Product is well worth its asking price. Its quality is of high standard. It is cheap. It adds a lot of playtime and it is pretty much required addition to properly enjoy this game. Keep that in mind when reading further review as it is all relative and I just want to talk and inform potential late consumer about realities of this product.
Content is more of what you got in vanilla game. It is not better on notewhile level. The issue comes in old philosophy that expansions should be more difficult. This content is designed primary for hardcore fans of vanilla which means, they expect you to pretty much know systems and have twinks while going into new content. Otherwise you will find yourself suddenly too weak. This game is arbitrary in its progression which consists of gear checks. Either your gear is good enough or it is not. Expansion hits you with poison and acid resists at which point, that stat was rare and game favored other items. Naturally you will tend to lack it and you will be melted. Then there is sudden shifts of different enemies, each dealing their own types of damage. So you hero must already have to be well geared for this content or you will find yourself uncomfortably squishy. Side bosses also went to complete bonkers. Difficulty spikes from vanilla and here are extremely noticeable where all mobs and bosses in vanilla are push overs. You can only make one avatar, shard of God to be an exception. Here you will encounter mobs who are on completely different difficulty scale and while that is not bad in itself, the issue is that new player won’t have gear required nor experience from previous encounters to tackle randomly overpowered bosses.
Another issue is 3 difficulty levels. This system requires you to complete game on Veteran which is fair, but it unlocks itself after vanilla game. If you are going to complete expansion, this likely will leave your overleveled and overgeared for elite. In fact, most of the community agrees that Elite is easier game mode. So, in other words, game difficulty goes from: “hard” to “medium” to “very hard”. You will have to waste 1/3 of all your playtime pointlessly grinding gear in completely redundant difficulty level which is easier than previous one, does not offer meaningful additions to your game and is here only to be a speed bump and cheap, artificial extention of your game’s time. You cannot complete this content on your first go without actively punishing yourself on your second, mandatory playthrough. So be aware that playing this expansion rather than stopping in vanilla and starting it over again will negatively affect your future playthroughs.
Another issue with this game is its community. Harrassment, trolling is perfectly acceptable here and you should keep your head down. Asking for forum moderator to actually moderate such abuse will result in your thread being locked rather than warning or banning abusers who start fights. This game have one of the worst online communities which I had “pleasure” in dealing with. People on frequent basis fail to read your comments, they lie, make stuff up in order to attack you. They are extremely defensive and will fail to voice a single argument for their opinions, but will rather attack you viciously if you will dare to vocally disagree with something. Before making the purchase you should be aware that community of this game, such as it is, is best left completely alone, because at such late stage of a product, only harcore elitist, fanboys and sheeps in echo chamber tend to remain.
Content is more of what you got in vanilla game. It is not better on notewhile level. The issue comes in old philosophy that expansions should be more difficult. This content is designed primary for hardcore fans of vanilla which means, they expect you to pretty much know systems and have twinks while going into new content. Otherwise you will find yourself suddenly too weak. This game is arbitrary in its progression which consists of gear checks. Either your gear is good enough or it is not. Expansion hits you with poison and acid resists at which point, that stat was rare and game favored other items. Naturally you will tend to lack it and you will be melted. Then there is sudden shifts of different enemies, each dealing their own types of damage. So you hero must already have to be well geared for this content or you will find yourself uncomfortably squishy. Side bosses also went to complete bonkers. Difficulty spikes from vanilla and here are extremely noticeable where all mobs and bosses in vanilla are push overs. You can only make one avatar, shard of God to be an exception. Here you will encounter mobs who are on completely different difficulty scale and while that is not bad in itself, the issue is that new player won’t have gear required nor experience from previous encounters to tackle randomly overpowered bosses.
Another issue is 3 difficulty levels. This system requires you to complete game on Veteran which is fair, but it unlocks itself after vanilla game. If you are going to complete expansion, this likely will leave your overleveled and overgeared for elite. In fact, most of the community agrees that Elite is easier game mode. So, in other words, game difficulty goes from: “hard” to “medium” to “very hard”. You will have to waste 1/3 of all your playtime pointlessly grinding gear in completely redundant difficulty level which is easier than previous one, does not offer meaningful additions to your game and is here only to be a speed bump and cheap, artificial extention of your game’s time. You cannot complete this content on your first go without actively punishing yourself on your second, mandatory playthrough. So be aware that playing this expansion rather than stopping in vanilla and starting it over again will negatively affect your future playthroughs.
Another issue with this game is its community. Harrassment, trolling is perfectly acceptable here and you should keep your head down. Asking for forum moderator to actually moderate such abuse will result in your thread being locked rather than warning or banning abusers who start fights. This game have one of the worst online communities which I had “pleasure” in dealing with. People on frequent basis fail to read your comments, they lie, make stuff up in order to attack you. They are extremely defensive and will fail to voice a single argument for their opinions, but will rather attack you viciously if you will dare to vocally disagree with something. Before making the purchase you should be aware that community of this game, such as it is, is best left completely alone, because at such late stage of a product, only harcore elitist, fanboys and sheeps in echo chamber tend to remain.