Recent reviews by Pacemaker

This is it. The best Gothic 2 mod ever made.

I have played Odyssey, Returning 2.0 and LoA. I will say straight up, if you go into this mod expecting similar or "better" quality, your mind will simply be blown. Not only does this game absolutely obliterate these mods in pretty much every single aspect, it even competes with (and in many areas, surpasses) the original game, which I never imagined it could have.

This is everything you could ever want out of the original G2:NotR experience.
- Carefully thought out game balance and progression
- Deep understanding of the game's atmosphere, lore, and how to apply and even expand on all of PB's original ideas
- Completely original content and mechanics despite the engine's limitations

There's nothing more that needs to be added. This is a must-play for any Gothic fan. It's so good, I already feel depressed knowing I might never play a modding project of this quality again.

The developers of the multiplayer module are incompetent. Forget about getting features within a reasonable time frame, they are not even capable of fixing a single bug without creating two new ones. Every once in a few months we get them talking about great new features that are set to release "VERY SOON", only to never see them mentioned again in progress updates or releases.

Anyone who's played multiplayer for more than a few months knows how hopeless it all seems. Until the server code is finally released and competent modders can come along and develop a functioning module, we will have to put up with this mess.

As someone who's played every single Armored Core game, this game gave me a good dose of just about most of the things I would want from another game of that style. However, I would still not give this game more than a 6/10, and I would sure as hell not recommend it to anyone who's not familiar with the genre.

I'd say this game was most enjoyable while the novelty of the few new mechanics it had in comparison to AC was still there (such as Femto buffs or the nice implementation of secondary weapons). Past that point, the negatives of the game start start getting more and more obvious. I'll try to sum up some of the biggest issues in this game.

1. It's trying to be too much like Armored Core:
From had some distinct design patterns for their AC games that they stuck with over the years. Not all of these are good per se, and I think it's much to this game's detriment that they tried copying a lot of them over without much thought behind it. Area borders were always terrible and there was no reason to just continue with them. As for the storytelling, having a silent protagonist that has no involvement in the story is not necessarily a good idea if you make the game as character focused as it is. Furthermore, abusing the trope of "Oh, looks like this mission took an unexpected turn!! Objective: ???" in basically every mission ruins it really quickly. The writers of AC timed this kind of thing a lot better, and it only happened like once or twice per game, making it genuinely interesting. But the writing in general is bad, so

2. The story sucks:
They tried to mix in anime with a typical AC setting. It's not a bad idea, but the execution is horrible. Every single character is a one-dimensional archetype that you will not give a **** about even when their obligatory tearjerker moment plays out. Also, prepare for a lot of nonsensical philosophy that the game will continually force down your throat until it eventually decides to actually explain the grand idea behind it, which is anything but grand. It also feels disjointed as hell and it's quite clear the developers were under time pressure and couldn't finish it properly. Lastly I'd also like to mention that there are no paths unlike in many Armored Core games, save for a few different mission outcomes, which was a huge bummer to me. There are a few choices you can make, but they are about as impactful as choices in, say, Persona 5.

3. Generally watered down in terms of features compared to Armored Core:
If you are going to copy a lot of the things AC games had, why not ones that generally everyone likes? Where is the arena for singleplayer? Where are all the other equipment slots? Why are there no interesting completionist goals such as mission rank? And how is the AI even dumber than in the PS1 generation games? You'd at least expect it to keep up with games that are already more than 20 years old.

Lastly for a big positive, the online mode is fantastic and carries basically this entire game. The co-op content is fun, the boss fighting is fun, and so on. Wish they'd done even more with it, but even as it stands, it's definitely the saving grace of this game.

As much as I've enjoyed this game, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone but AC fans. For those people, this is definitely worth playing once. But all in all, I'd almost rather replay AC Nexus, Last Raven or FA.