First off, I believe if you enjoyed other RPG's such as Witcher and Skyrim then I imagine you'll really enjoy the game. Skyrim in particular is a good example here because it's a great example of a franchise (Elder Scrolls) that has some very obvious hitches here and there that are forgiven by the community. **Pros** This section would be vast but I'll try highlighting points I feel people would be most interested in, . The world feels alive - things go on without you and it *feels* like quests are being spawned on the fly (they aren't). . There really is multiple angles - If you fail on a particular method of completing a quest (and the game expects this) there are other ways to tackle it. An example would be getting a item, you either fight the guy who has it, pickpocket him and take his keys and steal it, or sometimes you compete with them for the item you need. In cases such as competition it is normally a scripted event, but you still typically have to find the means to unlock that event. . Some areas are extremely in depth - A good example here is alchemy, you have recipes and you have to cook them as described. First you have to lay out the ingredients manually, then decide what liquid to place it in based on the recipe (water, wine ect...) whether to boil and how much, whether to grind the herbs before you add - you get the idea. Funnily enough you also have to learn to read, the better your reading level, the less scrambled the words. . Combat - For me this is in depth and entertaining, when you start unlocking more combos and constantly parry and riposte it feels satisfying. . Exploration - some of the forestry, towns and *interesting places* are well, interesting! - AND BEAUTIFUL. . Risk/Reward - Another one of those that seems to be splitting the camp, a habit of some RPG players is to save before any decision is made or search online (you know who you are). This game tries to make you think about decisions because it isn't as easy as reloading a file if it goes sour. This makes you really plan out sometimes before you pursue a task, such as getting some charisma buffs before you try to convince someone to help, or you train in the arena before you subdue some bandits. Some may hate it, but the restricted saving does add some extra level of conviction in this game, with the upcoming patch to allow to save on exit, I think you would be doing yourself a disservice to mod the game on your first play through. (As a side note, a few hours into the game it really doesn't become difficult to obtain the drink needed to save.) .Levelling - Things do start off rough, the game has some great progression however, tasks such as taking on a group of 3/4 bandits will cause a lot of stress but if you train for a few hours and go back its a cinch, for example. *Cons* These are absolutely small details I can think of that do break the immersion/spoil certain aspects of the game for me. .Post Romancing -Most RPG's have a 'meh' end to a quest track after you finally 'bed' the lady (in this case) where the character has some mild dialogue changes here, or some extra repeatable cut scene there. In this game however, you bed certain characters and they turn into a generic townsman, by which I mean the dialogue options you get are the same dialogue options you get if you talk to Jeff in the local tavern, it just dampens the previous experience, in one case you simply cant interact ever again with the NPC. .Map borders/Hunting - One minor but frustrating detail, when you near the edge of the map your character is forced to walk at an incredibly slow pace to an eventual stop, however there is no such barrier for NPCs. So imagine this, you're hunting a boar, it runs past said barrier, you are 20% walking pace chasing after it and it's going full pace into the horizon, basically, you aren't ever getting said boar unless you leave and return. .Multiple NPC combat - I remember quotes along the lines of avoiding multiple person combat as you will die, now... this would be true if the enemies all attacked you. A good example of what I mean is when I saved and tested out my levelled up sword skills by fighting guards in a town. There were around 5/6 guards on my screen with more piling up, however 2, or a maximum (rare) of 3 would participate, with 1 of those not really landing any blows to avoid the others, effectively you never fight more than two opponents, others just run on the spot in the background until one dies and then they participate. This makes multiple opponents redundant and a wipe up of the entire towns population possible (yeah, that's right, I didn't die - My sword skill was only level 10 of a max of 20.) In summary, it's worth buying, this review is after 20~ hours of gameplay, make of that what you will.
