I'm sorry there's no breaks in this text, but that's Gamespots fault not mine.I have been a Guild Wars fan since day-0 when it started in 2005 and my god I sank my free hours into that game like there was no tomorrow. It was refreshing and just plain fun. Although sometimes I longed Guild Wars to be more "free-roaming" and somewhere down the road I tried WoW and I got hooked instantly. Adventuring in the immense world of Warcraft was a blast, but at level high-something my screen got cluttered with all kinds of skills, spells and whatnot and I thought back of the 8-skill skillbar of Guild Wars and all the tactical decisions it brought with it. And then in 2007 A-net announced Guild Wars 2 and it would be revolutionary and considering the development time it had better be just that. A combination of the best part of WoW and the best parts of Guild Wars would make an awesome game I thought. It turned out quite differently, instead of learning from the strengths of WoW, Arenanet seemed to be focused on fixing the most annoying flaws of WoW and put those in GW2. It doesn't mean that Guild Wars 2 is a bad game, to the contrary I am having fun playing it. But it is not THE sequel to the first Guild Wars I expected it to be.The story of GW2 is pretty much forgettable. You are a newborn hero and there seems to be a big sinister villain which you need to tie down. Nothing compared to the epic Searing in Guild Wars. There is no incentive to take part in the story. In Guild Wars you needed to run for your life to get the hell out of Charr-overrun Ascalon. In GW2 everything is fine, but there is that evil lurking and..meh…if you're up for it you may chase it.rnrnThe combat is fast and flowing and I like it better than the static spellcasting in Guild Wars. You are even able to move while casting which is a huge improvement upon the usual combat system found in a lot of games. rnrnI like the way GW2 lets you play the way YOU want to play it. There are no class/race restrictions and if you want to use a sword as a mage then there's no one stopping you. In fact your character uses different class-based skills per type of weapon you wield. In Guild Wars I often tried the unusual class combinations like N/W using a sword for extra bleeding damage and my necro spells for more health draining. In theory it should be a winning combination, but the game and other players would slap you in the face for even trying. In GW2 whatever you do, it isn't wrong. Unfortunately GW2 takes this a bit too far in the sense that combat gets unpredictable. There are too many skills which have a chance to give a random buff or random condition, it doesn't feel like you control the battle and that's a big miss. rnrnFor PvP this means a lot of button mashing and hoping your enemy dies faster than you. Although I must admit that this chaos makes combat very exciting and I am liking structured PvP a lot. World vs World on the other hand, not so much. I'll cover that later. PvP in GW2 is very balanced and having a low geared char is not an issue since you get bumped to lvl 80 and get new gear that matches accordingly. The thing I absolutely detest in PvP is the downed state when you kill an enemy character. Downed state means your enemy falls to the ground, but is still able to fight on with different "downed" skills. So I have busting my ass to finally kill my enemy with myself hanging on a thread and BAM! I'm dead too because he is fighting from the ground and now I'm lying there as he walks away. I am not sure why you need to kill an enemy twice, again a flaw in the game. rnrnOk, now for WvW (World vs World) because that is a stinker I'll tell you. Instead of having factions battling each other, GW2 is using a WvW or WvWvW system in which 3 realms/servers are fighting in 4 different maps over resources and strategic points. It sounds and could be awesome but the reality is that it is as unbalanced as my fat grannie on the other side of the seesaw. You go into battle bumped to lvl 80 but wearing your current PvE gear, say level 40. And there's the enemy 50+ players flocking your way and there you stand on a bridge with (if you're lucky) also 50 players, trying to make a stand. But WHOOP you die. Some 80-high geared enemy did a kamikaze-run with an insane AoE skill and mows down all the lower geared player on your side. A-net says that WvW lowers the bar for players who are kind of scared of PvP, but I am more scared of WvW than PvP. On top of being ganked like crazy you need to pay steep repair cost for every time you die…and you die a lot. And my god, you need fast computer to engage in big WvW battles. My quadcore Intel cpu, 4Gb ram and Radeon 6850 can't get more than 3 fps in those hectic fights. rnrnThe crafting in GW2 is kinda so-so. Not very special, be warned to farm and grind a lot of mats for leveling your skills. And I mean be ready for some epic Korean-WoW-gold farming when trying to level your crafting. I see that GW2 tries to be different with that crafting and all, but it fails miserably at it. Instead of crafting like 100 of the same scepters you may level you skill by discovering recipes through combining all kinds of mats. The thing is: I don't want to depend on luck when I craft my own weapons or potions. I want to pick out THAT recipe that is needed for my character to get better. So I am looking up those combinations on the internet and the discovery system falls on its face. rnrnI'm gonna finish up writing this review, but I must say that the graphics are on par for games anno 2012. And the skill animations are very well done. Playing PvE with a small band of other players the game runs butter-smooth and again it's plain fun. There are some bugs which break the flow a little, but those are patched up every other day. Nevertheless, expecting the sheer epicness, smartness, and freshness that was Guild Wars I must say that GW2 let me down.
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