The game has an awsome story, though it's quite short (about 15 - 25 hours). Gameplay is somewhat similar to Shadw Tactics, though there is a lot more sneaking and a lot less killing. It plays quite nicely and is very well carried by scripted events. One star off for almost no music during levels and the voices sometimes being very low volume.
For an EA it works well, no hard crash in the >10 hours it took me to get through the content currently available. The atmosphere reminds me of a mix of Disco Elysium (the graphics and all the skill checks in diaglogs) and Assassins Creed Syndicate (which plays in 19th century London). There is one annoying performance issue in larger buildings and dungeons. About every minute the game freezes for about 5 to 10 seconds, then continues normal until the next freeze. In the outside world and smaller buildings this doesn't seem to happen. Also I think the developers made a rather questionable design decision regarding the levels of party members. Most games typically take one of two approaches. Either when characters join the party they become the same level as the main character and keep getting the same XP whether they are in the active party or not, so they keep up. (Pathfinder does this for example.) Or the characters join at a fixed level but gain XP individually based on the ratio of their character level to opponent level, so they catch up fast. (Trails games do this.) Unfortunately here the party members always join with level 1, and every character gets the same amount of XP, so they are never able to truely catch up. All in all I still would recommend the game to anyone who likes RPGs and doesn't need bombastic graphics.
To start with the conclusion: the combat feels strangly addicting, almost everything else is pretty miserable. Here's the details. Pros: - The descriptions of classes and skills are very detailed. - You're always being told exactly why you can't use a certain skill or equip a certain item. - You can lure enemies away from the group to fight them alone. If you are not careful and get too close to other enemies, they might join the battle. - There is line of sight in battles, which may be good or bad - There are battle bonuses for attacking from the side or the back. - Some classes have world skills that allow you access to areas you otherwise couldn't enter. Cons: - There is no intro sequence, just two or three lines of text. - There is no voice acting whatsoever (if you don't count the grunts of peolple being hit during battle). - You can't talk to any NPC who isn't a merchent or has quest dialog. If you try to do it, you char will turn to the NPC as if to speak to them and then just stand there like he forgot what you want him to do. - It seems you can't sell weapons or armor pieces, which is a shame because in the demo alone there droip at least 150 of those. - The enemies are obsessed with attacking your main character. If you play a sturdy melee, you can keep the enemies occupied, heal from a distance and have the other two char do what they like. I your main is ranged however, pretty much every melee will ignore the front liners (unless you taunt, which some classes can do with a cooldown) and rush your main, which can get pretty messy pretty quic - While you can do custom formations, you main is always fixed in the middle and you can't place the others more than two or three steps in front of him, which makes the enemies rushing your main even worse.
