Put briefly: the gameplay is considerably worse than Skyrim and doesn't hold up that well. The world, however, is far better, and that is the single most important thing in an Elder Scrolls game. Morrowind is a truly unique setting with no direct counterpart in real-world history or well-known fantasy media.
I played this after Coteries expecting it to be similar, but it was actually quite a bit better. Like Coteries, this is a visual novella, not an RPG; don't expect it to be Bloodlines 2. The story is mostly linear, though the ending does change depending on your previous choices. Coteries wasn't bad, but the ending was unsatisfying, and it kind of felt like a demo of the 5e New York setting, buoyed by some interesting characters. This game, on the other hand, is actually a complete story with a cathartic resolution and rather good writing; the romance plot is maybe the best I can think of in a video game. The art's good too, and captures the VtM atmosphere. Some of the very current slang and references may not age well down the line, but they also make the story feel real to a degree. Unfortunately, like the first game, it does suffer from some technical limitations. The Linux version is literally unplayable out of the box due to an incorrect path in the startup script; thankfully, I was able to diagnose and fix this in five minutes or so, but surely the professional developers could have bothered to do the same. More vexing is the lack of manual saving. If you make a choice and don't like the outcome, or click the wrong one, your only remedy is to start a new game and skip through back to the desired point, or manually back up the save. Overall, I would enthusiastically recommend this to fans of the VtM world who enjoy visual novels, especially when on sale.
I will first preface this by saying that I did not follow any of the coverage of this game over the last few years, and went in with few prior expectations. I also have a PC which meets the recommended requirements, but only just. The core of the game is good and enjoyable. Night City is aesthetically interesting and has a lot of unique districts, and the main story as well as main sidequests are quite good, and always kept me interested. V's male voice actor is a bit flat at times, but otherwise the acting is solid. The random gigs do get repetitive after a while, but the larger quests provide enough content to satisfy me. One thing I will say is that, relative to a game like Bloodlines, or Dragon Age, there is fairly limited opportunity to roleplay a specific character. Now, as to the infamous bugs: they're there, but they weren't that bad on my machine. I had only one crash in like 90 hours, and only two or three times that I had to restart the program to fix a bug. I did have some occasional weirdness that ranged from funny to annoying, and one very minor sidequest that was uncompletable. One thing I found annoying is that it can be difficult to pick up items. There are other oversights that are more serious, though, mainly related to AI. Traffic AI is absolutely terrible and unfinished. Cars do not know how to get around obstacles, and often stop in the road for no reason at all, causing traffic jams and problems for the player; get used to driving on an overpass at 100 mph only to crash into a stationary car in the middle of the road. Bystanders are really skittish, and will go crazy and cower any time you drive into a parking lot. There are more vehicle problems beyond this that I won't go into. On the whole, I liked the game and will be checking out the expansions when they're released. However, I would call it more "Outer Worlds"-good than Morrowind-fantastic. I also feel that it should have been further delayed to fix the major issues mentioned above.
Played the game and finished it in the course of one day. The visuals are pretty good, and if you've played an adventure game before you know what to expect. Honestly, though, the puzzles can get pretty frustrating, and there's not much of a narrative. IMO this genre works a lot better when you do have a strong narrative at the center, like in Grim Fandango. I found myself having to resort to hints and puzzle solutions a lot, and occasionally would get stuck entirely because of missing something in the interface. Compared to Primordia, a similar game which I also played this year, I would say that Primordia is easily better. This game is certainly worth the $3.74 sale price, though.
