Guild Wars 2

Only one waypoint, and travel golems that cost more than waypoints to go between levels. None for the top, though. Wouldn’t want it to be too convenient. Not so good idea.

Annoying amounts of veterans and elites, as well as mortars and mines. If anyone gets downed in the minefield, it’s almost never worth the trouble to revive them, as any revivers must avoid any nearby enemies and the constantly respawning mines.

Without swiftness, you have to dodge every time just to be sure you won’t be hit, as well as stunbreakers to get back up if you are hit, otherwise you can get ping-ponged to death.

Bad idea.

And the worst idea: “Gated” events forcing you to complete them before you can move on. Always being group events. Never again.

Despite the enemy below being a veteran, it’s actually closer to elite strength. On top of that, it has ranged non projectile attacks and constantly whittles your health away with the “spore field” and hallucination minions that spawn as well.

And depending on the scaling, it can be a champion instead, making it near impossible without a mini-zerg.

Oh, and when you die, you’ll have to restart at the waypoint at the very start, repair your armor, and start over/pay the travel golems, then try to get back to where you were. Ugh.

Stand and fight? No, better to run most of the time. Usually you’ll just draw more enemies to you in the process of fighting, then their conditions/AoE become too much for you to handle.

And it gets worse if you’re in a spot where a gating group event can spawn (and it does), meaning even more enemies come at you, or you’re stuck with little room to move, in order to avoid getting their attention. This applies to the minefields as well.

One of the few good parts (gameplay-wise) is the Nightmare Chambers, where you can get some dialogue between some of the Living Story characters, as well as some dialogue from the Invasive Weed referring to your second storyline choice (provided you completed it).

Depending on your race, order, and how much personal story you’ve completed, you can end up fighting hallucinations of your respective Destiny’s Edge mentor, your order mentor…and a certain character reviled by most.

2nd floor is pretty much like the first floor, but with spiders and spider webs. So it’s worse, basically.

The third floor has the toxic debuff constantly on, save for some “safe spots” where there are air purifiers that the Toxic forces didn’t destroy, thankfully. Not sure why they didn’t but…(shrug)

So, let’s see…mines, gated events, annoying amount of enemies, no travel golem straight to the top if you got there at least…pretty much another zerg-fest to get the meta and then stay away. It’s a shame, in concept, the tower was yet another good idea, just not done so well…. the tower also looks nice on the inside, for a toxic haven of evil.

Pictured: Bad enemy layout. Seriously, how am I supposed to fight all that in the toxic stuff? Might as well run…although, depending on how many dodges/stunbreaks/stability you have at the time, that will fail a lot as well. As shown here..

Story? Well….

In the Nightmare chambers (the first one you go into) Kasmeer and Marjory talk about the hallucinations. Kasmeer suggests that Scarlet is exerting some influence once the toxins have weakened our defenses, making us see specific hallucinations like Aetherblades, Molten Alliance, and other characters see people they know as well.

Rox sees Rytlock.

Braham claims he can see Eir out the corner of his eye, and thinks she’s spying on him. As if, Braham.

Marjory sees Mendel..sigh.

Kasmeer sees her (dead?) father.

Afterwards, once you get to the top chamber..you find that even though the Priory got the antitoxin ready for injection, they didn’t get to use it. So you have to finish what they started.

So apparently Scarlet (and the Nightmare faction with her) have convinced the krait that they’re incarnating one of their true prophets inside the tower. I guess that works.

Fight through some Twisted waves, then some Aetherblade waves, and finally some Molten waves. Along the way, Kasmeer got pricked by a thorn. Some seem to think that may imply something bad will happen to her. Hopefully not, though.

Finally, we get to the main chamber, and a few more Toxics who deliver a not so great welcome. Then….she comes in.

“Here, let me recap everything I’ve been behind like you should care!”

On one hand, it does catch up those who’ve joined/started midway through this. On the other hand it’s also very annoying to hear her ramble on over what is otherwise a nice looking cut-scene.

Did I mention she’s ugly? Seriously…even the “ugly faces” in Sylvari character creation have some measure of beauty to them. Not this weed.

Oh, and she’s apparently leaving for a while…and she just walks right out a portal in front of us while we watch her do so. Then we fight the boss, inject the antitoxin, and it’s done…all that’s left is to finish the meta achievement and never return.

I think this video sums it up better than me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZU8h-9nyHU