Chris InglisGuild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure is the fourth major expansion to the 2012 MMORPG Guild Wars 2 developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSoft. I have been a fan of Guild Wars 1 since the very first days and the launch of Guild Wars 2 was a big step up in many ways. I am an avid collector of expansions for MMORPGs even though I don’t have the time to play them as much as I used to. This will be the first Guild Wars 2 expansion that I play through with my reviewer hat on, and it’s been an awesome experience so far. The new Wizard’s Vault daily system is customisable to your playstyle and achievable for me, I love hunting for relics with other players and the story was highly engaging, though shorter than previous expansions with just three acts.
Secrets of the Obscure was released on August 22, 2023, and takes players to the lands above the clouds, where you must delve into the mysteries of the Wizard’s Tower and combat the strange and otherworldly forces emerging through rifts to devastate Tyria. As you fight back against Kryptis invaders from the Mists, you’ll uncover the answers to mysteries that have haunted Tyria from the time of the original Guild Wars. Ancient rivalries come into play and the entire world is at risk.
Going into this review I have not yet played through all the content from Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, nor End of Dragons, so I was curious, and a bit concerned as to whether my character would be ready for the new expansion content. I’m pleased to say that even if this is your first GW2 expansion, you are granted everything you need to be able to traverse and progress these new lands including a skyscale flying mount, the ability to hunt down and complete new kryptis rifts and play through the expansions engaging main story. Some of these new additions will only be useable in these new lands until you unlock masteries for them, but then you can use them in all other lands within Tyria.
Two new explorable maps have been added – Skywatch Archipelago and Amnytas, with both featuring areas soaring into the sky and you’ll need to make use of skyscale mounts to traverse their grand heights. There is also a new central outpost hub called Wizard’s Tower which becomes available once you advance the story partway through Act 2. This area contains all the things you need in one place like the bank, auction house and all the master crafters, launch strike missions, plus portals back to Lion’s Arch and other places. The game’s graphics have always been brilliant to me and they’re even more so with these new lands. Being able to soar up high on your skyscale mount and look down at lands you want to go visit next was breathtaking. It all ran super smooth too with very rare frame rate drops which are usually attributed to my potato pc anyway.
When I first logged in, I was prompted to start the new story missions which you can either do or dismiss to play later. You’re also shown the new daily wizard’s vault screen and I customised this to only show PvE quests, but there’s also options for PvP and WvW which I don’t do much of these days. If you mistakenly hit ok without adjusting to your preferences, you can go into the wizard’s vault screen and make changes which will come into effect with the next daily/weekly refresh. You can also see the rewards you can unlock with the astral acclaims you’re collecting.
There are three main acts in Secrets of the Obscure and took me around 10-12 hours which I felt was a reasonable amount of time to reveal all the secrets and traverse the lands. I really appreciated that sections of the story halted progress while you to go off and learn how to use the heart of the obscure to search for and to defeat monsters from rifts. It was a good break from the large amounts of spoken and written text, but more importantly you got to explore around these new areas, finding POI’s, fast travel points and my favourite, vistas. I play as a human male guardian and with the character Zojja returning, I took great delight in hearing the terrific voice actors of Nolan North, Felicia Day and the rest of the actors who do an amazing job at portraying their characters. The game’s music also does a really good job of instilling the right emotions as the story plays out.
Some may complain that the story content is about half of that in the other expansions, however ArenaNet have been clear that this is only the beginning. There will be three more major releases which will add more story content (roughly one update per quarter) taking us into 2024 with more story quests, a third major map zone to explore, more relics and armour sets, and more mastery unlocks to do with rifts in order to unleash new legendary enemies. Also, while completing the story and exploring new lands there were arcane treasure chests that I discovered in hideaway locations. Some I could open but greater arcane chests required a mastery to be unlocked, so there are plenty of goals to set for yourself in these new expansion lands.
Three main mastery lines are unlocked in Secrets of the Obscure, and each are worth pursuing – heart of the obscure research, flight training, and astral ward. All of them are useful and enhance rifts, flying and crafting. I recommend prioritising flight training so that you can take advantage of wallspring and enhanced updrafts. Being a new player to flying mounts, it can be frustrating initially as you can see where you want to go high in the sky, but the fresh skyscale mount can only fly to certain altitudes. You quickly learn to look for lower pieces of land to recharge and continue up. Looking around at veteran players, you see them shooting high up into the sky with ease.
Kryptis rifts were my favourite addition to this expansion. When completing kryptis rifts, tier 1s can be soloed and tiers 2 and 3 rifts will require groups, though I rarely found myself fighting alone. Closing rifts will earn you new materials called essences, and these relate to the tiers of rifts that can be formed. Only tier 1 rifts are tracked and found initially, but once you unlock astral craft under the astral ward mastery, you can create tier 2/3 motivations. You can double click a motivation to change the tier of rift you can summon, and then activating a motivation while closing a rift will increase the rewards you earn which is exciting and kept me hunting for more.
While I did unlock weapon masteries by progressing the story, this won’t come into full effect until the second content update later this year. With this weapon masteries update, you will be able to equip additional weapons for your class despite if you are using a specific elite specialisation. For example, my guardian is using the dragonhunter elite spec. Once the new update releases I will be able to equip a pistol in main and offhand which is cool. I have been using a greatsword and longbow combo pretty much for the last 10 years so it will be refreshing to try pistols out.
Overall, Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure has been the most engaging expansion for me. I have bought all previous expansions and played a little of each, but this is the first that has grown in appeal the more I played. I was glad that we weren’t skill or mount gated by previous content so we could complete the content if this was someone’s first expansion experience. The story was engaging and voice acting outstanding as always. I liked that the story paused at times for you to find more rifts and get better at those which enabled you to explore the new lands, hunt for POIs/vistas, and work on unlocking masteries. I am also glad that we’re going to get more story content in upcoming patches, so the expansion is definitely worth the purchase price.
This review utilised a key provided by Zebra Partners and Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure is out now through Steam or the official website.
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