First...after 30+years of gaming&reading i can say that very few games or books research the wheel anew.
I have a special love for several games(or series) that changed my personal view to gaming..like Wasteland, Bards Tale, Fallout, Daggerfall, QfG, Ultima, Ultima UW,...and games that tried to copy and/ore improve these loved ones whre often games i enjoyed too.
Lending itself doesn't make a game auto-bad or soulless, for me...a nice world, interesting lore and rulesystem, a good story, good music and a usefull Ui that doesn't drive me mad make the game good or bad.
And reading/viewing the stuff about AoG...my only concern are the comments that the storytelling has only medium- quality and that is lacks balancing.
Edit:And there's quite a number of Bugreports up to gamebreaking thinks.

But to check this i have to give it a try, so..wishlisted and waiting for patches.

Weren't backers supposed to get the deluxe version? I only got the standard version.

Frequently I would rather spent my free time actually relaxing and playing whatever game I fancy than trawling the Internet for information about a new purchase. My assumption is that the store page should contain most of the relevant information.

Mind, I was not complaining about this game being a rip-off or whatnot. I was, however, concerned about its quality given the incredible similarities to TBS.

The map in AoG might as well been drawn by TBS artist. The artwork in "settlement" screen is not only functionally identical, it might as well be using the same art assets. The travel screen is right from TBS. The cutscenes have the same presentation. The combat screen, while at least showing some changes, is eerily similar.

This might be a fantastic game, but my first impression, combined with this being a release from a different company, suggested caution.

Now, I did enjoy the Banner Saga immensely. I will probably enjoy Ash of Gods: Redemption as much (assuming the implementation is not problematic). But, I will wait to see what others say about it before buying all the same.

I understand. I only actively looked for the information because it was a hot topic, and I wanted to see if there was substance in complaints regarding. You could say I provided info for people that needed it, even though I didn't need to.

This is definitely not the only game that leaves out information that it tells their Kickstarters. This isn't the first game that looks similar to another either, in fact GOG has another game here that has similar art and turn-based combat to the apparent god-father The Banner Saga.

edit:
https://www.gog.com/game/tahira_echoes_of_the_astral_empire

And Skyshine's BEDLAM.

Skyshine's BEDLAM it's not only similar, it uses the very same engine of The Banner Saga.
Despite all his problems, i enjoyed it.

What drive me crazy is the "stealing" thing.

They have rotoscoped the animations, they draw everything (there are also videos on youtube of the creation process, from rotoscope to animation), they use another engine (Unity) and there are people out there accusing them of

"Using the same assets".

Or the "same UI".
Or the same "Camera Orientation".
Or the same "Color palette".
Or using the same relationship between the characters (Thorn have a daughter that will be a good fighter, just like Rook.)
Or one of the main char having beard too. (It's real)
Or "stealing" the design of an evil character from demo of unity 5, that look similar (and it's viceversa similar to the Nameless One of PS:T), but it's also a FREE unity asset.

Come on, guys...

They developed the game within 2 years, with a KS campaign that got $87k, while The Banner Saga raised $720k (and Skyshines' BEDLAM $ 166k , just for comparison).
They are readily releasing patches (on Sundays!) and fixing bugs and listening to player's feedback (a bit too much in my opinion).
They have several languages available at release and much more coming in the next months.

Context is important. The real question is: do they live up with backer's expectations? Right now, partially, but they are on the right road.

The only real concerns are that the writing is "average", not at all on par with the music and visuals and probably some of the localizations too, since they're from english and not russian.

That's in part due to the breaknecking pace they keep, in part being not natively written in English, and yes in part probably due to poor writing itself.

But do you remember all the bad feedback that received some of Banner Saga's translations, don't you?
Well, in this case, English IS a translation. Don't forgot it.

Of course, i am not saying they're perfect, and all is going nice, and all shall be well,

but... just don't throw mud on them for fun. It's not fair.

Russian fantasy writers basically come in three varieties, and all are terrible:
- people who learned to read on the same shitty LotR translation and never read anything else, ever. Mostly men.
- people who were fans of Joanna Chmielewska in the 90s, then watched LotR and had an epiphany. Mostly women.
- a racist yaoi fangirl, who has a special kind of terrible all to herself.

I mean... this is the sort of sci-fi that gets hardcover releases. (Fantasy is just as bad but less obvious.)

Well, can't read russian, so i must take you on word, but if the covers reflect the writing, then AoG is a masterpiece in comparison XD

Anyway, what i was trying to say is that for sure in the complex it's not an 9 out of 10 game, but quite a bunch of people just did a lot of nitpicking.

The sequel Ash of Gods: The Way releases on 27th of April:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CytheVNQXZs

No sign for a release concurrent with other platforms yet.

Launch Trailer

On GoG in a couple minutes too, possibly maybe?