Action RPG: 1 playable character and three stats. Pick up all weapons in the tutorial. Two active at any time and upgrade them later on. Talents unlock special moves. The talent tree isn't overbearingly huge. The game isn't souls-like in doing its best to kill you whenever, but you do get environmental insta-kills (mainly deep water). Ambushes you can evade if you pay attention. Hungry chests. Boss fights. There is a huge sprawling world, with short-cuts you can open up later. Linear at first, but later you can pick between several directions. Only got lost once and I found it easy to regain bearings. Like DS, the game takes place in a deteriorating world, but it has living people. Magical echoes that replay events and help explain the backstory. Focus on choices and consequences seems a bit off to me; the choices I'd prefer to make weren't available. I feel that part could be improved by a better presentation. The manner in which characters speak is a bit too modern for my tastes and at times too much a commentary on bad current governments. Then again, there's a reason the city is deteriorating. Not many bugs. Did get stuck inside a bomb during a boss fight. Smacked it to smithereens and got launched right up out of the map and insta-killed. Besides that, crashes on my Intel Iris laptop in the area opened up by Quintus. That GPU isn't officially supported, but would be great if a future update fixes it. The performance on that machine is splendid. As for system specs, I feel they are listed a bit higher than really needed. The installer is ~12Gb, not 30Gb. At the start everything is set to ultra. My nVidia 1650 Super had no issues on 1080p.
Finally here. Just enjoy it for what it is. Two things of note: when you go into bat form for fast travel, select a destination on the map then press the key to travel there. (Normally outside of bat-form the toggles map on and off) I didn't find that very intuitive. Also note you don't have health bars and such on the opponents. Pay attention to the sounds and visuals for how well you're doing. VAE VICTUS!
