Finished the game today, about a decade since I've played the original. I'm impressed – it's a clear improvement, and a fun game. I played on Torment difficulty with a self-imposed challenge of not using any canisters save for the mandatory one in the tutorial, and one more to be able to create fyoras (because playing Geneforge without creations seemed like an absolute waste). Was pleasantly surprised that the game recognized this in the ending, even if only by changing a line or two.
Combat-wise, the game was pretty solid. There were some obvious cheese tactics (spray crystal applying ridiculously OP acid condition being a good example) but none that'd entirely trivialize the game – encounters that were meant to be hard were still hard, even if perhaps easier than intended. Amount of XP gained being dependent on your level seemed such an abysmal decision, but aside from making the player feel annoyed and disappointed, it didn't really affect much – I still ended the game extremely powerful and plowed my way through every encounter the game could throw at me (including the total genocide of Vakkiri and Kazg, slaying Goettsch, etc.). Overall, pretty good.
Story-wise, I was disappointed by the overall lack of reactivity. The world is utterly static, with NPCs even teasing you with shit like "Now that you've cleared the fields, we will go and reoccupy them!" only to never actually do that. Similarly, the NPCs do not react to your deeds enough, nor does the game acknowledge half the shit you do. This is particularly visible if you do big stuff like wiping out Kazg, and find out you cannot tell the advanced servile outpost about it (an outpost whose sole purpose is to fight against Kazg...). Nor can you tell the leader of Obeyers that you've wiped out the other factions, or, say, inform the last of the ascended that his pals are dead and their lifelong work is finished. It's all comparatively minor stuff, but were it added, it would've massively improved the player's experience.
Itemization was pretty good – I actually used consumables quite a lot since they were very useful. The game was a bit too generous with them, though. Economy was totally busted, with me actually reaching the cap of 30k coins (did you know it's capped? You cannot have more than 30k), but there wasn't all that much to buy anyway.
In summary, I liked the game quite a lot, as much as I did the original all those years ago. I'm surprised, too – after Queen's Wish, I didn't dare hope to see anything worthwhile from Jeff.
