Combat is good, voice acting is good, character progression is ok, story is ok, characters are cool. Crafting system has legs, but between the randomization and having to access it in camp then wait for it outside camp (so unnecessary loading screens), it's a frustrating experience. Also, I wish generic items changed name when receiving unique upgrades. There's also not enough unique gear. Beyond smaller annoyances (such as not being able to pass time in camp), the so called strategic layer is really the only downside of the game. It feels underdeveloped barely even qualifies. It consists of sending your legion to take over central province settlement (all of them with the same level of defens at ~1/3 of your legion's strength), then 'pacifying' it either by spending a resource or doing a mission (chosen at random), repeat until the map is cleared. The AI will occasionally send a small force (again 1/3 of your force) to attack a conquered province at random, but with enough heads-up for you to park your legion there and crush them. Resource management doesn't really exist, resource buildings are just consumables used to upgrade your camp. The entire thing is very barebones, very repetitive and more of a chore than a feature. And the legion battles are the worst thing since Deadfire's 'ship combat'.
Modern resolutions and widescreen support (among other improvements) were added in an update to the steam version 6 years ago and yet this version still doesn't have it, forcing us into hacky solutions. WTF, GoG?!
Been playing this for 3 days and still can't figure out what it does to justify the hype and all the 5 star reviews. GFX: Worst in class. Models are NWN2 level (15 y/o), but even that at least displayed cloaks. And the facial hair, omg... it's first ventures into 3d level! They opted for this art style and botched it. Writing: Worst in class. Being in the same genre as the likes BG, MotB, Tyranny, PST and so on and so forth, this fall woefully short. The story, from what I've seen so far is meh, not awful. But the dialogues, jfc. Only Kingmaker is comparably hammy. And it's not helped by... VA: Worst in class. It's CRPG, if you can't afford good and consistent VA across the board, just get a few great ones and leave the rest as text only. UI: Horrific. Level up and anything around managing characters is a pain in the ass, stash and inventory management is a nightmare, no key binds for anything so lots of extra clicks. 1 example of this with something other games handle fine - you can't hit key to end turn, you have to click the UI, which moves. Design: DnD not giving them credit for. And even then, it's a bare bones implementation (there's 9 feats to rub together, lack of classes) and what's in is meh (crafting) or bad (food). What they did well is combat, action economy and jump&push gimmick. But they took it too far in level design and turned every level into "See what we did with this mechanic, check it out, try it, keep doing it" and not much else. It went from a feature to a chore. Gamebreakers: Ran into 2 and was close to refund until I figured out the cause. 1st wouldn't load a map, 2nd hid the UI in combat. Skip unless you've played everything in genre. Here's a small sample of games/series you can play before this: BG, IWD, PST, Torment, PoE, Wasteland, Fallout, Tyranny, NWN, Expeditions, Shadowrun, Battletech, DA, Stygian etc. Side note, what kind of idiot implemented a character limit on reviews, GOG?!
