Guild Wars 2 In-depth Review

Guild Wars 2 has finally launched, but the question still remains, does it deliver? Not only did Guild Wars 2 reached it’s expectations, but it has also surpassed them. The original Guild Wars was remarkably successful game due to its free-to-play model, and fantastic gameplay. Guild Wars 2 stays true to the free-to-play model but with a bigger emphasis on microtransactions. Guild Wars 2 is a very big game; there is a lot to talk about, discuss, and explain. Let’s start with the art style of the game, and the overall look, and then we will get into the meaty stuff.

Art Style and Races

Guild Wars 2 art direction is superb, as it perfectly captures the look and feel of medieval/fantasy era. Guild Wars 2 has all types of different environments, starting with dense forest areas, spring, beautiful grasslands, snowy mountains, deserts, caves, lakes and ponds. Everything looks crisp and clear. However, the game’s overall graphical demand is pretty intense. In order to enjoy this game at its full graphical potential, then make sure your system is up to date with current technology, especially if your computer has not been upgraded for the last 3 years. It is an enormous game; there are a lot of people on the screen, monsters, particle effects, and of course the world itself.

Guild Wars 2 has 5 different races, Humans, Norn, Asura, Charr, and Sylvari. The Norn resemble the Norse vikings that live in the snowy areas and follow animal spirits. They are also 9 feet tall as opposed to the 6 foot tall humans and they look like real savages. Asura are the gnomes of Guild Wars 2 they are the most intelligent race in the game, and have a lot of connection with science and portal technology. Asura look like cute little aliens with oversized heads, eyes and ears. Charr is the semi-cat race they are the only animal related race in the game, with the addition of prominent horns on their head. Finally, the Sylvari are the Elves of Guild Wars 2 they mostly live in the trees, and connect with nature, as opposed to other races.

In Guild Wars 2, each race starts at their own capital city; there is a total of 5 races, and 6 capital cities. The Norn begins their adventure in a city called Hoelbrak, Asura start in Rata Sum, Humans start in Divinity’s Reach, Charr reside in the Black Citadel and Sylvari live in The Grove. There is also Lion Arch, a city where every race meets. ArenaNet’s artists have made sure that every starting city fits the race’s culture, they all have a unique feeling, and most importantly they all fit the game’s overall style.

The Questing System

The questing in Guild Wars 2 is nontraditional as opposed to other MMOs. The game rewards players by exploring the zones, rather than grinding quests and killing a ridiculous amount of mobs. In order to complete a map, must find all the hearts, interest points, waypoints, skill-challenges, and vistas.

When the player presses M to look at their map, they will see yellow hearts that are empty, those hearts represent tasks around the area. Once a player gets close to the heart, he, or she will get a little pop-up text on the top right. The text explains the player what needs to be done in order to fill up the heart. Once the heart has been filled up, the player receives his, or her experience. There is no such thing as talking to NPCs to accept quests, or to complete quests. No one ever has to check their quest log to see what they have left to do. Instead, the map acts as your guidance throughout your adventure it displays everything the player can do in the area.

Vistas appear as 2 little red triangles on the map these vista points are jumping puzzles on the map. Once the player is close to the vista point they will see a little floating map above the ground. In order to complete the puzzle the player must find a way to get up to the floating map, and press the F key to confirm it. When a player confirms a vista point, they gain experience for finding it and a pleasant in-game cinematic camera video of the overall environment. They are well designed, and fun to figure out. Here, is one of the vista camera shots below in the first Norn questing zone.

Way-points are the big diamonds on the map, as you explore the zone you will find them on the go. They’re not hidden from the player at all, their main purpose is to reward the player with shortcuts around the map and experience. Once you have found a few waypoints, all you have to do is go to your map and click on one of them to teleport. They’re made so that you don’t have to run all the way across a map in order to fulfill that last heart that you missed, or maybe you need to go to the nearest vendor and repair your equipment. It’s basically just quick-traveling around the zone instead of running.

Points of Interests are tiny little squares that you try to find in the zone. They don’t do anything special, and their only purpose is to give you experience and lead you to a cool looking monument, or some kind of a interesting area in the zone. These are usually the hardest to find because they’re very small and hard to see.

Skill-Point Challenges appear as blue arrows that point up. They’re usually found near interesting areas of the zone, and what they allow you to do is to take on a skill challenge that earns you experience and a skill point. Skill-Point Challenges are actually important for your character progression, as you level up you can gain access new skills, but in order to be able to use them you need skill points to unlock them. You can gain skill points by accepting these different skill challenges in different areas of the map and complete them.

One of the challenges required me to defeat a named mob that is somewhat hard to solo, but do-able if you understand how the combat system works and of course if you are good with your profession. Another challenge can just simply be completed by getting to the challenge itself and communing with it. That means you had to get through an area that was filled with monsters, but because you managed to do it, you are rewarded with the skill point just by simply getting to the challenge and clicking on it. These kind of challenges are usually found in caves filled with mobs, or other hidden places.

Fulfilling hearts, solving vista puzzles, getting all the way-points, completing all the skill-point-challenges and finding all the points of interest count towards your overall map accomplishment. As you do more tasks, and discover things, the percentage of the completion goes up, once you have reached 100% of the map you will receive a chest that has loot reward for you. It’s very fun to try to 100% a map, it can be quite time consuming to get everything, but Guild Wars 2 does it so well that you’re addicted and you don’t even care how long it takes you because it’s well designed and you’re just having too much fun.

There is one more source of experience while questing in Guild Wars 2 and those are random events. Sometimes when you’re just traversing through the zone you might get a random orange pop-up on the top right with red text on it.  If you look at your radar at the bottom right you will see an area that’s circled in red, this shows the location of the world event and where it’s taking place, this circle only appears if your near the event. This indicates a World Event in the zone, most of them usually range from defending a certain point on the map from waves of enemies, escorting a yak that’s traveling with his merchants from one area to another, or killing a large zone boss that takes a large group of people to kill.

These random events create dynamic gameplay, they’re fun to do, and they’re on the go. You are never forced to do them, but if you choose to participate you will earn a great deal of experience, money, karma, and sometimes a chest full of very good loot.  These events can repeat themselves and appear again, you can still do them all for more experience if you wish, but I personally skip them if I already did one of them. These random events do not count towards your overall map completion, they’re just there to break up the pace in the zone. Here is an image below that displays a 100% map completion with the reward chest.

Another cool thing about Guild Wars 2 is that when you look at the world map, it tells every zones level range. You never have to guess to which zone you have to go next. The very first zones range from 1-15, then 15-25 and so on. Also if you are playing as a particular race, but don’t like their starting zones, or their cities, you can easily just go to the hub city straight at level 1 and go to a different starting zone to start your adventure there.

You can also quest via Personal Story in Guild Wars 2. Personal Story quests are basically made for solo play, the story plays out different depending on the race you picked and the personality traits you choose. It’s an interesting concept, but I personally did not enjoy this type of questing due to the fact that the story characters felt somewhat dull, stereotypical and the fact that this is supposed to be social game.

Professions 

There are 8 different professions in Guild Wars 2. Warrior, Guardian, Thief, Ranger, Mesmer, Engineer, Necromancer and Elementalist.

The Warrior is the most versatile melee class in the game, they can use a combination of different weapons. Whether you choose to tear through your enemies with dual wielding axes, swords, maces, or brutalize your opponents with massive two-handed greatswords and hammers. Feel like kitting a little bit before going into melee combat? Then equip your two-handed rifle and start shooting from a distance and cripple your enemy before they get to you. You can also equip a 1 handed weapon in your main hand and a shield in the other to try to be more tanky, or a warhorn if you want to be a support melee. Warhorns lets you give buffs to yourself and your group.

Warriors rely on something called “Adrenaline”, when you use your regular abilities you build up 3 different levels of adrenaline, the higher the level of adrenaline you have the more of an impact you can get out of your adrenaline ability, you’re adrenaline ability depends on the weapon you are carrying in your hands. Warriors are very fun to play, their animations are great, they feel powerful and the combination of different weapon sets just lets you have all the fun you want. If you are looking for a pure savage barbarian play-style then the warrior is for you.

The Guardian is probably the true support class in Guild Wars 2. They can be very defensive, and they’re excellent at keeping allies save. Guardians can cast force-fields that block enemy projectiles, call upon a magical hammer that follows you around and knocks enemies down to the ground for a few seconds, or even a magical sword that hits enemies for a good amount of damage. Guardians can equip maces, swords and scepters in their main hand, shield, torches, focuses in their off hand. They can also wield two-handed greatswords, hammers, and staffs.

At first I thought that the Guardian was a boring class, but it turned out be quite the opposite. The particle effects, animations and skill sets for each weapon are really astounding. If your carrying a torch in your off hand hand you can actually breath fire on your enemies while smacking them in the face with your maces or trying to cut their guts with a sword in your main hand. You can use a two-handed greatsword and use your whirlwind skill to do area-of-effect damage on your enemies and send out bolts of lightning around you at the same time. As a Guardian your basically doing all these cool attacks and at the same time protect and buff your allies. It’s one of the most fun support classes I have ever played in any MMO game, well designed, has an awesome style to it and feels great to play.

The Thief is the rogue of Guild Wars 2, and it’s a fun rogue too. The Thief profession in Guild Wars 2 is unique, it’s an interesting class because you can not only carry dual daggers, but you can even carry dual pistols, or better yet a pistol in the main hand and a dagger in the off-hand, or vice versa for a different weapon skill set. Thieves have skills that allow them to teleport to the enemy from distance using a skill called “Shadow Shot”. Shadow Shot shoots a single bullet, once the bullet makes contact you’re instantly teleported right in front your target. Once you’re up front with the target you can go to town with your dagger and kill him.

Thieves rely on their “Initiative” points, when you use your abilities they consume initiative points, the initiative points automatically regenerate themselves overtime. You must think fast, and come up with a rotation that doesn’t waste your energy and does just enough damage to the enemy at the same time. Another really cool mechanic with the Thief is the “stealth”, when you go into stealth you can use your pistol to come out of the shadows and start rapidly firing doing burst damage, it looks really cool, and feels great when used. I usually stealth when I need to heal, when you use Thief’s healing ability, he automatically goes into stealth and regenerates certain amount of health instantly, this also allows you to surprise your foe with your gun rapid firing pistols when you come out of the shadows.

The Engineer is a utility range support class. Engineers most of the time use dual pistols and two-handed rifles, they can also equip a shield in the off-hand if they wish. Engineers may lack the choice of weapons, but their skills really make up for it. One of the skills is called “Glue Shot”, this skill lets you choose an area on the ground to shoot out a big puddle of glue. When the enemies try to go through the puddle of sticky glue, their movement  speed is severely slowed, this allows you and your allies to gun them down before they get close to you. Engineers can also blow fire out of their pistols and rifles which allows them to use their weapons as flamethrowers.

“Static Shot” is another skill you can use that shoots out a bolt of electricity, the bolt bounces from the enemy it originally hit to other enemies around him. . Engineers do not have any resources to spend, you can just whatever you want. Engineers are usually played a particular way based on the situation that’s going on around them, similar to the Guardians. It wouldn’t be an Engineer without the ability to place turrets either, if you enjoyed playing as a Engineer in Team Fortress 2, you will enjoy playing one in Guild Wars 2.

The Ranger is your long range class that has a pet companion that follows him throughout his, or her adventures. Rangers can equip axes, long bows and short bows for their long range combat, they can also get up close and personal if they wish with two handed greatsword. The nice thing about Ranger is that their pets are very in-depth, they have their own sets of skill, and the pets can level up in an evolution manner. Ranger is also a better class if you are new to the game, it’s easier to make up for your mistakes, because you have pets that can take the hits for you. You can also wield a warhorn in your off-hand if your wielding an axe in the main hand, the warhorn allows you to cast buffs on yourself and your allies.

The pet that you get depends on the race that you pick, if you decide to play the Ranger profession as the Norn you will get to pick a bear, wolf or a snow leopard as your starting pet. However, if you decided to play as the Charr you will have access to the drake, stalker, and devourer. Once you pick your race you are not stuck with that pet forever, the Ranger can go out in the wild and tame a ton of different beasts for his, or her arsenal. Any wild pet that has the word “Juvenile” at the beginning of their name can be tamed out in the world, so if you ever see a “Juvenile Brown Bear” that means the pet can be acquired for use. Taming pets is as easy as clicking on them.

The Ranger can store up to a total of 4 pets in his Pet Management tab. Pet’s also have their own skills, my wolf for example has the ability to howl at enemies causing them to chill and lose 66% of their movement speed and up their cooldown time also by 66%. If you enjoy staying at a distance and harassing your enemies with arrows and axes in their face then the Ranger would be a great choice.

Mesmer is a tricky profession as opposed to others, the Mesmer is very unique, it is a ranged magical class that is based off the illusions and phantasms. As you auto-attack the Mesmer creates illusions of himself, you can use these illusions to do different things. One of the abilities allowed me to self-destruct the illusions in order to cause major damage around them to the enemies, another ability confuses the enemies instead of dealing damage. You can have a total of up to 3 illusions of yourself at a time, after that you can decide what you want to use the illusions for. Do you want to control, or do you want to damage, the Mesmer is a master of both. The Mesmer can equip a scepter in the main hand, a sword in the main hand and the off-hand, focus, pistol and a torch in the off-hand. As for two-handed weapons the Mesmer can wield a staff, or a greatsword. Underwater the Mesmer can use a two-handed trident as their weapon of choice.

The phantasm mechanic for the Mesmer is really nice, depending on the weapon you have you can cast different types of phantasms to do different things. I used the pistol in my off-hand as my weapon of choice for the phantasm abilities while wielding a scepter in the main hand. The ability was called “Phantasm Duelist” it summoned a phantasm that started to shoot enemies with dual pistols causing burst damage. It was an awesome sight to see and really satisfying to use, the phantasm abilities is a nice touch to the addition of the combat.

Overall I felt that the Mesmer is not a newbie friendly class, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing it just means I don’t think many people will be inclined to play this class due to the difficulty curve. The illusions and phantasms mechanics can be used in many different ways, they’re easy to use but hard to master.  However, I do believe that this is a good class and can be very useful in the a middle of a heated battle that requires a lot of crowd control.

The Necromancer is a range damage dealing profession, with an addition of necrotic pets, undead minions and a shadow form. Necromancer has two interesting mechanics, for one they can turn into a shadow form that allows them to cast a whole new set of skills and the ability to summon pets that can transfer life over to their master, the Necromancer can also sacrifice their horrific creatures to receive a larger amount of healing. Necromancers can use axes and focuses in their main hand, daggers in either hand, focuses and warhorns in the off-hand. If you’re into weakening your enemies, controlling minions at your will and do damage overtime, then the Necromancer is the profession for you.

The Elementalist is basically the mage of Guild Wars 2, Elementalists use something called “Attunements”. There are 4 attunements, fire, water, earth and air, each element does different things. Fire attunement is mostly for area-of-effect damage and self buffs, while water is to damage, slow enemies, and heal yourself and your groupmates, the earth attunement is more for survival, while air is for single-target focus. Elementalist is a very fun class, particle effects look fantastic and you can swap about between the 4 attunements on the fly as you fight. This allows the player to create different combo attacks, if the player is smart they will develop the strategies depending on the battle they’re in.

Elementalists can equip a scepter in the main hand, dagger in either hands, focus on the off-hand and a staff with two hands. Overall the elementalist is a fun class, especially for those that enjoy controlling the battlefield with freezing spells, or doing massive amounts of damage with fire to a group of enemies.

The Combat System

The combat system in Guild Wars 2 is phenomenal and extremely fluid. Guild Wars 2 combat seemed a bit hard to understand at first, but after an hour or so it was very easy to get into. The combat system is based on what type of weapon you are carrying in your hand and in which hand. Warriors can  use axes in main hand, or off-hand, same goes for maces and swords, or they can use a axe in one hand and a mace in the other, you have your standard axe and shield or sword and shield or mace and shield, another thing they can use is a warhorn in the off-hand. The only two handed weapons that Warriors can use are the greatswords and hammers.

Depending on which weapon you have in which hand the game automatically gives you a different skill set. For example: if a Warrior carried a axe in his main hand with the mace in the off-hand,  it would be different if he carried a mace in the main hand and the axe in the off-hand. This allows for very interesting combat complexity and style. You can also dual wield axes, maces, or swords, obviously each of these options will give you different skill sets. What I like about this system is that this not like a traditional MMO where you get a sword, or an axe and you try to decide which one to to use even though both of the weapons have the same stats.

When I started playing my Warrior I decided to go with a sword and a shield, I also had an option to use a warhorn instead of my shield. Warhorns allow you to give buffs to yourself and the people around you.  There are many ways to play this game as far as your combat style goes. When I was using my shield I was more defensive, I was able to shield bash enemies, and take less damage, with the warhorn I would kill faster but still not put out a lot of damage to be considered a pure damage melee class, instead I was the melee support role.

Guild Wars 2 has a swap button next to your skill bar, it allows you swap out between two different 2 weapon sets that you choose. My first set included two 1 handed axes that I could dual wield for pure damage, and my second set was a two-handed rifle. I would use the rifle to start combat, slow the enemy, kite for a bit and then once all of my rifle abilities were on cooldown, I instantly swapped to my other weapon set and finished off the enemy.

The first five skills on your skill bar represent the weapon skills. The first three skills are your main hand weapon and the last two are from your off hand. If you’re using a 2-handed weapon then all the 5 skills are just all from that one weapon. The sixth skill is your healing spell, and the next three are your “Utility” skills such as a kick that interrupts and pushes the enemy forward, a buff, or a long distance stun. These skills do not take your weapons in the account, these are just different skills that you can later unlock and customize your skill bar with which “Utility” spells you want to use.

The last skill is your “Elite” skill, it’s a skill that you unlock way later down the road when you get to level 30. Elite skills are basically very strong and have long cooldown abilities that let you do a lot of cool stuff. One of the elite skills is called “Juggernaut” it increases your character in size and let’s you ground stomp, and just do massive damage all over your enemies as hit them with your big punches and kicks.

Guild Wars 2 has a whole separate mechanic for underwater combat as well. Underwater you can use harpoons, tridents and spear-guns, once you dive down your skill set will change automatically and you’re instantly ready to fight. Underwater combat feels and plays just as good as the regular combat, ArenaNet did a good job on making the underwater combat experience fun and not frustrating like most other games. Here is a screenshot below of my warrior using a harpoon gun to kill a shale.

In conclusion the combat animations are very nicely done, they feel smooth and fluid, just the combat system itself feels fantastic. Guild Wars 2 combat is face-paced, violent, visceral and you actually feel immersed when you fight someone. Could not have been any better, I am extremely pleased.

PVP

Guild Wars 2 PvP System is great, it’s quite in-depth and there is many different ways to do PvP. There is Structured PvP, World vs World, and Tournaments. You can jump into PvP starting at level 1 if you wish too and have a complete blast, because when you go to Strucuted PvP you are instantly level 80 with all the skills and Glory Rank 1 PvP gear. In order to join the fray you have to press the H button and click on the PvP tab and go to Heart of Mists. In the Heart of Mists this is where you get ready for PvP. You can change up your skills here, fix up your traits and so on. This is also the area where you buy your PvP gear as you level up in Glory Ranks, in order to earn Glory experience you must participate in either Tournaments or Structured PvP. Let’s talk about Structured PvP first.

Structured PvP has 4 different maps, there is Forest of Niflhel, Legacy of the Foefire, Raid on the Capricorn and Battle of Kyhlo. These four maps are classified as Conquest maps. Conquest is a gameplay type where you must dominate the map and secure capture points, each map has 3 different capture points. Once your team takes over a capture point it takes 2 seconds for your team to gain 1 point and you gain additional 5 points every time an enemy player is killed, whoever reaches 500 points first wins the match.

Each of the four maps have secondary mechanics that make each map unique. In Forest of Niflhel you can kill 2 different NPCs that reward the team with additional points, this secondary mechanic adds a new strategic element to winning, or losing the battle. In Battle of Khylo each team has a trebuchet in their base. A player can use this trebuchet to cause major damage to the enemy team on the battlefield, there is no friendly fire so you don’t have to worry about hurting your teammates. However, an enemy team can destroy your trebuchet, if the trebuchet is destroyed you can use the repair kit that spawns in your base to get the trebuchet back up running again.

World vs World is a whole different ball game, you are scaled to level 80, but you are not actually level 80 and do not have all the skills with you. In WvW you must capture different supply points and try to take over entire lands. When you see an enemy player it tells you which server they are invading you from. Sometimes you will come across reinforced gates and the only way to break them is to find siege weapons, you have to use the siege weapon in order to break-through and take over the area.

Whether you succeed in WvW or fail at it, it will cause an effect on the PvE side of the world, and change the world dynamically. Another really cool aspect of WvW is that you can actually earn quite a lot of experience just by completing objectives, killing players, so if you ever wished to level a character through PvP this is the way to go. If you’re bloodthirsty for some PvP and just want to brutalize your enemy then WvW is the way to go, it’s fast, dynamic, progress your character and most importantly it’s fun.

 Crafting

Crafting in Guild Wars 2 is pretty simple and standard just like most MMOs. You can have up to 2 disciples at a time on each character, and there are a total of 8 crafting professions to choose from. You can be an Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Leatherworker, Jeweler, Chef, Artificer, and Huntsmen. You gather materials in a simple manner, all you have to do is buy the appropriate gathering tool for the right job. You need a mining pick for mining, sickle to gather food, or plants and an axe to chop trees for wood. Guild Wars 2 makes gathering very easy, once you buy all the 3 tools all you need to do is equip them and you are ready to begin gathering materials for your crafting.

You can equip all three tools at a time without having to worry about switching every time you see a copper vein, or a tree to chop down, once you have equipped your tools they free up your inventory space. Guild Wars 2 also makes it easy to switch disciples, when you switch one of your disciples for another you do not lose the progression on your last disciple, this means that every player can max-out all of the 8 disciples in the game without losing skills on their other ones. However, if you do decide to switch you have to pay a in-game fee and that is the only penalty.

As you quest and explore the zone the radar on the bottom right shows you different gathering symbols, ore symbol indicates a mining vein, wood means there is a tree that you can chop down for materials, and a plant displays food gathering. Every time you gather you gain experience points that actually count towards your level, so not only do you progress with crafting you also slowly progress your character levels. I like the way this was designed because it makes the crafting more fun. There is also zero competition for gathering materials, because every single node in the game is exclusive to each player, and it doesn’t matter if two different players are gathering from the same node, they still get all their materials regardless.

When your inventory gets filled up with a lot of materials you can actually send them to a special collectible bank by right-clicking on the material and choosing “Deposit Collectible”, this is one of the most useful things ever, because you can free up your inventory space fast and easy and keep on questing without having to go back to town to unload your inventory. This collectible material bank is separate from your actual bank, it’s purely designed for crafting and other optional items like mini-pets, and runes that enhance your armor and weapons. You can also salvage your weapons, armor or certain items that you loot from mobs for crafting materials. Salvaging is great because it frees up your inventory space from useless stuff and turns it into crafting materials instead, and you can get rid of your old weapons and armor in exchange for more materials.

Once you get enough materials and feel like crafting something you can go to your starting city and find the station for your crafting disciple. Once you arrive at the crafting station you are ready to craft your heart out. ArenaNet was genius to add the possibly to level characters through crafting, this means every time you craft an item you gain experience points towards your level. You can actually gain a few levels if you enjoy crafting in MMOs, and crafting in Guild Wars 2 is pretty rewarding. There is also another system called “Discovery”, Discovery allows you to mix different components from your crafting materials to discover new recipes for your disciple. It’s basically like a gamble system, and it tells you how many different possible recipes you can get out of your mix of materials.

Achievements System

Achievements have became the standard for every game that comes out these days and Guild Wars 2 is no different. Guild Wars 2 achievement system actually progresses your characters, rewards titles and even loot.  Every time you achieve something in Guild Wars 2 you gain experience points towards your level and achievement points for bragging rights. I was mostly occupied trying to achieve my daily achievements, because of the amount of experience it rewarded me and loot. You never feel like your wasting your time if you’re trying to achieve something in Guild Wars 2 as opposed to other games where people hunt achievements purely for cosmetics, or bragging rights.

Conclusion

Guild Wars 2 is an incredible game. It’s rich with its story, visuals, fantastic combat and gameplay mechanics. This game is a pure gem and will go down in history as one of the most successful MMO games ever created, not to mention it’s free-to-play. I would rather pay $15 for this game than play it for free, because in my honest opinion the developers really deserve it. Well done ArenaNet, keep up on doing what you’re doing and I absolutely cannot wait for the future expansions. Stop reading this review and go buy the game please, thank you!

This game reviewed on PC.