I've been playing Guild Wars for 17 months (well, my oldest characters are), and I must say, after beating Nightfall, it is by far the best Guild Wars out there.
Oh but don't jump to conclusions, I haven't beaten the game 100%, I still have a bunch of side-quests to do, I am still a Sunspear General, and not all towns have been discovered yet. Don't think also that Nightfall is short, I played like hell these last three days, I would say it's a little longer than Factions campaign.
First, the story, ah ! Anet has done much better this time, you seem to be in the middle of an epic adventure, and you can't wait to know what will happen next. The heroes playing a part in the story is just fantastic, sometimes they speak to say nonesense, but it's great ! It makes the characters alive, with a personality, they have background, it's not like in Factions were Togo, Shiro and co. were uninteresting characters, and in the end you don't care if they died or get defeated. I loved this addition, I hope they'll keep the same author for the next chapters. And something we haven't seen yet in GW, some nice humor in cutscenes and in other situations (Bukka Amphitheatre
) that is great ( yes I know, Rurik getting scalped was pretty funny, don't remind me about it Now, English is not my primary language, but I liked the voice-acting in Nightfall (for most characters... Jin, yuk), looks like Anet addressed this issue that players complained about. Now, the cutscenes are more interesting to watch, and listen.
The theme music is fantastic, but I must admit, I don't remember noticing much music there again. Like in Factions, the music is so slow, that you could barely notice it playing. BUT, the best addition to the sound department is by far the Battle Music, I LOVE this, it makes you believe you take part in an epic battle, it's exciting.
Graphics, really good, vast plains, tall grass, arid deserts, they are all superb. I have nothing but good things to say about it. But, sometimes I noticed little parts of the ground missing. Most of the new weapons and armors look great !
I had the objective to do all missions with Heroes and Henchmen, and I almost completed my objective... There is only one mission I played with a player (yes, the 2nd last one... ). Difficulty wise, I was a bit dissapointed at first, I was beating the missions and (most)bonuses with ease, until one point where the difficulty spiked so high ! It went to easy to hard with no transition between the two. Fighting a group of 7 lvl 28 can be intimidating, but when in the heat of battle another patrol joins the party (and it happens very often), things get complicated. And the last few missions can be hard and very stressing, which is, a good thing in my opinion. I'd say, in all the 20 missions, about three of four were hard, and one was very hard. It seems not like much, but the missions, even if often easy, are very fun to do, they are not the Prophecies-like mission point A to point B, you have often defend the base missions and the like.
Wurm riding, nice addition, it's really cool to control this beast, and really cool to see the carnage it can cause.
Of course, there is a few bugs I encountered (like the blasted door of the Kournan Keep), but it's normal for a new game, it will get fixed with time.
Also hero AI is not perfect, they might NEVER use some skills (like Healing Seed for instance), or if not a caster class, they will not cast enchantements on themselves (they cast it on myself instead), and if I try to make them cast their enchant of themselves, they will remove it immediatly.
I also experienced some frustrating situations with monster AI, expecially the monks. When attacked, they sometimes start to run and NEVER stops, you can't attack them and if you try to pursue them, you risk running in other hostile patrols. I hope Anet will fix this, not that they stop running, but that they get a limit of how far they can distance its group.
Oh I'm sure I forgot to comment on much other points of the game but basically, I have almost nothing but good things to say.
Great job Anet !
