So what's improved from Kingmaker? - You finally have the ability to dispel your own spells. Yay! No more having to go off and make a cup of tea while you wait for your druid's spike stones or sorcerer's web spell to wear off. - The graphics look a bit less cartoony and there are more options to customise your character, plus more classes and races to choose from. - The game is more noob-friendly, with more tutorials, in-game explanation of the Pathfinder rules, and a somewhat more forgiving early game experience. What's not improved from Kingmaker? - Enemy AI is still awful. Enemies will often focus either on your main character or one of your companions at the back, and they will make a beeline for their target via the most direct route, happily wading straight into your AOE spells or getting themselves killed by attacks of opportunity as they just walk nonchalantly past your party members. While it can be amusing to watch enemies self destruct like this, it's annoying when your summoned monsters and non-controllable allies do exactly the same thing. - The UI still doesn't display the in-game date and time, and you still can't make notes on the map. - There are still no hotkeys for stealth mode or switching weapon sets. You still have to mouse over to the fiddly little icons near the bottom right and click on them each time. - RNG still seems to be wonky. You will constantly roll natural 1s on your attack rolls, skill checks and saving throws, while the enemies seem to hardly ever get below 10 on their rolls. - Game still seems to be aimed at the power gamer types, with bloated enemy stats all over the place, and crazy difficulty spikes at various points in the game. - Random encounters are still as dopey as ever. A lone minor demon or a couple of low level cultists will still attack your heavily armed party of 6 characters, bravely fighting to the death each and every time. Would have given this 4/5, but docked a point because of these issues.
My main gripe about this game, apart from the clunky interface, gameplay, and graphics, is the balance. Good luck getting beyond the starting town (Shrouded Hills) and making it to one of the other two towns that your quest log leads you to. You have to journey for several days across the wilderness, where you will have random encounters with wild animals that decimate your party in a few rounds, like a 5th level party up against a 15th level grizzly bear, or a group of 5 level 12 poison rats. Great fun. Should you make it to one of the other towns somehow, you will find that the NPCs are way higher level than your group and getting into combat with anyone will be fatal for you. There is no hand holding in this game and you generally have to find out things the hard way. The combat system uses a stupid fatigue system where being hit by enemies, attacking too many times during a round or casting a spell costs fatigue points. When your fatigue points reach zero, you collapse to the ground and just lie motionless while the enemies beat you to a pulp. At this point, it's game over unless any of your surviving followers can hopefully finish them off. There is no proper autosave option, no ability to swap weapons quickly and moving long distances across the world map or the area you are currently in involves scrolling jerkily to the edge of the screen, clicking there, then repeating the process. This game was released in 2001, about 3 years before Baldur's Gate, but seriously looks about 5 years older. The game engine looks like Tim Cain developed it in a week while drunk and working in his basement alone. On the plus side, the music is pretty good, the quests are interesting and the dialogue in the game adjusts for characters of low intelligence, resulting in some hilarious conversations and journal entries. I just don't understand why this game is revered so much. Rather play Baldur's Gate if you're looking for a good RPG from about 20 years back.
Played this game for about 3 hours and could not get into it at all, despite enjoying the Gwent games in the Witcher 3. This game feels like a cheap mobile game built around a dumbed down version of the Gwent game from the Witcher 3. The Gwent in this game only has 2 rows instead of the 3 that were used in the Witcher 3, and the card play feels more rushed. But hey, there are flashy animations all over the place to keep the kids amused!
Decent game and way better than the last Spiders game I played, Bound by Flame, which was pretty abysmal. This game feels a lot like Dragon Age Inquisition but with a better combat system which reminds me of the Witcher 3. I think this one is worth 7/10, but I'm subtracting a point owing to the following somewhat janky features: - Really dated facial animations (game should maybe have been called "Teethfall" instead?), though you tend to get used to them after a while. - The game has a day/night cycle but NPCs just go about their routines 24 hours a day. Merchants will still bark at you to come and check out their wares when you run past their stalls in the dead of night, some townsfolk just stand around staring blankly and all the NPCs who walk around occasionally get stuck on obstacles which they continue walking against until you bump against them. - No children to be seen anywhere, even in native villages, which ruins immersion somewhat. - Copy/pasted interiors for all the major buildings, like the governors' mansions and the native chieftain huts. If this sort of thing really irritated you in Dragon Age 2, then I would recommend you avoid this game. - Companions who repeat the same lines endlessly in combat. - Ridiculous difficulty spikes for some boss battles. - Lots of poorly designed, tedious fetch quests (eg the infamous Logging Camp one) which have you running back and forth repeatedly. In summary, this is worth picking up on sale if you enjoy Bioware type RPGs, but don't expect the experience to be as polished. I think Spiders is a developer that comes up with some great ideas for their games, but tends to fall short in the quality department as they simply don't have the resources to compete with the bigger studios. Hopefully that may change in the future....
