Your character is automatic level up, you can not control what to put into your stats. The only decision is to buy skills you earn from fight. Only your pawns is interesting about this game. You got some customable pawn which levelp up with you and you can hire another two to go with you. And sometimes they are extremly stupid and dont do what I tell them (only Go, Come Back, Help are actions for pawns). Mage is extremely poor on beginning although it is fun later in the game (allegedly), but who wants suffer until the fun begin? Lot of information is missing and you dont know what to do, how to prepare yourself or how to care about your character. You are thrown into deep sea without know swimming. You will be lot of trial and error. You can save game only on some points (or saved automaticaly) and if you die, you lost progress to saved point. And in first steps you can die easily if you overlook enemy strength (which you have no chance to find out without fight). Even worse if your pawns start attac without your will. Another bad thing is UI and mouse action. Some actions have to be done by keyboard and some with mouse. You have to click on certain area to interact with items, etc... Manage things with this terrible behaviour is not good to play longer this game. In the end, game can be interesting, but there are too negative things. If you are bored and dont know what to play try, maybe you like it if you forgive it what I wrote.
This review is mainly for offline players. I have this game on steam since its development started. They claim "back to the roots" (I think first Flatout) but it ends in between Flatout 2 and something different. The first and main problem is (if you are offline player) the AI. While you control car with semi-simulation physics, your opponents don't use simulation. And it is too obvious. If you don't like those AI behaviour you will be disappointed. If you don't know what I am talking about, it means that no matter how you are good, opponents are always better. They can dissapear on corners, while you have to break. Another problem is in demolation derby arenas, they allways well know what are you doing and it start to be obvious when you try hit a car but you miss it because physics are not implemented into AI, that means they accelleration is much different then yours. Another issue is camera (I don't like camera behind car, because is set too low and you don't see a road), Flatout 1 had much better camera behind car. There is offline tournaments you can progress, but the objectives and missions are bad explained and sometimes they can be acomplish very quickly and sometimes they are near to imposible, Some tracks are good (they are from first Flatout or another games) and some are bad and most of them are boring. I love first Flatout tracks they are very good designed. Overall game looks like unfinished or like mod for some game. If you want play a game online or with friends, or you don't mind about AI and camera, it is not that bad and you can add into my rating 1 - 2 starts.
Avoid this game if your CPU is 8 core +, it will not working. (I have Windows 11 and i7 12700 (as I am writing this review)). From now, I have to check every purchased game immediately, and if not working refund it because why should I pay for something which is not working?
