Differences between 1 and 2

[Nasty Peep]

I just got both 1 and 2 and have only played each fairly briefly. One thing I really, really liked about 1 is that you had to find/craft spells, and it really didn't feel like much of a grind (a good thing). In 2 so far from what I can tell is that you pick a class and start out with every spell that class can use, does this change? I also really enjoyed being able to find upgrades which I had to equip to different parts of my body in the game. The health system seems to have changed from an overall bullk health quantity to a small number of "hearts" kind of like Zelda.

Can anyone clarify just how different is 2? I know all about the strategy aspect addition already. So far 2 doesn't entirely feel like a sequel to me, more like a completely different game. This isn't a bad thing, but I was in all honesty hoping that two was more of an expansion of 1.

[Qwar]

Don't let the health bar fool you, it's the same as the first game. The hearths will become smaller as you take damage until it skips to the next one.

As for the strategic mode: You use the survivors more widely than in the first game. They rescue more survivors, gather food and scraps, operate certain buldings, etc, and there are monsters in the world map that they have to figth/avoid. Meanwhile, you open more tiles for them and level up so you can defeat the big bad.

The main difference for me is that you have 4 spells instead of two. This, apparently, means that using the mouse wasn't a posibility, since they generally dont have 4 buttons. So they scrapped the mouse. You move your char with up/left/rigth/down and fire the different spells with asdf. Which means that you either shoot up, straigth to the front, or jump and then fire straigth, or run stupidly ahead while you press up+rigth to fire diagonally, meanwhile taking a thousand enemy hits.

In short: I like the strategic turn of the world map, but the action part was several times better in the first game.