This is a schedule post so please allow for a delay in any replies to comments.
We’re currently on holiday cruising among islands that we have visited a few times before, but only on a cruise. On such holidays you only spend a day in each place normally, so you rarely do more than one activity or tour. That means that going on the same itinerary, or a similar one, is no problem as you’ve not come close to exhausting everything there is to do in any one place.
Playing through Secret World Legends, in the Tokyo zone again, I was struck by this same idea of familiar territory mixed with new experiences. We’d played through the zone not so long before the game’s relaunch and had a lot of fun there. This time around it was places we could remember but there were plenty of stuff we’d not done or noticed before.
Familiar streets
We’re playing Illuminati this time instead of Templar (plus a Dragon) so there have been some new cut-scenes to see all the way along and in Tokyo some subtle differences in background details as well.
There have also been some missions that we just didn’t do – maybe because we didn’t have that particular Issue purchased back when content was sold in packs.
かわいいロボットです、ね。
There’s also the constant yet stimulating distraction of seeing Japanese written all over the place. After just one year of study I can barely read anything not written for beginners since I know so few Kanji as yet, but stuff written in just the two kana alphabets I can read. That’s always a fun moment when I see something I recognise – a new frisson from this second playthrough.
O-ro-chi
The Orochi Tower sub-zone, which seemed to take no time at all in The Secret World was a major chunk of content on this playthrough. You have to do all of the levels for the main mission, I believe it was more of a repeatable random selection before. That means a *lot* more story and background details to explore now. There is some really excellent content in these levels, even if the shared layout used by most gets a bit repetitive.
Quick, make like we’re on holiday…
Who packed the insect spray!?
Overall Tokyo, as the most recent content we’d played on our original characters, felt so much less familiar than the earlier zones we’d played much earlier. I think the inherent grind in TSW’s Tokyo made us want to focus more on just the bare minimum to get the main story done. This time around the difficulty was certainly lower, but that meant we felt more comfortable just running around gawping at everything we could find – just like proper tourists.
IntPiPoMo total 20/50
GamingSF 