After playing the first real beta. I was impressed from the start. It is clear that a lot of work has been done since the first time I saw it back at Rezzed.
After my initial disappointment of the pre beta where we got to play a very underwhelming Revenant, I was not keen to start off with it. I have also been very much looking forward to trying the Reaper.
I don’t want to go into too much detail but I would like to list a few of my observations and thoughts.
Reaper
On the whole, I would say that this is a spectacular piece of work. I really enjoyed playing this specialisation. The play style felt fun and worthwhile. The animations are also very nice on the whole. As was obvious from the POI streams, the attack speed of the Great Sword was quite slow. The speed is not an issue, I do however feel that it could hit a little harder considering the slowness of the attacks. The Reaper Shroud is nothing other than bad kitten
Mastery’s
In general I like the idea of mastery’s. This definitely has the potential to provide the much needed expandable end game progression we all would like. The only criticism I have after the beta is the introduction to it. I don’t think it is very clear how training mastery’s work. I figured out that you have to level the experience then spend the point(s). For my first Mastery level I just had to assume that I could spend the points once I hit the level. During the beta I was only able to get to the first level of gliding and the first level of the mushroom jumping. This was mainly down to the lack of working events in the beta. It is very difficult to level when you are just killing mobs.
Gliding
Overall I was very happy with the feel of gliding. Compared to my experience at rezzed, it was like it had been in the game forever. It felt natural, smooth and most importantly – not clunky! For the first tier the glide distance felt fine if not a little too long. The extra dimension it brought to the game felt nice. My only concern is that it is going to make the vanilla gw2 feel like trying to jump in gw1.
Mushroom Jumping
The mushrooms around the Itzle village are a nice addition. In theory it will make traversing the platforms a much better experience. Sadly this is not the experience I had. I had a number of experiences where I triggered the jump whilst not standing on the platform. This had the effect of firing me short of the landing spot. On a couple of occasions, death could have been avoidable by being able to open my glider. Unfortunately the glider does not open when you are in the midst of a jumping mushroom. I feel that the mushroom jump needs to take you to the same location every time. If that means you can only trigger the jump when standing on top then that’s how it should be.
Revenant and other Specialisations
I tried the Revenant and all other specialisations with the exception of the Cronomancer. In all honesty I was having too much fun with the Reaper to spend much time on them. I liked the animations and feel of the tempest. I wasn’t particularly fussed with the Dragon Hunter which is a shame as my main is currently a Guardian. I didn’t really enjoy the Revenant. Maybe I had it speced wrong but I found that with Shiro and Jalis I was dying very fast. I also had issues getting my head around the f1 f2 and weapon swap. I will defo give it another go but I am going to wait until the end result is available.
As I said before, all in all the game is looking great. I look forward to playing the next beta. Keep up the good work.
One final thing I would like to say – Being as it is the third anniversary in a few weeks. Please give us something to do even if it is just a rehash of something like the gauntlet.