I'll keep this one short and to-the-point: This is a really well-crafted Castlevania-esque game with *seriously* killer art direction that escalates to the point of being semi-Lovecraftian towards the end of the game. The difficulty curve is absolutely perfect (don't listen to other whinging reviews about it being too hard) in that it provides a good, gradually increasing challenge while still being completely fair and never requiring speedrunner-esque twitchy pixel-perfect reflexes. The last boss in particular really ramps it up and feels like the final encounter with a powerful demonic entity, and the satisfaction and sense of conclusion from beating him is great. There's also a fair, but not overwhelming, amount of backtracking required to get to alternate stage paths and better armor, weapons, and spells, so the Metroidvania crowd out there reading this will get a bit of their fix as well, while those outside of that loop will still appreciate the added depth and sense of accomplishment from finding everything and getting gradually more powerful. Overall, this game is an absolute blast and fans of dark fantasy will get more than their money's worth for a pittance of 10 dollars.
This is a game that gets a staggering and bizarre amount of praise from nearly all quarters, and as a huge fan of Daggerfall, Morrowind, and even Skyrim, I'll explain briefly why it's ill-deserved: 1. The writing is comically dreadful, both in the pacing and originality of its stories as well as in the total lack of quality in the prose of the dialogue. The dialogue writing in the Elder Scrolls has never been known for its originality or depth, but this game really pulls out the stops when it comes to refusing to pull out any stops. The blandness of this game's writing forms a sort of singularity that really makes you hate western fantasy, even if you love it (like I do). Every faction you can join deems you to be The Chosen One™ within minutes of meeting you and throws macguffins at you with the same meandering lack of care that your dad threw bread at the ducks with you when you were a kid. Every line of dialogue in general just reads like a first draft. 2. All enemies at every stage of every quest have some degree of level-scaling, enabling you to finish most of the game's content at absurdly low levels as well as de-incentivizing character progression. As a sort of "balance" to this, quest rewards are also level-scaled in such a way that rewarded equipment is weaker if you finish a quest at lower levels than higher ones, encouraging you to not turn in quests until you're a significantly higher level (i.e. until you've already played through much of the game without the nice equipment you would get from quests). 3. The game is crushingly buggy in a not-at-all-endearing way, and unofficial patches, mods, and console commands do not count as one of the game's merits The only real merit of this game is the Construction Kit, which has allowed such a large host of modders to introduce such a huge amount of content, bug-fixes, and gameplay alterations that the game can actually be quite compelling if you mod it into a completely different game.
Other reviewers have waxed lyrical and spoken about the game in-depth; all I wanted to say is that every single aspect of this game is absolutely stunning and enjoyable. The art and sound direction are incomparable, the style of the game is so damn wonderful, the puzzles are never dull and never mind-numbingly frustrating. This is the first game I've played in years that gave me same the sense of wonder and joy throughout the whole experience that I felt with my all-time favorites. Worth every penny, at full price or otherwise.
