You won't find it on a store shelf but Savage 2: A Tortured Soul has now been officially released via the game's official web site and community portal. The client download (mirrored here on AusGamers) also functions as a time limited demo, offering 5 hours of free play before requiring a one time purchase (no ongoing subscriptions) of US$29.99 for the full game.

We'll have a full review up in the coming days but until then, here's the skinny from the official press release:

Savage 2: A Tortured Soul is a fast paced multiplayer action title that takes team based game play to another level. Each match is a war for dominance where two teams of 5 to 17 players from two factions, beast or humans, attempt to destroy each other. It will take more than guns to finish the job. Players can choose from an array of units each with ranged, melee, and special abilities. To close the deal and seal the enemy’s fate, players can take control of the ultimate siege units like the Behemoth or the Battering Ram used to destroy enemy buildings or even resurrect a burning demonic Hellbourne. For the more strategic player, each team has one commander who overlooks the battlefield and manages construction, research, and issues commands for strategic assaults.

Interestingly, S2 Games aren't currently letting any third parties run ranked servers. The good news however, is that they have provided several Aussie servers for us to play on.

Check out the release trailer right here on AusGamers.

I'm intrigued to see what QGL thinks of this game. It's not bad imo.

I'm enjoying it so far, steep learning curve even after knowing original Savage inside and out but definitely looks like it will be pretty rewarding once you know what you're doing.

lets just hope they don't drop the ball like they did on the first one

i bought this game so long ago during beta that i forgot i even had it.

i will invest some time doing the training and reading the manuals because i know this game will be brilliant when i get beyond the general melee slaw and into the tactical part of it.

same bought it ages ago, surprised they didnt email me saying it was live kek.

What ball did they drop?

boba drops dan's balls all the time, soon as someone walks over to their desk area

Not sure what boba's referring to, but I reckon the first big problem with Savage was that the demo was too good. It offered up a massive chunk of the game for free and there just wasn't enough incentive for people to buy the full game. Eventually releasing it for free was the best thing they could have done.

Oh ok, I thought he ment gameplay! Yeh it did suck I think I only got one game ona full server after I bought it.

Played a couple of more hours of Savage 2 today and it gets the thumbs up now. Steep as hell learning curve but once you get everything down and get a game with enough other people that do to, it's really fun.

buying it now!

I have been playing this game since alpha stages and can say that it has come an extremely long way. Some days i didn't think this game would be very good in the end, and sometimes i wondered why i still played it. But once the current melee was first introduced i could see that this game was going to be worth the wait for everyone.

REALLY fun game once you know what you are doing.

i'm getting a lot of crashes, dont think im gona buy it yet. hopefully some patches will fix it.

I give thumbs up but its still confusing as hell.

best way to fix that is do the tutorial as fast as possible without missing crap

i shot through it and have a fair time playing online. still lots of deaths and reading about each ability in game though.

New aussie site up for Savage.

http://www.aus-savage.com

why isnt this game more popular :/ not many players on the EU servers either

Indeed, it's damn fun, it's too bad that self publishers can't get word out as well as popular ones.

it still crashes on me a lot ... definitely not wasting $29.95, cant even play a full game without random crashes

i'm actually surprised how smooth is all went for me. no issues with DL or installation, and i run at max detail 1650 rez. rock solid.

just starting to really understand and get into it now. me rikey

next patch will be out very soon. I have helped test it on a server where i had 240 ping and it seemed smoother there then on au servers with the current patch.

Hopefully the next patch will give it the polished feel it needs.

this looks good but i won't be buying it until there's at least 5 for so decent Australian servers.

Learn to read, asshat.

The good news however, is that they have provided several Aussie servers for us to play on.

There are 5 servers atm. Usually there is 2 full and one smaller one.

When i said i tested with 240 ping that was because the test build which only has a us and uk server. There are very few aussies that help with the test build so no point for an au server.

It's a little weird you can't run your own servers

We had a big discussion about this on the forums and they will be sorting something out in a month or so.

http://forums.s2games.com/showthread.php?t=7128

Double postage.

V 1.1.0 has been released.

VERSION 1.1.0
-------------
-Fixed an issue with replays
-Fixed a server crash
-A small area around the commander's cursor is now rendered transparently
-When using snapcasted spells, entities that snapcast ignores (such as small bushes) will be transparent when moused over
-Any time the camera is obstructed by the player, the player is rendered 50% transparent
-Fixed a crash related to gadget placement
-Made it so players cannot "ping" the map when viewing the spawn screen
-Receiving a soul should now play a sound effect in addition to the visual effect
-Eden now has monkits
-Removed fog of war from warmup
-In warmup you can spawn from any allied OR enemy spawn points. You can also spawn from any foundation structure (gold mines, scars) during the warmup phase
-NPCs will not aggro during warmup unless attacked
-All units, weapons, and skills are available (and free) during warmup
-Team damage is enabled during warmup
-Fixed bug where using charge would cause other states and effects to be removed from the player
-Fixed "view stats" button from right clicking a player, it should now display stats properly
-Fixed client side lag issues that would sometimes appear when joining games in progress
-Fixed issue with the karma player selection menu that was causing the last player in the list to not be visible
-Fixed other various crashes
-Players who change units on the field (such as using a hell shrine) no longer leave revivable corpses
-Fixed commander worker move speed
-Improve Imp/Bearloth following ability
-Fixed a few issues with the build button being blocked
-Squad officer hover info now properly disappears
-Significant experience increase for dealing damage to buildings
-Sentry Hawk now uses the same minimap icon as the Electric Eye
-Workers cost more gold and react slower in combat situations
-Gold donation experience reward from 20% of gold donated to 10%
-Tower costs increased slightly
-Fixed issues with "ghost" NPCs
-Fixed an issue where ranged weapons would be unusable after blocking in melee
-ALT info should now show for all visible players on your screen, not just some
-Towers will now attack polymorphed players if the player has damaged it recently
-Firing a gun now puts the player's other guns into cooldown for the appropriate length
-Destroyed siege units no longer show the repair tooltip
-Vehicles no longer tilt if they are dead
-Local servers are no longer affected by server filters
-Fixed an issue where getting disconnected due to level range would leave you connected to the server for several minutes
-Fixed "Authentication failure" issue
-Malphas health degeneration increased slightly (Still lower than original)
-Malphas movement speed increased slightly
-Cast experience removed for a number of gadgets, now fully based off how useful they are once placed
-Commander and player experience are now tracked seperately, fixing an exploit to get "free" player experience
-Demo accounts now only have a 3 second spawn time increase, instead of 10
-Fixed a potential issue that could give a user negative experience or gold
-Beginner servers are now level 1 - 4, general are 5 - inf.
-Lowered the max. clients temporarily
-Fixed several editor-related crashes
-Scoreboards are now sorted by experience
-When using a toggled skill that disables your skills, the toggled skill now remains "available"
-Fixed an issue where disconnecting from a server could leave a user stuck at the "connecting" interface
-Added a "Connection Timeout" message to the connecting interface
-Shaman's Health and Mana Chant no longer have any effect on Hellbourne
-Commander's workers now repair slightly slower
-Towers now take longer to construct
-Imp's health changed to 425, armor reduced from 5 to 3
-Fix "Not in level range" error when you are actually in a server's level range
-Added a new effect for when a player recieves a soul
-Setup the patch test server

Good that towers have been nerfed a bit. Pretty massive patch considering how long they've been working on it. Impressed with the support so far.

Second Major patch has been released.
This patch from what i have played is very good. I am capped and got no lag! I never crashed and i can max the graphics out now and never could before. I think there is a 30-50ms drop in ping as well. This patch is what i feel the game should have been released on. Only downside is stats have a few problem now but should be fixed by Monday.

VERSION 1.2.2
-------------
- Fixed an issue that was causing servers to crash


VERSION 1.2.1
-------------
- Fixed a crash related to using persistent items

VERSION 1.2.0
-------------
- Malphas does roughly 150% damage to structures (down from 200%)
- Increased general movement speed by about 10%, however the sprint speeds remain the same
- Riposte no longer works against siege or Hellbourne
- Summoner's locust mana cost increased by 25%
- Decreased the duration on sentry hawks and electric eyes from 10 minutes to 3 minutes
- Commanders now earn all the experience his workers earn (building, repairing etc). This does NOT effect the current player ladder as commander stats and exp does not count toward your player SF
- Commanders now earn experience and kills from their towers
- Mana cost of tempest's push back ability lowered from 80 to 50
- Revamp to how eyes and hawks give experience (less reward for bunching them up, more reward for longer life, more strict definition of unique sighting)
- Removed the 5 second pause when transforming into a hellbourne unit
- Updates to the loadout screen. It will now point out the ability to mouse-over skills for their descriptions
- New ability descriptions on the loadout screen (will list the skill type as well as details on damage, duration, etc.)
- Shield Towers and Chlorophilic Spires now check for nearby buildings differently. This should prevent structures receiving the healing or shield benefit when outside the maximum range
- Some netcode changes to improve client smoothing in instances where clients start to lag
- Netcode optimizations (will improve latency by about 30-50ms on average)
- Fixed several memory leaks
- Fixed some timings on eye placement to better match animation
- Fixed some issues with projectiles, including appearing to pass through things that they impact
- Various NPC improvements/fixes
- Users who are below the minimum level requirement for a server may now join that server, however, that server will be filtered out of the list by default
- Removed spawn queues from warmup mode
- Fixes to warmup, gadgets/pets should now be considered allies or enemies properly
- Respawning NPCs on crossroads now have their own respawn timers (rather than all the respawning npcs on the map respawning at the same time), fixes some lag spikes
- Changed the timeout while connecting to a server from 10 minutes to 4 minutes (if you crash when connecting, your account should be "freed" after 4 minutes)
- Added some smoothing when placing gadgets. The preview should now smoothly transition when moving over uneven terrain
- Updated the ground sprites for Shield Towers and Chlorophilic Spires so they more accurately depict the buildings they will shield/heal
- Static Charge Spire is now named "Static Spire"
- Transparency for malphas, tempests, and behemoths should now trigger when they aim "down" to look at nearby units
- Updated the sound effect that plays when a soul is received
- Improved the chat filter slightly
- Fixed an issue where steam turret and venus plants line of sight was being blocked by objects that should not be blocking line of sight (such as corpses)
- Fixed issues with dynamic props being unattackable with certain attack types (This fixes tutorial's whirling blade section)
- Fixed an issue that was causing clients to potentially drop packets at the end of games
- Fixed an issue that was causing clients to time out when they shouldn't have been
- Fixed some issues with clients improperly timing out during connection
- Fixed an issue that caused the camera to warp to the corner of the map at the end game screen
- Fixed issue causing third person effects (such as flames) showing up in first person view
- Fixed issue allowing commanders to see game events through the fog of war (this should hide enemy officer auras through fog of war)
- Fixed one cause of the "Connection Interrupted" scenario
- Fixed Riposte against practice opponents
- Fixed an issue with storm shield that could cause players to recieve a negative amount of experience
- Improved commander's snapcast targeting and casting of AOE spells
- More netcode/lag fixes
- Added an area display for the Predator's Fear spell
- Fixed Tempest's ethereal shader, it should now look as intended
- Improve client smoothing code
- Reduced client-side bandwidth use
- The commander's cursor will now cause objects to go transparent, allowing him to see past trees and props that block vision.
- Fixed an issue that was causing some effects to not play
- Fixed the animations for the Battering Ram and the Tempest's Pushback, they will now always play properly
- Fixed Tempest's Pushback so that it properly hits units right up against the Tempest
- Fixed camera settings for the Revenant

sorry to revive this, but the patch seems to have fixed a lot of things including the crashes, but I get this weird lag when a round finishes and the next map loads up where I cant choose a team ....


anyone still playing this? i noticed the aussie servers dont get filled up much but here in europe dont tend to have trouble finding servers with people playing which is good

I haven't experienced that however i know that it was very hard for them to debug the end game due to it being the end game :p

And I don't know what is going on with no one playing. The game recently got a 8.3/10 on IGN and will have a review up on here soon so that will hopefully give the game a nice boost.
In the meantime head over to aus-savage.com and talk to a few players and see if you can get a game going.