Walking around and exploring as a tiny cute fox in a mystical world is pretty fun, but eventually fighting enemies and especially bosses over and over again gets annoying. But my biggest gripe is that there is no satisfaying conclusion to the story. You have to look online for explanations and even then you're left with more questions than answers. That's a very anti-climatic ending to what at first seemed like a very intriguing setting.
This game is fun! You go around with your adventuring party talking to NPCs, fighting monsters, uncovering secret treasures and completing quests. The dialogues are intriguing, the world is big and open to exploration, and the combat system is fun and challenging. If you like high fantasy RPGs this is the game for you. I was disappointed by the blatant sexualization of the female characters' art design. Please stop with the boob armor and chain mail bikinis. I want my female heroes to look as badass as their male counterparts. The inventory system was quite a chore. I'd recommend using or losing any items as they come, otherwise you'll end up with a ton of dead weight in your pack. The camera was also kind of annoying. While it is a nice idea in principle that you could rotate the camera and see things from different angles, in practice it's just annoying and not at all preferable to your standard isometric view. The movement of everything felt very "slow". When I tried to drag character portraits, skills or items in my inventory it usually took a long while for the game to respond. The ending, after the final battle, was rather anti climatic. It looked like there was going to be a big montage detailing how your actions affected the world and the people you met along the way. But instead I got only a few underwhelming tidbits. Despite those few flaws, I warmly recommend you play this game.
Anyone who likes exploring and going on quests will like this game. You have a party of adventurers with which you travel around in this beautiful fantasy world, fighting monsters and meeting NPCs. In general, I really liked it. There is so much to explore and so many quests to go on that I'd have to play it again to see many of the things I missed in my first run. There are a few things that can be improved on, I think: The level progression feels too fast. Your characters get very powerful really quickly, making most combat encounters unchallenging. The main storyline is kind of a letdown when compared to the original PoE. The decisions at the end are especially anticlimatic. There aren't that many interesting spells to choose from. I expected there to be a ton of new options but there weren't many. The descriptions of spells and abilities are lacking, to say the least. Some descriptions of 9th level spells often make them sound no better then 1st level spells. And others completely omit vital information. Sidekicks are a major letdown. They seem like interesting NPCs, only to find that they have no dialogue or story. The ship to ship combat was underwhelming. On the bright side, I really LOVED the way the game begins.
If this is your first time playing, go ahead, you'll like it. Lot's of dialogue and side quests, mysterious story with many different paths along the way. But for someone who knows the original, I am disappointed. I was hoping BeamDog would fix the many inconsistencies in dialogue and quests, and recover some cut-out content. But no, the inconsistencies are still there and there is nothing new.
I enjoyed this game very much. Most of the game is written dialogues where the player explores both the Ninth World and their character's inner world and past. I'd say it's more "interactive choose-your-own-adventure book" than what you'd usually expect of a computer game. While there is combat, it's slow and tedious. I do wish there were more battles, but for that to be fun they'd also need to improve the combat system a LOT. I found it annoying that I couldn't save during combat or dialogue. And they MUST do away with the repetitive background noise because it'll drive you nuts. But despite those drawbacks, I had a lot of fun playing this game. If you like exiting stories about mysterious worlds I'd recommend you try Torment.
