It is just a transition zone. The next one will be here very soon, i feel it… Lets be ready for the next zone next month!
As I was running around in the village full of unwashed villagers. Village made of rusty sheet metal, sticks and stones… I ended up picking corn. While doing all this… I wondered where the hell I left my Power Armor and Dogmeat… 
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Yeah!
Or that Tower you built with the psychic old lady junkie at the top, then you take away the steps so she’s trapped there, all alone, forever!
Er, I can’t be the only one who did that, right?
Right?!
RIGHT?!?!?!
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Yeah, I’m getting the sense that the next zone won’t be TOO far off (as in, not Tokyo wait). They explicitly say where we’re going and then there’s a new portal in Agartha just teasing everyone. That’d be kind of odd if the content is potentially ages away.
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Few hours of recycled content to get new currency with what you can buy junk… and because of this we were driven out from TSW?
No, its not good enough. “Cather 30 corns”, “Collect buckets of dirty water”… sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
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Anyone else feels like this is somewhat misrepresentative of the experience? It’s the first step of the first quest and even for that it’s somewhat of a false explanation.
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I dont think he knows how bare Kaidan was at launch…
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To be fair, the corn and buckets thing was referencing two missions that are tedious by design, presumably intended to make you go “sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet”, foundling. And there really isn’t that much more to the daytime map; all the action is at instanced night.
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That said, you go to said nighttime map in like, what? Ten minutes? Maybe more if you wander around? Granted, maybe a clue as to that’s where the fun is would be nice but still…
Well, above all, it was good to get back in the field, even if it was a little too brief. A couple of points: one, all the fights were probably too easy, given that the great majority of players have had long enough to put together reasonably powerful L.50 characters. Two, the supersoldiers were, to my mind, a bit of a disaster design-wise; they looked like something escaped from a crude early version of Doom, and quite foreign to the more subtle TSW/SWL design tradition.
As for the story itself, I have to say I was disappointed. For me at least, it lacked the sense of creepy, looming menace that New England, Transylvania and even the Kaidan docks had in spades. This felt more like a pedestrian action/thriller computer game, without the true Secret World sense of mystery. Hopefully, this will return in later segments, but harking back to what I posted a few weeks ago in another thread, South Africa really does turn out to be as flat as I feared it might prove…
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Trust me, I know, I’ve played TSW from beta. And I know that peoples left the TSW because Kaidan was too hard. I liked the challenge and mysteries to be solved… Chuck.
Season 2 was extremely easy, solo instanced nothingness. There weren’t even one Investigation mission there… thats is pretty big thing to me. TSW was all about mysteries and secrets, season 2 is collect this, kill that with “deja vu” effect all around… Zombies vs Plants mortar mission ffs… Everything was predictable and ended to “boss” fight, nothing ended to “great mystery revealed” feeling what Kingsmouth was full of for example.
Season 2 is sign that Lovecraftiness, Cthulhu and classic horror themes are gone. This is kidz game now on.
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To be fair, they had set the difficulty to be a little bit higher than Kaidan so that people who aren’t overpowered monsters don’t struggle.
They also did say that they’re only releasing some of the content for now and more will be added soon
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you forgot the “tm” thingie
That was rather what I felt about it, though I honestly wouldn’t pitch it that strong. And I sure to Cthulthu hope it changes for the better…
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OP here, I finally played through the content so decided to leave my thoughts.
The Good
One of my biggest concerns was that the content amount wouldn’t hold up compared to updates we’ve had in the past. In terms of what we’ve gotten I’d say that it compares favourably to Tyler Freeborn, Last Train and A Dream to Kill. There is less in term of reused environments, an equal or more than amount of cutscene content and it moves the story forward in a way that ties very naturally to all of the previous zones.
I laughed a lot at the side missions in the first part of the zone, clean then dirty etc.
The lore for the zone was quite interesting, though I did feel that some of the new “characters” were killed off a little bit too easily.
The day/night cycle was a different dynamic which I liked.
Whoever told me that there wasn’t handler content was so wrong words cannot express how wrong they were. Bonus points that I could play through all the missions with my Templar friend, myself a Dragon, without missing out on any content.
The Bad
Though the last fights were quite tough, in general the first two thirds of the content were far, far too easy. The new enemies look cool but melted before me, and I’m only item power 350 or so. Night time looks scary, but it isn’t.
I was disappointed by the last two zones, favoured and anointed. There wasn’t much to do there and they felt very dead.
The ending seemed slightly abrupt but that might just be me.
Final impression
Overall I really enjoyed it and look forward to repeating it soon, but I do really hope we get the zone fleshed out a bit more and that given the foreshadowing the next area isn’t so far away. Well done to the whole team at Funcom working on SWL.
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Since apparently less than 15% of players bother themselves with group content, I’d imagine the average player’s item power is much lower than that when they finish Tokyo. Especially if they’re not taking the time to complete each zone 100% before moving on.
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Im glad that you enjoyed, truly am. You are the target audience of this kind of “Secret World”, clearly. I do not ask you to “join” anything what I say, but I am entitled to give my opinion of this Season 2, without your “witty” oneliner comment what backfired.
I lived and loved The Secret World. It was taken from me because of future Season 2. I didnt like Season 2. Period.
I expected something “Secret World” like Tyler Freeborn level stuff, especially after I heard that Scrivomancer is back on duty. But nope… I got 3 hours of generic theme park dlc.
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Let’s not get at each other over the story. That’s far more opinion-based and not really a ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong’ question. It worked for some. It didn’t for others.
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Then what will I “get” eventually?
Yeah, I can see it clearly didn’t get under your skin. 
If you didn’t like the story then that’s fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But that’s an entirely different kettle of fish to claiming it was all recycled content and solo instances (neither of which is true) or that the game is now dumb baby garbage for children (which is a straight up insult to the people who did enjoy it).
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DOTM wasn’t kiddie at all to me.
It was the brightest appearing day, to the dark reality that at night, everyone was effectively a smiling blood sacrifice, in many ways. Just because its the brightest daylight and has the most peaceful instance (daytime), doesn’t mean its ‘a kidz game’.
In terms of challenge, well I’m a mix on that. I think we should realize that the item power is not going to be something Funcom will assume highly of, for tuning content. Transylvania doesn’t assume any power, Tokyo barely assumes power, and New Dawn’s higher challenges (champions, bosses) don’t assume much at all. ~500 IP itself is ‘Nightmare’ territory and I’m sure Funcom wants a smooth progress for any new players. The next zone may end up harder than New Dawn, but still mostly ask considerably less then ‘Nightmare’ gear (Orange-Red) in the meantime, at least for most of the content. Join me in asking for Hard Mode versions of zones, I guess.
That said:
-the basic enemies are still too easy. I’m just 266 IP and they fell super easily. Even if they’re tuning for 100 IP or whatever, I still imagine that to be rather easier than Kaidan basic enemies. This is a mistake. For once, I’m asking for a buff.
-I don’t think bosses and maybe champions are too bad, fine. But consider that for potentially added action missions, which may give a little higher rewards (I hope), to tune up the challenge for bosses. And of course if there is more endgame oriented content (instanced lair? probably not though), keep it endgame, arguably harder than previous (lairs).
There is an Investigation coming. I’d prefer more (at least 2-3) but I’ll take this if the next zone is coming this year, and if it’ll have more.
The mortar was fine! I swear it seems like some of you don’t remember the high focus of TSW on weaponry, setting bombs, high powered raids on godly enemies. How 1/3 of the weapons were guns, how the first aux weapon was a rocket launcher, how there’s small armies of supernatural enemies to mow down. That said, the Bloodied look and act too silly. It gave too much of a cheap look.
I give the content a 8/10. Not one of my favorite zones, and I really consider it a mini-zone, but I like a lot of parts of it. Its not a 9/10 due to intrinsic flaws and my tastes, and its not then a 10 because its lacking so much potential and/or upcoming content. It proves to me that Funcom can at least make something, and this something hasn’t given me an experience of buggy junk.
I hope we don’t have to wait 3 months, but 1-2 at most, to get further missions in this area: investigation, outskirts of camp, more African mythos, exploration of mansion, etc. And I hope Funcom isn’t so stretched thin this year that its not just about producing a few missions then the next zone, but that they can restore at least most of the mission TSW content, and even make a new thing or two (weapon?). I won’t assume a South African themed dungeon this year, but I hope they keep it in mind for a release next year; they obviously could reuse a lot of the assets from production of the camp zone and upcoming missions.
So is it good enough? I think so. Its only not as spectacular that it has me shouting game praises as I would of the base game, or Kaidan when put together. But ‘South Africa’ is apparently going to be a region of 2 (or 1.5, depending on sizes) zones, its going to be a bigger chapter by the end (probably next year), and I want to ultimately judge it on that result as well.
We got an interlude and I enjoy this one more than Venice Scenario grind.
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