Q 2 Review

By the magic of blogger's scheduled posts facility, here I am posting when actually at this very moment I'll be waiting for two hours in a line with my two daughters at Eurodisney for a chance to meet a lady dressed up as Sleeping Beauty.

Anyway, there was great fanfare back in August when AGDI released QFG2VGA but the reaction in the AGS forums was perhaps somewhat muted. There's a kind of historic animosity between AGDI fans and AGS fans. Anyone who doesn't drool over AGDI games can expect a mauling from fans. Al Emmo was particularly badly received, although that could entirely be down to the voice acting of the main character (see Richard Cobbett's comment on his own QFG2VGA review).

So, here's my brief review: Graphics look great, its entirely unclear what you're supposed to do or how to get anywhere in the game without looking at hints or a walkthrough. Full of mazes, very hard combat and I gave up after playing for a few hours as there seemed to be no point. Other reviewers have said that perseverance is rewarded but I don't see why I shouldn't be rewarded a bit earlier. It's a game: its supposed to be fun! They even tell you to go and play QFG1 first, despite the fact its pretty unobtainable without pirating. I also realise that I've gotten used to the awesomeness of tutorials. Most games on the web with an slightly unusual control mechanism explain themselves fully: Dave Gilbert's Blackwell games do this, too. But no help here until you get the walkthrough and manage to find the adventurer guild where you can be taught to fight. By taught I mean get stuck in an unexitable loop until you guess the right nanosecond to hit the correct one of 5 dodge buttons. Sorry folks, this is too much like hard work.

Oh, and postpone your hate mail since I won't be online for a week after this is published anyway...