deal with it (I just don't really care).
I just don't find him all that funny, and his voice is sometimes REALLY grating and annoying.
Compare to Duke Nukem, who's cool, and funny, and compare to Caleb, who's also cool and somewhat funny, both also have some great one-liners, which I feel classic Lo Wang very much lacks.

In the reboot, at first I detested Lo Wang, because he's a self-centered douche and embarrassing nerd, but I grew to like him, it helps that Hoji doesn't hold back and makes fun of Lo Wang relentlessly, mocking his intellect. You're supposed to laugh at him.
However, he's not a worthless idiot, just kind of an idiot, actually kind of a cool idiot, he has some attitude to him, and he definitely can back it, the sword fighting system feels very solid, and you can nearly fight the entire game with just the sword if you really want to, this helps selling him as a capable action hero, or uh, 'hero'.

It's a shame Shadow Warrior 2 is so fucking godawful, both in terms of story and characters, but also with very lackluster gameplay (why, oh WHY did they turn it into a cutrate Borderlands clone?). The 2013 game wasn't a masterpiece with characters and story, but it tried, and mostly it worked. I cannot say the same for SW2, which feels like it takes a shit on everything the previous game did right in that department.
The idea that the new support character had to be Lo Wang's "conscious" is perhaps the most misguided idea I've ever heard in my life, Hoji was just as, if not far more amoral/immoral than Lo Wang himself, which is why they worked as a duo.
If they ever do another sequel, I desperately hope they retcon all of Shadow Warrior 2 as Lo Wang having some kind of drug fueled feverdream.

>>4651327
The level design wasn't excellent, but I didn't think it was bad at all.
For the upgrade system, I like that kind of stuff, but there was some that felt like bloat, like I basically used NO magic but the sword moves and the healing spell.

>but instead they decided to focus on everything bad about SW and double down on it for SW2
I kind of agree on that, in a way. It's like for every step forward they took in SW2, they took two backwards.

Where locales could sometimes be a bit plain and samey in SW, SW2 made environments more detailed and pretty, BUT, the procgen levels are a complete joke and there's basically only 10 or so actually different levels to play in the entire game, and you'll revisit the exact same environments constantly.
Some of the weapons could be a bit lackluster or 'floaty' in SW, which they did do better in SW2, but the problem is that SW2 was also turned into a pseudo-Borderlands, which I felt detracted massively, it's not AT ALL what I wanted.
For every weapon I enjoyed, there were like 4 that I didn't, and the upgrade system feels like the worlds biggest afterthought, with lots of worthless bonuses early on, and the orb system, which feels like it was designed to explicitly waste my fucking time.
The larger bestiary is kind of nice in some ways, but ostensibly it's actually less varied in roles, and a lot of the monsters are actually just reskins with mostly the same behavior and animations.

I'll also say that I kind of liked the plot and characters of SW, even if it's kind of flawed at places, whereas SW2 has absolutely atrocious plot and characters and shits all over the previous game.
I'm really hoping the third game starts with Lo Wang waking up from a drug induced stupor and then there's a real sequel.