Story - B+
Lore - A
Combat - A+
Class design - A
Open world content - A+
Endgame instanced content - B
Payment model - A
Quality of life systems - C
The game is fantastic for the price, especially for casual players. But the game lacks polish and also lacks a lot of ease of use featuresyou may find in other MMOs such as a queue system for dungeons and raids.
If you love MMORPGS, don't wait. Guild wars 2 is one of the best MMORPG's ever created. But be aware, there is no grind to it..... Only exploration, questing but not what you would expect, and an amazing story and a welcoming community.
Best MMO nowadays as far as I'm concerned, and maybe the one that respects the most the money you invest. There really nothing wrong with Guild Wars 2, and it amuses me that a good game like that had come from NCSoft.
Guild Wars 2 is still a great Game without any Question, but with a few "but.."Moments!
You have Acces to:
- Open World which is gigantic and after years you can still find secret Eastereggs, but....(few Maps are lagging very hard and most of them you need to pay for like Path of Fire Expansion Maps or Living Storry 4 Maps, all other Maps are fine so far)
- Fractals which are the deleveloped Options to Dungeons
- Dungeons which are nice for the first time but ArenaNet never upgrade it in the whole **** the Final Loot **** you can more or less easy Solo the Dungeon with a Hearth of Thrones / Path of Fire Expansion Build
- Raids which are not too hard in all, but you still need alot of "know how"
- World vs. World where you can fight against other Servers in a big Map to Control Sectors
- PvP, ****: PvP :)
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Templates for Gear and Skills
- Before ArenaNet take over there was a Free way to save Builds+Gear by a Programm called ArcDPS, now ArenaNet have there own System and its....
You start with 2 Gearslot, 3 Skillslots, but each Class has a Condition Build, Phsysical Damage, Heal, Tank, Support Builds and for Raids you need different Gear and Skills as in Fractals or for Open World, also World vs World is **** if you want to play it little bit more as a Weekendend Hobby you need to spend ~7€ for EACH Slot on EACH Character to a max of 5 Slots. Otherwise you need to spend alot of time to switch the Gear all the time one by one. This was a great idea, but more or less its behind a paywall to get a good comfort for your Character.
- Also a point that is good and bad at once: The Gear, if you are Level 80 you cant get better Gear after the Ancient Gear which is pretty easy to craft after 2-3 Month Playtime. So its very nice if you want to take a break, come back later and you dont need to upgrade the whole Gear again, but that also means that you need your own goals for the Game to set, without it can get boring very fast!
So keep this in Mind.
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Positive:
+ Many different Characters to play
+ Huge Map, many ways to do something like Meta-Maps, Fractals etc
+ Good solid Story
+ Content for a Year if you want to explore the Maps, Story's, see any Content and find all the little Secrets in the World etc
+ No pay to win, just many COMFORT Items like Unlimited Harvest Tools etc
Negative
- Map-Lags for Paid Content, but instead of fix this issues they are more interested to bring new Content (what means they dont care realy about !!!in my Opinion!!!)
- You need to set up your own goals to still have fun after round about a half year when you finished the Story, get your Gear etc
- Dungeons are realy fine and nice, but are no challenge after reach Level 80
- Few Maps are realy hard to explore until you get a Mount!
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All in All: Its a great game that is defently worth it to explore, but with a bad taste after around a half year! If you dont want to upgrade your gear each few Month and able to set your own goals in a Game and more a "Story, Explore, Find out" Dude instead of a "I need always something to do by the Game, Dailys, Items Grind, hard Challenges" its a DEFENTLY YES in my Opinion!
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Personal Hint: If you want to explore the Game without big frustation Moments play until Level 20-30 and if you still like it, look for a Guild which can support you with great Informations "how to..." and how to explore the big World!
Just reviewing the story missions of the base game here. This is one of the worst story experiences I've ever had. Mediocre voice acting; a lot of the minor actors sound like they just wandered into the studio. Very strange mechanics, like turret sections where you have to press the number keys to move and shoot the turret, or escort missions where you have to stand right next to but also slightly ahead of the NPC at all times to get them to move. TERRIBLE story progression. All that happens is you meet a few new characters, they die or betray you, and the other characters (most of whom have no personality beyond their fantasy race) are surprised. Then you beat the main boss by hopping on a turret and spamming 1 for 5 minutes straight.
After peaking ahead at some story content for the "Path of Fire" expansion, it does seem like their writing ability and use of mechanics gets better over time. But the base game is so atrocious and skippable, please do yourself a favor and just skip all the cutscenes. You don't need to know anything besides the Jolly Green Giant guy is the main hero for apparently no reason. That's it.
SummaryGuild Wars 2 draws from the game mechanics that made the original Guild Wars one of the most popular online games and adds a fully persistent world. Like its predecessors, Guild Wars 2 does not have a subscription fee. Guild Wars Eye of the North provide a Hall of Monuments where players' accomplishments are memorialized and eventually i...