Your opinions about Shadow Warrior 2?

To begin with, I really enjoyed the previous one as a wonderful retrospective first person shoother, or first person slasher if you want to call it that way. Interesting weapons and katana actions, demons, level design with beautiful environment, and not to mention the chattering between the protagonist and his ancient sidekick... everything was just enjoyable to me and I've never regretted my purchase. Only a few aspects disappointed me, such as committing suicide because you tried to dash down the stairs, or even glitches, related to the level design, that can completely interrupt the progression.

Now its sequel is about to be released within 8 days, and I can buy one with 20% discount, with 10% pre-order discount and another 10% discount for the owner of the previous Shadow Warrior. But to be honest, I watched some of the in-game action videos and I was a little bit disappointed then I was expecting. Certainly it still has an interesting level design with eye-catching environments, but I must say that I can't feel the satisfaction, that I had with my fully-upgraded crossbow and an enchanted katana, from the in-game video previews. Not to mention that chainsaw looks way too inferior to the Doom 2016. The HUD elements with damage points and health bar of enemies also look annoying, but I believe that there'll be an option to turn them off.

I want to buy this one, judging from the great experience I had from the previous game, but I'm not so sure about it right now. Any opinions about the upcoming Shadow Warrior are welcomed here.

I, too, enjoyed the first Shadow Warrior reboot, in spite of its many flaws. The sequel looks like an attempt to be the next Borderlands, but with even less charm (if that's possible). Still potentially entertaining... Looks like there's a decent amount of air control and mobility. Gunplay doesn't seem to move from bullet sponges, but then again how many first-person shooters do we have to choose from?

Definitely a wait&see buy for me. No point getting it at release (much less preorder!), Devolver Digital is pretty aggressive with their special sales. I expect -50% by the Steam winter sale, and -75% by next year.

I didn't even watch gameplay trailers, but bought it anyway.
I usually avoid preorder, but the price tag looked fine and I'm confident it will deliver.

Well, i haven't played the reboot but saw gameplay of it and liked it, seeing the katana in the gameplay slicing and dicing demons in half gave me good memories about slicing ninjas in half in the SW '98, as for SW2, i'll say that it looks interesting, also those ally ninjas in the trailer have me intriged, also i heard there's a new sidekick for Lo Wang, Hoji's sister i believe, which is cool too.
So i have a feeling that SW2 is gonna be great.

I played the first once and honestly I only enjoyed it for a little while until I just found disappointment with it since it detracted from the style of gameplay the original game had to arena based slaughterfests with very genericly designed maps, even most of the weapons weren't fun to use unlike the weapons in the original game, I pretty much prefered the original game from 1997. I am not really sure if I would even enjoy the sequel.

I hate the original. Generic monster cast, levels are nothing special, annoying protag, useless fucking items, redundant weapons, the weakest uzi I've ever heard maybe minus San Andreas' pop cap gun sounds. Whole game feels like a giant unbalanced mess. Just give me Duke 3D, or better yet Blood.

The remake is very competent. I like the traditional looking demons, the weapons and upgrades are nice, it's a linear affair but a gorgeous one. The sword is incredibly and surprisingly fun to use, almost everything is made of explodium, and they actually bothered with a story which is unnecessary but cool I guess. Since I dislike the first one I suppose the move to more "arena" based gameplay didn't affect me as much and I just took it as a whole new game.

The sequel looks to be mixing up the formula a bit, which I'm honestly fine with. I'll always remember when FEAR 2 came out and the outcry of fanboys who would crucify that game for not being exactly like the first one. Who wants to make the same game over and over?

So far the sequel kind of reminds me of a Borderlands and Serious Sam mixture. It's really up to you if you enjoy those sort of games or not. Personally I'll be getting it down the line, but I currently have a huge backlog already I need to get through.

Phml said:

...I expect -50% by the Steam winter sale, and -75% by next year.

Or even -90% later on. They're pretty generous to the massive discount sale, I can tell.

Anyway, thanks for the comments, guys. I'm still not sure about the pre-order, though.

9 times out of 10 it's smart to never pre-order. The two times I've ever pre-ordered was L4D2 and The Witcher 2, but these were from companies I trust not to have miserable failed launches. If you're unsure, save your money and wait to see what people say.

I've been going through the reboot and have been enjoying it a lot so far, ultimately preferring it to the Chang Nukem the original tries to be (and fails to capture the same magic as Duke did). I still think the original is very decent as far as BUILD games go but instead being like another Blood it's practically neck-and-neck with Redneck Rampage, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

I can't say I've been following the sequel too closely but from what I've seen so far it looks to be a fun and crazy ride. A departure from the reboot's direction for sure, but like CARRiON said if they just made SW 1.5 instead of, well, 2.0, wouldn't it just degrade into another same-y franchise?

Who wants to make the same game over and over?

The Japanese, apparently. God bless them for making Demon's Souls and then making it again. Four times.

Meh, SW97 was much much better than Redneck Rampage, I really wouldn't say it was on par with that mess of a game. I would even go as far as to say I enjoyed SW97 more than Duke Nukem 3D but not Blood, Blood was imho the best Build game.

SW97's items and weapons weren't useless and underpowered at all, they were even more varied with their alternate firing modes, but the Uzi was best dual weilded than used single though, and maybe one of the items was useless such as the cloak which didn't always work. Also the map design was no where near as generic and prefab based as the reboot, they were as interactive and non-linear as any other 2.5D game from the 90s.

The strongest points of the reboot were the story, graphics, and sword fighting.

I hated the original reboot, and I don't see how making it like Borderlands, another game I hate, is going to improve on it.

Cynical said:

I hated the original reboot, and I don't see how making it like Borderlands, another game I hate, is going to improve on it.

This.

The only good thing about the game was the humor. "You really put the ass in mass murderer"

There's already a SW2 thread.

I'm going to be weird and say I'm buying it because of the writing. The story and dialogue in the SW2013 were surprisingly good for the type of game it was and I'd like to see where they take it.

Gameplay-wise Shadow Warrior 2013 was extremely flawed. The level variety was pretty bad, with the warehouses in the middle act and that hour long ship level being the lowest point of the game. The levels had way too many combat arenas and the enemies themselves could tank a lot of hits no matter which weapon you were using - those large shaman enemies were especially obnoxious to fight. The bosses were gigantic bullet sponges and one took me half hour just because of how much health they had. The weapons packed no punch and there was barely any feedback that enemies were being hit other than the blood spurts.

From what I've seen of the sequel's gameplay it's an improvement in every way. Weapons and combat actually look fun now and I'm digging the big open levels with the focus on verticality like Doom 2016. Seems like the game has more of its own identity now rather than being yet another linear Painkiller-esque arena shooter.

the original Shadow Warrior is a clunky mess and not very enjoyable at all. the enemies are a bit too aggressive and dangerous to be dealt with, and honestly the guns were pretty lame and lacked the kind of visceral feedback that the Duke ones did.

the reboot was... alright, but it wasn't that great IMO. gameplay-wise like skeltal said, it's flawed. the combat is way too overcomplicated and the guns are pretty useless compared to the katana, and there's waaaaaaay too many upgrades to be bothered with. and also, i didn't really like the story that much, i felt it was a bit too tacked on and too serious for a game like Shadow Warrior, and that it demanded that i cared about someone that's seriously called Lo Wang. i haven't seen much of the sequel, but hopefully it'll at least be more fun to play and not such an overcomplicated mess. if not, well, that's a shame.

Again, thanks for the comments. :) I've decided to wait for christmas sale season, instead of pre-ordering the game.

I liked how Shadow Warrior reboot wasn't the same game as SW97. New spins and new directions are welcomed, and I don't think I've seen better first-person swordplay in a game since SW:Reboot. I remember seeing some cinematic trailers for SW2, but I haven't seen gameplay yet. I like the idea of co-op, though.

Main problem I had with the first one was how useless some of the weapons ended up being due to the massive bullet sponges. I mean, I suppose this was to encourage you to use the sword, but then there were still enemies that were basically sword sponges. I don't mind working an enemy to death, but several of those kinds of enemies in a row was annoying, from what I remember. Solid game otherwise, though. Humping rabbits and all.

Phml said:

The Japanese, apparently. God bless them for making Demon's Souls and then making it again. Four times.

If you are gonna play the japanese card then I will say that americans can be guilty of this took, Call of Duty, do I need to say anything? Same game for 9 fucking years with different skins but same engine and core gameplay so don't say it's just the japanese.

...I was *praising* the Souls team here.

Phml said:

...I was *praising* the Souls team here.

Oh i'm sorry then, I've completely mixed up the praise for something else, ah well, I think I just heard the opposite of what you said too many times in other places in other times.

NP. Easy to see how it could sound like sarcasm. I genuinely think there's something great in refining a good experience only slightly, to inch towards perfection. Even for the sole purpose of new content, it's worth it if the gameplay is fun to start with.