The game begins with an interesting premise that hooks the player in. You wake up in a tavern after an ambush and find you have been cursed with magical bonds that appear on your arms. You don't know what they do or how they got there, but after talking to the sage, you learn that each bond is controlled by an evil faction. Through these bonds they can take possession of the subject, and have them do their bidding. After exploring the city a little bit, you witness the king and the royal guards enter through the gates and your bonds start to glow. These bonds cause your party to attack the royal guards of the city. You are then thrown into jail and meet a thieves guild member who helps you break out. This starts the very long first dungeon of the game. It begins with exploring the thieves guild and fighting off the fire knives. This then leads to a multi layered sewer crawl where you fight a bunch of trolls and other creatures. Then once you finally get out of the sewers the game opens up.

A view of the open world map. Also a fun lttle refrence to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The open world in this game is much more linear this time around. There is a road that goes around the map with various towns and dungeons placed around along the way. Within each town you have a tavern and a shop to stock up on equipment. Not super exciting. However you have the option to explore around the town and sometimes you'll find a dungeon to delve into. Most of these dungeons are optional and will be filled with tough fights and some random treasure at the end. Some of the towns or dungeons however, are important to the story and will lead you to beating a boss and removing one of your bonds. To help you from wandering aimlessly or to give a little guidance on where to go next, you can meet a mysterious old man by some standing stones in the middle of the map. This curious fellow will point you in the direction of your next target which in turn leads to breaking one of your bonds. Once all the bonds are broken then you can meet the strange old man a final time and face the final boss. (You can probably guess who the final boss is). The story is more involved and personal this time around compared to the first game. It still involves a world ending threat, but your reasons for your actions leading up to that point are more personally motivated, due to the curse that was placed on you in the beginning.

In the Pit of Moander you meet some friendly faces, Alias and Dragonbait. You may have recognized them from the game cover.

The world is a bit of a downgrade compared to the first game. In Pool you had a large open environment with different locations that were hidden and when you found a location, you never knew what it might be. It could be a cave of kobolds, or a water pyramid, or a bandit camp, or a dragon lair etc. In Curse, none of the locations are very hidden, since they are all along the main road that you will be following. When you do reach a town, most are just basic "menu towns" that all serve the same purpose. The dungeons that you can explore outside of them can be interesting, but most of the time they don't feel very worthwhile to explore since the loot and XP earned are not very worthwhile compared to what you will get following the main quest locations. The important story related locations are at least fun to explore, but again, due to the more linear design of the world, it's not very satisfying finding these locations like in Pool.

Dragolitch encounter.

As far as the combat is concerned, it has been greatly sped up this time compared to Pool. This along with the fact you are higher level with better hit chance, greatly improves the pace of the combat. This is a much needed improvement that still keeps the strategy and difficulty without it feeling like a slog. There also is a new command added called "fix". This allows you to auto cast healing spells to heal your party when you encamp. Another much needed improvement that I honestly can't live without now. In Pool, to heal your party, you had to either use healing potions or cast your healing spells until you run out, re-memorize your spells, then repeat until everyone is fully healed up. It was a tedious and painful process. Luckily though, Gold Box Companion (a very useful fan patch that adds lots of QOL improvements to the games and comes included with the current version purchasable on PC) has an option called "encamp fix" which basically instantly heals and revives your entire party with a single click. Very overpowered and cheaty I know, however Pool can be very tedious with its healing and at a certain point I just decided, screw it. The encounter design feels a bit better in Curse as well. There are still many respawning trash mob fights, but they have less enemies and more variety of enemy types. Gone are the days of 50 hobgoblins attacking at once, Now it's usually a handful of melee fighters and a few mages or ranged fighters in the back. More interesting and fun.

Ending screen.

Overall I thought it was a solid sequel. The open world was lacking compared to Pool and felt a bit padded out with the basic towns and optional dungeons. However there were some much appreciated QOL changes such as increased combat speed, improved encounter design, and the "fix" command added. Curse felt like a more straightforward dungeon crawler than an open world adventure compared to Pool, but it was an enjoyable dungeon crawler nonetheless.