There is not much to say. It is 9.5/10, miles better gameplay-wise than BG1/2, Dragon Age, DOS1/2, Pillars of Eternity 1/2, and Solasta for me.
The story is very well designed and writing is pretty good, on the scale similar to PoE1. Art and scenery is simply breathtaking. However, it has major issues with overall gameplay design. To put it short and blunt, it is simply tedious and glitchy. Combat is even worse than PoE1 and substantially worse than Tyranny. Character development is also very limited. My main issue with the story is that it evolves around being an errand boy to higher powers or even minor NPCs. You don't even have a decent ability to command your own ship. At times, there is a feeling that the game plays itself without your actual participation. You do endless chores for all of these NPCs and eventually manage to save (or wreck) the world. It should have been less forcing, just tuning down the servitude tone will go a long way. Same is true for combat which is plain awful. It is extremely limited and AI is very simple and bad. Enemies are spawning out of thin air and your party and NPCs are jumping/teleporting all over the place for no reason. I understand that these days people like games that play themselves but this is not how a good RPG combat should work. It simply lacks precision, similar to PoE1, while Tyranny has been much better in this regard. Inventory is very cumbersome and management of everything is simply tedious. There is no fast travel, loading screens might not be very long but are very abundant, and just navigating around takes too much time. There is a huge disparity between the art/story and overall game design. Seems like the art/story part has been done by really talented team while all the rest is not very well thought through. It does have variety but all comes down to the same repeating and tedious tasks. The world of Deadfire is huge with hundreds of NPCs and there are no markers or navigation aids. So, you are forced to either take notes or use google/wiki as it is impossible to find anything otherwise, which is bad IMHO.
It is indeed a work of art, visual, music, sound, writing, everything. There are a few somewhat annoying systems in the game such as level and item scaling that are in place to ensure that the combat is balanced. These are in part skippable but not entirely. Despite all that, the whole experience makes you think and feel, which is certainly more than anybody can expect from a computer game. It is long, complex, beatiful, frustrating, elaborate, and I can use 100s more words to describe it.
This is one of the best series ever made IMHO. It is simply stunning and not really a game but atmospheric and interactive art. I wish there are more games like this, You can play it any way you want, just don't be surprised getting exactly what you deserve in the end.
The settings, story and combat and very original and fresh, although not very enjoyable for me. The graphics are outdated and there is no way to enjoy the scale of environment because zoom level is very limited both in and out. There is no normal role-playing, the path is linear and the only deviations possible are either doing side quests or not doing them. Which is again dubious because you pass through the areas anyhow and the quests, or better called tasks, are short and a bit pointless. The story is passable. Now, combat is a very original form of tower defense or more like a primitive Plants very Zombies variant with less complexity. There is no real way to plan and execute an attack and lots of mechanics are linked to positioning in real time, so it is not actually turn-based. There is no combat log, so it is often impossible to understand what is going on and who is attacked by what. There are quite a few enemies, up to a dozen or more, which you can barely see, doing something simultaneously. Some attacks are telegraphed while others come out of the blue. This makes it extremely hectic and based more on general perception than on rational thinking and assessment. It is not chess or D&D most certainly, but more like tetris or real time match-3 with some preparation involved. Some battles are tedious and pointless because later on, the heroes have enough mana and health regeneration to last indefinitely with proper clicking skills. The character and gear growth system is a bit on the cumbersome side due to severely limited resources and frequent need to upgrade almost constantly. Majority of the items are random drops with some really unoriginal names and not overall exciting. Overall, the system is tedious and cumbersome to manage. I got this game for free on GOG, so really should not be complaining. It runs well, does not crash and is actually not bad. However, the lost opportunities and design flaws irked me sufficiently to write this review.
