Replayability?

[~Dreamer~]

Watcha all think? :)
I just completed my first playthrough (Artificer; don't have the DLC)
Did you find your 2nd (or nth) playthrough notably different than the first?
Or is it likely going to end up being a "I know these strategies work, gonna repeat them" with a slightly adjusted story kinda 15 more hours?
(And how different is the story anyway? I saw there are achievements for more circle mages. Are those just randomly set? Is the world any different / different cities / different hero questline?)
What's everyone's opinion - should I give it another go or not? How much did you enjoy your nth playthrough compared to your 1st one? (And what did or didn't you like about replaying?)

[Kaysoky]

As someone that has played the game about 9 times (at least once for each class, plus several Impossible difficulty runs), I'd say there is a good deal of replayability.

Overall, I think the main story is mostly the same. Many of the individual quests have several paths to take, which can be nice to experiment with over multiple game. The cities will always be the same (although the Troll questline+city does have two drastically different routes). And there are 7 different heroes now, so 7 partial playthroughs would be needed to see them all. So there is some narrative replayability, but I wouldn't consider this a major factor.

I've most enjoyed the process of increasing the difficulty and experimenting with different start locations, different spell pages, and different classes. I'd consider this mechanical replayability. For example, when the DLC released, I played the game another 3 times. This included two runs as a Demonologist to explore the new features and another run with an Alchemist to experiment with new synergies with the Occultism spells.

[Nagual]

This game has good replayability, though not to the same degree as let's say CK2 or civilizations 6. You will find that the three(or four with the dlc) classes have very different playtroughs.
There is also enough RNG to make several games look nothing alike. Playing the same class with the trolls walking around and agressive circle mages like hokan, raith and uram is very different from playing with yria ysgrimm,Underghast and Yria.
Sidequest are also very random.For example i only had the night markets spawn a handful of times on more than 220 hours of gameplay.
As for "those steps work, don't try anything else", well it's true that ou cant go wrong with mentalism even on impossible, and that some combos might be a little too strong(might amplifier+summoning circle, shops from connach with replenish shops etc). But even on impossible you can very much win with less than optimal builds, provided you know what you are doing.

[Reality]

Feels like a 2 playthrough game too me. Honestly think need a year before I try the last class.

I think the surprisingly short win condition should be used too encourage starting over before covering the entire map (I'm an advocate for finishing Balanced with only a maximum stack size of 6)

[sarouman]

Let's be honest, the replayability is way better than civ6.
In civ6, The nations don't have any really significant differences.
Here, the starting class, choice of main schools, and location really have an impact on the game.

[Auua XII]

New map is must

[Ichthyic]

creating a random map system that doesn't end up becoming unplayable would take SO much more work (just ask the AoW guys). maybe just a couple extra static maps that can randomly rotate through instead?

[~Dreamer~]

Thank you everyone who provided their experience on this! :D
I did end up going a second time (necromancer), and I have to say battles work very different this time (summoning during battle is so unfair! ;D)
As per recommendations from this thread, I also went with different story choices this time, which did add some variance! (And different starting location)

Probably won't do a third time though. It was fun, but still similar enough. Different maps and rotating quests would for sure make a big difference! :)

[Sixtus]

It depends if you did explore the whole map or not - I only found some cities in my second or third playthrough. And the different mage schools play very different.