mode does wonders to teach you what you need to know in a really drawn out manner, but it never feels like a tutorial. The game teaches you what you need to know as you progress, something which you don’t often see nowadays. Color commentary is suitably comical with the announcers adding the needed flair to keep the game entertaining. Graphics are all quite lovely and the animations during the various actions is really satisfying. Players get knocked about in horrendous ways and can be knocked off the field for the crowd to beat-down, or even be injured and taken out of action. Blood Bowl to just looks great.
The difficulty level really does ramp up as the season mode progresses and teams that you face off against will present you with unique challenges. While early on teams will take it easy, or play the ball in a clear patterns, as you get deeper into the game they will drive you mad. Some teams will focus on running you down while others love running the ball and all will challenge you to quickly adapt to new strategies. While this is hard –in a good way– it’s also really important as when you take the game online you better believe you’ll be seeing some very serious players; as I’m sure you would with the table-top games. Learning the special abilities of your players and gaining XP to flesh them out is imperative.
There is much to praise in Blood Bowl 2, but like with anything there are a few issues that are more annoying than anything. The game is already pretty slow, but there is no way to rush animations, or skip them, as an action is happening. It’s not huge, but waiting for one of your players to finishing falling or completing a move before you can give another order drags the game down. I’d love to be able to issue an order and then move on to the next player without having to wait for everything to finish. I mean, the game drags enough as it is with the AI often taking its sweet time to make its moves. There is also the occasional graphical glitch here and there when thing are playing out. And while I love the announce team, they tend to repeat themselves a lot of the time with the games sound also being mediocre at best. I also really can’t stand the amount of menus I have to dig through just to play the game. From loading up Blood Bowl 2 to getting into my first match it felt like I was sitting staring at loading screens for near ten-minutes.
At the end of the day Blood Bowl 2 is still a fantastic game that has no equal on home consoles. It’s so damn unique that and fan of strategy games, or even chess games, would get a lot of enjoyment out of. With the solid online component of the game you could easily be playing this one for the entire lifespan of this console generation, especially if you get some friends together to form your own mini-league. If you are looking for a game that requires you at actually use your brain while having a load of fun Blood Bowl 2 is a must have title.
J. Luis
@_ShadowGallery