Thea 2: The Shattering

Summary: 8.5/10
Thea 2 is a longer game than Thea 1, per campaign. For the completionists, Thea 2 is a shorter game than Thea 1 for it removed the grinding annoyances. This game can easily be done if speedrun in 3 campaigns (due to needed godpoints to unlock all but Nyai and Triglav which get unlocked by finishing it once, divine and main quest).
The multiplayer is broken. I never got to experience it and people never will be as it definetly won't be fixed anymore. Since I don't care about this mode in this type of atmosphere and experience game, I will not deduct points for it. Just be warned, it is not a multiplayer game and likely cause for recent negative reviews.
The game has a similar atmosphere and lore as Thea 1 and continues the story in a nice manner. It just lost some charm by not being fully voiced. The battle system has become more streamlined and follows closer to TCG rules than Thea 1's card battle order. Overall the game has improved in many area and has my full endorsement.
Atmosphere & Lore: 9.5/10
The lore and atmosphere is as dense as in Thea 1. A lot of slavic lore with their own worldbuilding charm and adaptations offers a wide variety of encounters.
Unlike Thea 1 the quests in Thea 2 are sparsely narrated. It happens mostly during the main quests and not in its beautiful entirety. This could be fine, but even the quests they added from Thea 1 to add more content did not get added with their former voicelines. This sadly lessenes the beautiful atmosphere of the side-stories quite a bit.
Beyond this sad mishap and downgrade to Thea 1, the stories and choices are as diverse and interesting as before with a new multitude of choices between the three new challenges (physical, mental, spiritual and double as concept variants). Each of these offers unique paths and rewards or punishments, depending on the factions, gods or domains involved.
The factions added in this game are wildly different and sometimes are in direct opposition to each other. This can lead to interesting storylines if one wishes to attain certain allies or to experience special events.
Some new settlements even get founded as an allied entity (better trading and more services) if the faction is aided in some quests. Examples of these are the "blood bone" Stinger event, the water demon event with the Kraken and the Siren and the night demons in the mines.
With only a slight detraction for the reduction in immersion from Thea 1 to Thea 2, this game still excels with its lore.
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Compared to Thea 1 the gameplay has become more diverse. For one the world size and shape is not part of the difficulty curve anymore and difficulty does not rely on making the game slow and tedious, just harder. As such the 200% challenge becomes an actual challenge without feeling like an intentional slowdown of the player.
From the one town in Thea 1, Thea 2 expands to a playstayle of nomad with powerful ring artifacts but slow research and low productivity to one city + ring of power or two city gameplay. While two cities sounds limiting, the managing of gathering, refining and crafting in two of them is extremely taxing alongside your explorer's party. The best game mode is either one base working for you or a nomad group that is always together and safe but lacks carrying capacity and needs several fleet ships to carry all its loot. The nomad playstyle is also the strongest and easiest, counter to intuition. The start is slower, but the pace is faster.
Alongside this advancement of gameplay actions comes the boat. Oh how I loathed the maps that generated with a giant lake in the center in Thea 1. Now we can just sail through them once we build a carryable vessel whenever we want. Not only that, but sea travel is one of the most rewarding ways to engage with the world. From looting kraken den's to fighting pirates, the seas are were most of the important loot in the mid to lategame stem from.
The crafting system has been simplified and the equipment slots have been reduced. This is a good thing! Thea 1 had a hidden pseudo-meta - and so does Thea 2 - but its crafting system early on was confusing before it got streamlined in its later release patches. Thea 2 starts with a very clear and fair system. Essence sum decides the quality of a weapon and comes from items. Some got more essence but risk failing (losing 10% essence and 50% value), others got less essence but assure lighter equipment for the less strong in the party. Meanwhile essence combinations create different effects. In weapons metal gives "Armorbreak" and later "True Damage" attributes in Elemental and then Legendary essence ranges. Meanwhile stone gives shield leech of varying %. Meanwhile leather gives guaranteed base damage to ensure a weapon even held by a child strikes true. In armor the essence type then decides the bonus. Static HP or % HP etc. For magical equipment there are 3 variants possible each in spells and result depending on the primary essence used. It has enough depth to allow min-maxing but is perfectly viable on "Elemental". Legendary weapons never fill their essence bar, thus the trade-off for things like True Damage going through armor is the max damage etc. Shields sacrifice defense for mobility of the user, same with armor on legendary. It is a rewarding system.
The upgrade and downgrade system with coal that starts at the third tier of resources (and is needed to make any Tier 4+ resource outside of loot) is a bit tedious and has its main use in condensing your loot to more manageable weight. Refining wood to crystal wood takes tons of work and turns... that is never worth it. Be sure to use it when needed and for small quantities. Otherwise the system will feel like work and delay. The game can be beaten with Elemental weapons, even on 200%.
Battles are now played like a TCG on a board with zones and field effects, trigger spells etc. This means it has gotten more tactical depth and can't just be cheesed with a few sneak characters pushing two to three superbuffed characters to oneshot the enemy boss anymore. With a multitude of enemies from dracoliches which excel in armor to giant health sponges like krakens, this game has a lot of fun matches to test your planning and strategy against. Or you can autoresolve and let pure numbers fight for you. Note just like in Thea 1, what works best in battle does not necessarily work in autoresolve. Autoresolve uses cards 1v1 with their base values, regardless of field spells and effects. If you rely on auto, build stat monsters, not complex machines.
As always permadeath and consequences follow your decisions and add to the atmosphere, unless you use free saves. The old exploit of crashing the game to avoid losing in ironman still works, so if the 200% achievement is too hard, you can always rely on that.
This game is a clear improvement over Thea 1 gameplay.
Audio & Sound Design: 7/10
The game has a few different soundtracks for the gameplay in the background, which do not give or take from the general atmosphere. They are exchangeable but pleasant. The most dominant sounds are the weather effects, however, and alas they are qutie annoying. Loud howling winds in winter, the "loud" darkness and rain torrents are nice and novel for a time, but at some point several turns of loud weather noises did annoy me bit. If any of the sound design of the game starts grating on you, consider turning it off and putting on a nice music and instrumental on Youtube or other platform. Overall it is decent, but nothing to write home about.

This is the best turn based game I have played in 20+ years!
Tech support is great, and the Discord community if one of the best/helpful I've seen!
10/10!

If you're the type of person that gravitates towards save-scumming to get the perfect roll / upgrade for your characters, you'll end up putting a lot of hours into this game.
I'd strongly recommend you try out the demo to see if you're interested in the game, since it gives you a good idea of what the rest of the game will be like. Personally, I like the macro aspect of the game a lot - looking for the right place to plop down a village and planning a route to maximize exp for children so they can get as many levels as possible before their growing-up events. It's also really nice to be able to autocomplete battles since those can be pretty time-consuming.
My main gripe would be with the stuttering and lag that occurs later on during the game, especially when selecting a larger map.
In addition to the game and its DLCs, there's also a lot of great mods available for the game. They modify things like quests, races, skills, and complete overhauls to the game's systems (e.g. buildings & weapons). Many of the popular mods are also still being maintained (at the time of this review), and the modders also fix issues that people bring up, as well as fix compatibility issues with other mods.
The Thea 2 community on Discord has by far been the best part of this game for me. The modders themselves, other members, and devs have all helped me troubleshoot issues that I've run into while playing the game. It's made my experience playing the game so much better, and greatly contributed to the amount of hours I've put into the game thus far.

Overall good, some things are better than in the first one, some things are not quite as good(the combat).
Somewhat less balanced, some skills and classes just outshine the rest by a whole lot.
Still different enough to enjoy for a long time.

At first I was disappointed because I compared it with the awesome Thea 1 but when I have to consider recommending this game or not I would still say yes. Picking up this game after two or three years not playing I decided on Thea 2 instead of Thea 1. Beware of a steep learning curve and dying a lot on normal difficulty. I highly recommend both Thea 1 and 2.

A very fun game in a lore rich world, there is a lot to do in game. It's a mix of several genres to include party exploration/survival/village building/lore gathering. Some of the gameplay mechanics can be a bit difficult to figure out when you first jump in so it might be worth checking out a beginners guide first. There is also a ton of events and small stories/quests that you can encounter just wandering the world, I've done several runs and pretty much always find a new event each time I do a run. There's also a meta progression in the form of choosing different gods to serve and they provide you different bonuses/playstyles. Not a game for everyone but very fun if you are into this type of game.

Thea 2: The Shattering is a masterful blend of 4X strategy, RPG, and survival elements that creates a unique, compelling gameplay experience. The game's rich Slavic mythology setting, combined with a robust procedural world generation system, ensures a refreshing playthrough each time. The complexities of managing your village, as well as the depth of crafting and character progression systems, may be daunting at first but are deeply satisfying once understood. The card-based combat may not be to everyone's liking but it adds an interesting strategic layer that differs greatly from standard turn-based combat found in many games of the genre.
While the steep learning curve can be a hurdle for newcomers, those who take the time to learn Thea 2's intricacies will be rewarded with a deep, immersive experience. The game's artwork and sound design are beautifully crafted, complementing the setting and the narrative perfectly. The developers have also provided substantial post-launch support, addressing the technical issues and continuously improving the game, which is commendable.