Avernum 2: Crystal Souls

A lot of my hours were idle so it does not indicate how long it took. However, having finished, I give this game a grudging thumbs up. Overall, for a single developer, it deserves purchase and praise. Having written that, it is a grudging thumbs up for the following reasons: 1. The combat system is abysmal. You level up your character to 35 and you will still find with a 90% hit chance that you are missing but your enemies will go right through your resistances like butter. A boss will inexplicably increase damage until they delete you, invulnerability or not. 2. The graphics. 3. Many of the "puzzles" require you to figure out how to level up spells and then return someplace later, with no real notes on where. It makes a heck of a lot of progress hit-or-miss and boring. 4. Final critique is that some quests are bugged or do not make it clear how to progress. If you are a completionist, don't expect to complete everything. 5. Bonus: It annoys the snot out of me when I have a 4-person party that gets blocked easily and cannot be plotted for long distances of travel with no indication on how far away I can move the cursor. QoL issues.

NOTE: take about 6 hours off my playtime, as its wasn't uncommon for me to just step away from the game often. Boy, this game took a while, but thats the way most Spiderweb Software games are. A very heavy reading game, again, as all Spiderweb games, and I wouldnt have it any other way. Even as Spiderweb software games go, this one on normal is a fairly easy, as long as you realize magic is busted good in this game. I'm a bit sad i didn't get my achievement for beating the games every ending on normal I should have gotten, due to fiddling with the difficulty options (without even exiting the options screen). However, I don't ever feel like playing these types of games on difficulties higher than normal. so not like i'm 100% achievements this game anyway. If you've played the original Avernum 2, you probably dont need to play this one unless you REALLY loved it and want to experience it with a new coat of paint and some Quality of Life changes that were much needed (thank god for the junk bag). If you haven't, get it on sale and have an enjoyable crpg with a lot of reading. Don't expect a lot of "your choices matter" here, as theres few of those. Just enjoy the ride, play on normal, and go from weak soldiers to demi-gods.

Fantastic game, chock full of good content and good writing. It's really cool to see how the world has changed since the first game, and to come across characters that were present back then but have changed over the time gap.

This is classic RPG goodness, aside from the odd mechanics issue, it's a gem.

pretty good

super retro, hands down one of the best games ever made especially the older version. in depth story and lore. takes a little time to get used to the game play but very addictive. 2 and 3 are the best along with geneforge. 10/10

awesome game from an awesome remade series from an awesome oldschool rpg dev still going hard at it!