
For all its issues, Shadow Warrior 2 features an addictive mission cycle that mixes the satisfaction of a looter shooter with a rewarding sense of character progression. I’m not sure I have the answer at this point, but if I were to guess, I’d say it’s related to the gameplay loop. And this directly ties to another standout: the visual and gameplay variety on offer when it comes to weapons - … More I was very close to calling it a day about 4 hours in, but after that, something clicked in the way I saw the game, and I became almost hypnotised by its continuous appeal to do one more story mission, one more bounty quest, just to see what new gear would come out of it.

So why on earth did I do every single thing there is to do in this game? It had a ton of performance and optimisation issues, the procedurally generated levels are somewhat mediocre, most side missions are a carbon copy of each other, the gem crafting roulette is nonsensical at best, the number of unnecessary upgrades makes for confusing and bloated menu navigation, and the amount asset recycling is almost insulting. Hell, it doesn’t even break top 5 of the ones I’ve played this year so far. Yet, this is far from being one of my favourite games. I’ve spent about 35hrs in a game that seemingly takes most people 24hrs to reach completionist status. So this is the one of the very few games I’ve fully completed in my life, in the sense that I’ve done every single main quest, side quest and activity there is to do. If you just want to brutally murder monsters and stuff with swords, bows and miniguns - look no further. It's fun, looks good, has no micro-transactions or daily quests or whatever, and it only takes ~30 hours even if you do almost every side-quest. The descriptions for some are kinda vague too. The skill system is kinda unbalanced with some skills being useless or overly expensive.
Shadow warrior 2 fortune cookies upgrade#
Seriously, i wanted to remove the negative effects from one upgrade item and it required like 120 orbs when completing a single trial gives only 3! I never even bothered with any of it after unlocking everything. They're really hard (harder than the normal game) and to use the special powers you unlock you have to replay them to gather enough special orbs. Seriously, i wanted to remove the negative effects from one upgrade item and it required like … More And i even skipped half a dozen bounties. There is a limited amount of maps and you have to revisit them a tad too often. A "merge all junks" option would have helped a lot. The system with slotable item upgrades works good for the most part, but it does require too much attention. Oh yeah, and the Vanish power combined with the sword ranged attack is amazing. Combined with being able to revisit areas with new enemies present you can never really get "stuck" due to the difficulty. I want to especially highlight how there are bounties that you can freely ignore or play to get xp/items. It looks really nice and quite a bit of the environment is destructible. The game is well-optimised and i could even sort of play it in 4K with my crappy RX560 (like 20 fps or something, i quickly went back to 1K). The humour is solid, especially some of the fortune cookies are great: "I've figured it out guys, it's to be" - Shakespeare. There are tons of enemies and weapons and combat feels visceral. Movement is mostly very smooth, with dash, double jump and no fall damage. SW2 is a first-person slasher/shooter in which you visit maps, kill stuff and get new weapons, upgrades and skills.
