anthony62490: Fair enough, but you have to remember that Spoony is an entertainer. His schtick is getting ludicrously pissed off over small problems. I have never played Privateer 2, but I'm willing to bet that Spoony is picking the game apart and only showing us the bad parts. Regardless, I'm not going to play it, so I'm not really sure why I feel the need to judge.
custardcream: brilliant game.
if they do get it on gog, which i see no reason not to...
I've just installed my original Privateer 2: The Darkening again (after playing Privateer 1 for about 3 hours which was a lot of fun), just to see if it isn't even a little enjoyable. And I must say: it's even worse than Spoony mentioned in his review. The game just isn't really playable like the first Privateer! At all! While Privateer 1 was all about cargo missions and "hunting down enemies" missions, this game doesn't give you ANY of that! Here's what I mean:
1.) There are no missions!
Seriously... no Merchants Guild, no Mercenary Guild and NO MISSIONS from a mission computer or anything! So how do you make money in this game? That's simple. Simple and boring: every kill gives you a tiny amount of money instead.
2.) No trading!
As in: you can't trade goods yourself, you must hire a cargo ship which does that. That's a huge deal-breaker if you ask me. Of course you can "escort" that cargo ship by flying alongside of it – but where's the fun in that?
Also: even IF you choose to do cargo runs via those cargo ships: it won't get you anywhere financially. The most you'll be able to get out of it is a 10% gain. So you're better off killing random enemies. That gives you 50 or 100 or maybe even more credits per kill.
3.) No free universe!
First of all, there are no free routes – instead you have to fly over several waypoints to get to your destination. You'll never be able to just pick a nav point, hit the autopilot and expect to be there with maybe one or two distractions (like in Privateer 1). Instead you'll be hopping over ~10 smaller nav points. That sucks. It feels like moving ahead like in a board game.
4.) The combat will piss you off – AND it sucks!
Why it will piss you off? At each of those small nav points mentioned in point 3 up there, there's the chance that enemies will enter the nav point at random. And you have to kill them all in order to advance to the next nav point.
There are only two things you'll encounter while flying through space here: enemies that are ridiculously easy to kill and enemies that are next to impossible to kill. Early in the game there'll be enemies that don't even really shoot you. So you might as well fly directly in front of it, set the throttle to zero and hold down the trigger button until the enemy's dead. Yup, that's it.
And no, you can't outrun them as in Privateer 1 – you HAVE to kill them, otherwise you won't be able to leave the current nav point area. But when you kill one, you can almost be a 100% sure that there will be new ones entering right away. So prepare to stay at those mini-waypoints for a LONG time, if that happens.
5.) Nothing to do on planets or stations!
No bar with rumours from the barkeeper or talking to guests or anything. There are only two things you can do: enter a booth or advance the story if you happen to be at the right place. In the booth, you can customize your ship, hire wingmen or cargo ships (which is pointless), buy or sell commodities (which is pointless), read stuff in some sort of encyclopedia about persons and places (which is pointless but at least gives you a feel of an immersive world), and read the news.
So... in fact... there's NOTHING "brilliant" about this game apart from maybe the storyline told through the videos. From a gameplay standpoint, it's utter garbage.
And it's stated as that in this [url=http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Privateer_II:_A_Playtester%27s_Perspective]
Playtester's story[/url] – and guess who's to blame? Yup, you're right:
EA.
