In and of itself, the game is pretty good. It has good enough graphics, some pretty good implementation and I have found that for early access, it is already quite polished. It is a game worth playing. However, and I am sad to say that I feared this from the early interviews about the game, it is not Baldur's Gate and I am left feeling frustrated about it. It is basically DOS with a slightly different skin. Only four party members at a time is a failure. BG series had six and it radically changes your party cohesion, set up, fun, character interactions etc. BG hit the sweet spot, DOS (and therefore this game) does not. The story so far is not gripping. I still recall th instant interest of the Candlekeep prologue at the beginning of BG. The story was instantly inriguing and starts humbly in order to grow into a great saga. This tries way too hard from the start and in an RPG, starting the story well is critical to immersion. The dice roll for certain actions is interesting but I can live without it to be honest, I'm a bit 50/50. The maps are more limited than I expected, quite linear and lack a feeling of freedom. I do like the jump action though, something that enables characters to reach other areas, that was smart thinking. I'm still getting used to mage and priest casting skills so I will reserve jusdgement on that. The fighting... It's DOS system so it's fine but it is not what I hoped for. At the time the real time system in BG was incredible, it felt clever, realistic and was full of action, spending too much time watching one fight could lead you to unintentionally leaving Minsc to get mauled by a mage... It felt, big, interesting and strategic. I have found the fight scenes in the DOS universe to be quite boring in comparison and sadly BG3 has followed suit. I don't feel fulfilled by this game and can quite happily walk away from it after 30 minutes of playing and forget it exists for a chunk of time before going back to it for another chunk of time.
The Witcher 3 has probably spoiled me but although Greedfall tries quite hard, I found it uninspiring, samey and boring after only about 10 hours. It's story is 'okay'. It's characters are 'okay'. It's music is 'okay'. And so on... It's not bad, people with huge amounts of spare time may well play it through and enjoy it for what it is but considering many people don't have limitless time, I won't be going back to this game, possibly ever as there are many other games out there which are far better than 'okay'.
The story is reasonable but sometimes long winded (not their best work by far) and although I was very excited by the chance of a top down RPG in the Witcher world, I was saddened by the Gwent battles. They're cheap attempts at managing combat, I would have loved something more akin to Banner Saga or XCOM fights or perhaps Disciples etc. This is basically a glorified card game with very limited mechanics. There is some enjoyment from the story and style hence two stars but for me, this game has a lot lacking. CDPR, this is the first let down in your game making. It could have been so good but it fails.
