Neat game. I like the graphics and the overall game-play. The story is ok. I think the romance is quite unconvincing. The plot is contrived in some points. It's not the end of the world. It is refreshing to see a fantasy game that is not set in Made-Up-Fantasy-World-Number-40532. It is set in Venice, which is great, but the city just kinda looks like Venice... and people speak in Brittish accents... The protagonist sounds too much like Lara Croft for some one who is supposed to be Italian. Overall the setting is good. Combat is quite clunky, but enjoyable. I like that gear you pick up is not junk like in most RPGs, and different types of weapons are useful in specific situations. It is cool that you have to tailor the gear you come accross to fit you, and the fan-service is appreciated. The problem with the game is that it needs polish. It has lots of glitches that will mess up with your quests. Every time you load a new zone the loading screen plays an anoying music that gets on my nerves so much I dread entering houses. The lockpicking minigame is hell and you have to do it to most chests in the game, which is not worth it. The boss fight with the spirit assassin is horrible since you cannot damage it until it lets you, randomly. The puzzles are too obtuse to me, but it might be that I suck at video-game puzzles. Bottom line is: this is a charming game that needs some love.
This game looks fun, but it has such random difficulty spikes that makes it completely unplayable to me. I don'k know if this is a faithful recreation of the table top game or if the developers failed to adapt it to computer, or if it was done on purpose. In one case, I think I will never come close to Pathfinder roleplaying game and stick with Dungeons & Dragons; in the other, well, then this game simply is not for me.
In this game zombies are controllable and predictable. It really misses the point of zombies.
I didn't like Icewind Dale back in the day and I didn't like it when I took it to play eighteen years later. My impression was that it looked like Baldur's Gate, but it didn't have the characters, the story and the exploration, the dungeons had no end and it was frustratingly difficult. I tried hard to get into the game for what it is, a dungeon crawl, and I eventually did. The hardest part is the beginning. Creating an effective party takes many tries and I restarted this game so many times I got burned by the music in the title screen, in Easthaven and in the Vale of Shadows. I was so upset about the music that I was flabbergasted by people who said that they loved it. Then I turned sound down, put some podcasts to play in the background and 20 hours later I managed to create a party where the killing rate was close to 20% for each character except for the bard, who didn't fight much. With a well balanced party the game is very enjoyable. It is very satisfying to see your party hack through hordes of enemies that would kick your previous party's asses, and see they grow stronger with each level. There is definitely a learning curve, or rather, a learning wall that you have to climb, even if you are experienced in AD&D Infinity Engine games. It took me a while to understand why people love this game so much. Later I learned that you can replace party members if you move your save from the \save folder into \mpsave and load it on multiplayer, then you create your new characters, save, and move your save back again to \save. That way you can tweak your party in single player without having to start from the beginning. This should be a feature.
