The chapter available in early release is reasonable sized, but the introduction segment was poorly thought out without adding notable value that I could see. Combat is fairly simplistic with a surprisingly lack of variety of approach. Several chapter 1 quests feel incomplete or bugged. Inventory management needs serious improvement, I carefully redirect equipment that is class specific to the character of that class, then a bit later, all equipment not equipped is back on the main character. Weight is listed, but there is no indicator it is in use. The camera function is jagged and irritating, even on manual mode. I spent more time fighting it than any other part of the controls. Overall, the storytelling feels like a foundation, not a first chapter. Hopefully, the writers will be able to weave together a coherent storyline, cutting content that doesn't contribute to it.
The most important part of an RPG is the storytelling. This game, it never felt like I could care about the story. the main character feels cookie-cutter, no background at all. Most of the companions, even those with background, I cared about even less, and the game forced me into accepting characters that were written at a relatively low quality and very obvious who was really a villain, who wasn't. That could be partially forgiven if the mechanics worked well, but they just didn't. The game was designed to be very difficult, artificially so, such that unless you play specific optimizations, knowing in advance what you will encounter, you are likely to get destroyed. Again and again. Note, that's on "normal" difficulty, not one of the extra high difficulty levels aimed at people who prefer such. Several areas are designed in ways that can induce vertigo in those who are susceptible, with no warning of the design elements. Overall, I just found too many "routine" monsters that were immune to everything a "normal" party had at that point, including having an armor class so high as to be effectively immune to physical attacks. We're not talking end-game bosses here, but monsters encountered around level 10 (in theory, close to half-way through the game), being as hard to deal with as the end-game bosses in the preceding game from a pure statistical perspective -- yet encountered ten levels earlier. The changes in traps (must carefully move a character around to find the "trap deactivation point" way away from the trap) also reduced enjoyment in the game.
The game is a reasonable attempt at a "ship combat and trading" game. What irks me are quality of life issues. For example, you find yourself cruising between ports at various distances. You can try and carry fuel for "cruise" mode to go quickly between them, or plod along at your regular speed. But you go through fuel so fast, that to carry enough to be worth using cruise mode for more than escaping (more on that later), you'd have no space for anything else. You can accelerate the game up to 10x speed, but to be useful, you'd need 20x speed to avoid the headaches. Then there's the pirates that spring out of nowhere, everywhere, including forces much stronger than you. There's almost as many pirates willing to engage you as there are vessels that don't want to engage you. If you take down the pirates, they get stronger, so you are disincentivized to do so. In combat, there are "riders" that are supposed to be little fighters, except they are so overpowered that a force that carries them can take out a far superior force, just by forcing you to spend all your effort trying to forcus on them -- except you can't select your own targets, it's whatever targets the computer picks for you. Hey, maybe we should target the riders trying to flank us before they can. Nah, we should totally aim for that half-dead gunship that could barely touch us even if it was at full power. As others have said, quests tend to be "go fetch", and the plot is thin at best, really barely enough to give an excuse for the fetch quest. Yes, some quests are "fetch this enemy and sink their ship. Reasonable, but nothing astounding. Add quality of life features to make the game less irritating and I'd add a star.
I want to like this game, I do, but about halfway through the game, without even trying, I run out of new technologies to research and start experiencing hangs from 30 seconds to five minutes. Why do I say those in the same sentence you ask? Good thing you asked. Around mid-game, these freezes became so frequent, that I tried some of the usual things, checking memory usage, CPU, GPU, IO statistics, anything to suggest it was my hardware. Nope. They got worse and worse to the point I'd alt-tab away and search for support options while it was frozen, coming back when it unfroze. I was spending only half my time in game actually able to play. I could open windows in the game, review things, but not actually issue orders to units, so it wasn't frame rate or anything like that. Then I realized, it was every time a new technology was researched. So I kept playing, and sure enough, every tech advancement resulted in a pause from 30 seconds to five minutes. The techs available are frankly? Boring. I find myself exhausting the tech tree and never getting some techs, then another playthrough getting them early on. I know it's semi-random, but really, there shouldn't be a point where you are just locked out of technologies entirely because of the luck of the draw. And yes, this was playing the same custom race as a previous try. Maybe when this game is no longer a beta release, it will be ready to play, but no matter what the authors say, it feels like a beta product.
It's a big game, but I found myself sitting around wondering "okay, do you really expect me to grind for another 30+ hours just to advance the plot? It turned out, the answer was yes. The game feels like a foundation with plot thrown in for flavor, but it didn't feel sufficiently connected to bring me from one thing to the next. Also, several critical events I skipped the first time through because ... I didn't go to a particular location at the right time when there was nothing to tell me to go there, no journal entry, no quest marker. Ended up being rather annoying. Also, is it really too much to ask that on the world map I have something between "no names, no quest markers" and "all the names and your quest markers that you can barely find because the names are in the way"?
They incorporated just enough of DnD 5th edition to make you think they're following it, but they made enough arbitrary changes that completely change how you must play the game, changes that feel like they were inspired from regrets of the developers that they didn't work out in DoS:II. Examples: Stealth is a free action for everyone, partial cover is not implemented (can shoot through/over other foes easily and no impact on to hit chance), shove being a free action instead of replacing an attack action, changing weapon sets is completely free, changes to key spells (sleep). More importantly though, the game is designed with the same flaws of DoS series in that you must complete missions in a certain order or you will be massively underpowered. Even foes of the same level, based on just how many foes you can expect to encounter. Mechanically, I spent more time watching the stupid d20 roll animation than it takes to roll the die in real life because of the unskippable success/failure animation. I died early on several times because the default action on something without a tooltip out of combat was ... attack, and it turned out to explode when attacked. The party limit of four makes no sense in a DnD context, resulting in a few hours lost because I couldn't figure out what the game devs wanted me to do and I kept getting swarmed by more foes than my tiny party could handle at that point. Arrows being an unlimited resource -- except magic arrows, makes bows and crossbows suddenly the most powerful weapon in the game, especially since shields are not implementing the "provide cover for missile fire" type mode I expected to see. Make arrows something limited for you and your opponents, with weight implications. Sorry, I found Neverwinter Nights series far more entertaining.
A couple hours in, all I could really experience was a first person perspective, which is exactly what I wanted to avoid. Had the game been tagged as such, I would not have purchased.
The map interface is so small, that even when an enemy is visible on the map, you can hardly see it because it's so tiny of a dot. There is no ability to zoom in on the overhead map so you actually see what you are looking at. This can create a long slog of slowly working methodically through the map trying to find that one lone building that is keeping the game running -- for the past hour or more.
