The camera also contributes to your character's general lack of survivability. Monsters move quickly. In fact, they move at the same speed as your character. If you want to keep them from getting to you, you have to run away for long enough to aim your spells and fire a couple of times to kill them. Far too often, you'll be running and the camera will jump to another angle. Not swing--jump. It's completely disorienting, and it will usually cause you to move in a direction that causes the camera to jump yet again. The monsters that you were running away from will then easily catch up to you and pile on until you're dead. Dying in Nightcaster II is unnecessarily punitive, considering how easily it can happen. You'll lose all the experience you gained since the last time you saved, and when you do continue, you'll be in the very same place, with a very short period of invulnerability. There'll be times when you will die more than once trying to get out of the same crowd. Even worse, in cooperative mode, if you both die before one of you can restart, the game will end with no opportunity to continue.
The graphics aren't terrible, but most other aspects of the game are.
In general, it seems as if no one really tested this game to see if it played well. Apart from the control scheme and combat tuning being at odds with the game style, there are lots of little things that just aren't right. Take the sound, for instance. There are some spells that have an area of effect that lasts for a couple of seconds. If you should happen to walk through the center of this area while the spell is in effect, the sound effect of the spell becomes extremely loud. In addition, certain points on the map will trigger your orb to speak to you and give you a tip about the area or how to play the game, but if you walk outside of the zone, the tip stops, and when you walk back in, it starts over again. If you backtrack through an area of the map, you'll get to hear the beginning of a tip now and then as you run through, no matter how many times you've heard it already or even if you are in the middle of combat. The music is just as repetitive, too.
Nightcaster II may fool a shopper into thinking that since the game is a sequel, it must be worth buying. But it's hard to imagine anyone actually thinking that Nightcaster II is truly an improvement on the original in any way, shape, or form. The game just feels like one big rush job right from the start. Then again, beer could have been a factor. At any rate, Nightcaster II is a big step backward for the series in just about every respect.
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