Let me preface this by saying that I both enjoy a wide variety of RPGs (wider then most people, I think) - and that I don't really play them for the combat. I enjoyed Morrowind, but was also fine with Oblivion and Skyrim. I enjoyed Fallout 1/2, but also Fallout 3. I liked the original Wasteland, as well as the reboot. I have played most of the major kickstarter RPGs, and as far as I can remember, this is the first one thus far that I really, honestly hated. I've had RPGs I don't 'care for', or got bored and had not finished, but not any that I actually hated in a long time. I bought it on the recommendation of a friend who said he did not enjoy the 1st, but found this to be one of the greatest RPGs since Dragon Age. I own the first, thought it was "OK" ...but...I never got out of the starting city. Everytime I tried I died, and when I consulted the walkthroughs, they all basically said it was because I had not stolen everything nailed down, and had missed some fetch quests. So I never got farther then dying outside the city walls. It had been on my "to finish list" for awhile, once I could be bothered to get a walkthrough and figure out what fetch quests I was missing, and if it was possible to complete the game without being a kleptomaniac. I was assured this game lacked those flaws. Well, the game started fine at first. Cool-chargen, a tutorial ship that didn't seem so bad, then I'm plunked down into the starting zone, and.... the first four combats I encounter wipe the floor with me. I avoided looking at walkthroughs, and tried other quests, came back to them later, and...got my ass kicked. Fine, OK - I check walkthroughs. They all say that I need to be several levels higher. Ok, so I turn down the difficulty from classic to explorer, do some more quests and....get through it. Barely. And I keep playing. And slogging. And playing, and waiting for it to get fun. It never got fun. Here are the major problems with the system, from what I can tell playing with it, and consulting online. #1: Every enemy knows every weakness you have (even like, rats), and will 100% of the time target based off of them. Have one character thats vulnerable to "X" status effect? Expect to see every enemy that can use that, specifically target them with it to the exclusion of anyone else. #2: Enemies don't play by the same rules. Frustrated by the above? SURPRISE - all of these enemies (even animals) will have ~2x the maximum hitpoints you can possibly get at the level you encounter them. All enemies also have ~2-3 times the range on all ranged attacks you do, and have a more generous target window. So, for instance, one of the first fights you'll encounter is an arena, and one of the enemies in it is atop a platform. You can get atop an identical platform. They can target you, and you can't target them. Period. They can even (if you manage to throw a fire bomb up there) walk through a nearby door and shoot at you from behind a wall through the door, when the game would NEVER let you get away with that considering the angle and the blockage. #3. Just because environmental effects come into play, doesn't mean fights are necessarily fun. The game has a very dynamic combat system (freeze water, boil water, burn away poison) - and people love that because Bethesda and EA have lowered the bar for interactivity nearly to zero. But that doesn't, by itself, mean that combat system is FUN. It isn't. Its a horrible, horrible, slog. If you enjoy preparing for fights your characters couldn't possibly know about in advance by moving around barrels and doing crazy environmental things, to "solve the puzzle of the fight" - thats great, you'll love this game. Just looking to get through the fights, have a decent-ok time, and see the plot? THIS GAME IS NOT FOR YOU. Again, I want to point out with #3, that I have beaten a large number of tactical RPGS before. These fights are not 'challenging'. They are 'stupid and brutally pointless'. There is clearly a market for RPG players who look at the prospect of having to rob an entire city blind, with no-one magically knowing, in order to prepare for ordinary fights...who look at that with glee. I am not one of them. Rating: 0/5 stars. I wish I could get my money back. I hate it. I loathe it.
Alright, so, here's the thing. If you go into this game expecting something like "Baldur's Gate" - your going to be sorely disapointed. If you go into it expecting Wasteland 2, your going to be disappointed. Really, really disapointed. A lot of people who say how much they love Planescape: Torment now forget how universally ignored it was at first, how little money it made, and how many people complained that it had "too many words". I remember, the first time I tried it as a teenager, thinking it was slow-paced and boring, and only coming to love it when I was in college, years later. This game has more in common with a book series then it does with something like BG2 or Skyrim. Its not something you can go to mindlessly veg. into. Its more like a book you'd curl up and read. Don't think of it as "a really plot heavy version of Pillars of Eternity" - that game is a linear slug-fest compared to this game. Think of this as the greatest, most in-depth choose your own adventure game ever made, the likes of which will, I almost guarantee you, never be made again. Almost everything that happens in this game is dialog-based; and almost every minor NPC has a whole story and life behind them, with multiple branching approaches... if you happen to discover them. And you probably will miss most of it, the first time through. Here's an example. While it was downloading, I read reviews, and people kept complaining they never encountered any combat, one guy said he hit one combat scene in 12 hours that I read. This didn't bother me, I play RPGs for the story, for the world, for the living another life. So I made an intelligent, charasmatic nano with no combat skills, and a bit of snark. And it let me play that. ....and I got into perhaps 5 combats in the first two or three hours? And had my face BEAT IN every single time. And it wasn't the end of the game, or the end of the world. Like many a spunky literary hero, I picked myself up each time, and kept on going. I restarted a bit in after that, and ended up not hitting a single combat for what felt like forever, and solved all of my quests in entirely different ways. The second time, as well as the first, I was basically playing an intelligent, charismatic character...just a bit more straitlaced. And everything was different. I'll admit, when I got my face beat down in combat, I was pretty annoyed. I think its too tough, and it needs patching and balancing. But I can't say it wasn't realistic. I was talking smack and didn't really have the combat prowess to back it up, and reality ensured. I didn't have anything resembling a combat build, I just felt like talking smack instead of avoiding combat. And not many games will play that straight with you. Likewise, one of the adjustments in this game is that it doesn't play by the rules. In normal RPGs, failure is bad, and success is good. This game doesn't necessarily penalize you for failure in terms of mechanics, or reward you for success mechanically, either. It CAN...but it doesn't necessarily do that. Instead, sometimes failure leads to unexpected opportunities. It tries to be a 'story simulator' in many ways - it wants to give you room to tell a story within the confines of the game, rather then have you play in its story. Its not for everyone. And its combat system may be a bit too unforgiving - its hard for me to say, given how I played, but I did feel frustrated. But perhaps I deserved to be, with how I was playing. I'll say this - the game has guts, and heart. But thats because its not really a game. Its a four million dollar work of Interactive Fiction. And I doubt anyone will ever make something like this again.
