The good (mostly): * Can build full party from game start. No more juggling reputation or starting with points spent on less-than-ideal combat skills - you can have your ideal lineup ready to rock. * A few nice UI upgrades including toggle mode for sidebar buttons. * Zoom levels expanded considerably. * Toggle for always-on info mode (i.e. TAB button). * Easier to see characters and creatures. * Gameplay configuration is improved with options that don't increase enemy damage done at higher difficulty levels, much finder control over auto-pausing and options like "don't switch to melee after depleting a single ammo stack". (Funny thing is, I never had this happen..they would go melee only after they had exhausted a single ammo *type* from the ammo cache). The bad: * Building full party takes away significantly from the game experience. Why bother with Minsc and his badgering about saving his partner when you can roll a character whose just as good? You'll miss all the NPC quests unless you're able to recruit them just long enough to accept the quest, and even then you might not be able to redeem them without doing it a second time. I didn't actually test this but whether it works or not it feels kind of cheap. Also, your home-rolled PCs will come with minimal gear..you'll need to buy nearly everything for them. * UI aesthetic seem out of place somehow. It feels more like Neverwinter than Baldur's Gate. Black and white is a step backwards IMO. * Somehow the more distinctive sprites and whatnot feels..wrong. Almost like cheating. Fortunately you can disable most of that. * Keymapping is completely broken. There's no way they couldn't have known this before release. And that's where I gave up. Plenty of others have described the poor writing and Casey Hudson-esque pushing of an extremist agenda..I didn't even get that far because a fundamental game function is BROKEN. Apparently, Beamdog now wants to copy the "new" Bioware in every way.
(Note: I won't bother reviewing gameplay because most people seem to prefer videos these days. I'm not among them, but that's irrelevant.) DLC in early access release?? NOT very encouraging. I'm not about to pay $15 for an alpha, let alone one that has optional paid content! I did what any sensible person would do and obtained the game via alternative means (in this case a friend with more dollars than sense bought it, and was regretting it it within days). Terratech does have some promise in the sandbox genre but make no mistake, its buggy as hell. I haven't gotten beyond the third or fourth tutorial missions before it falls apart. The only way around crashes and corrupted saves that I've found is to ignore the tutorial content altogether and just run wild. Performance is poor..the lighting effects at night will drag most systems to their knees. I have a fairly quick 6-core AMD with an R7-370 and its a slideshow most of the time on Windows 7 64-bit. Meanwhile on my buddy's Intel i5 its about four times faster so it looks like the usual developer hardware bias is at work (he also has a high-end R9 but he uses max settings while I only play at "good" level, so it should roughly even out). Even with considerable warts, there's the seed of something cool here..time will tell if they can get it sorted out. Its astounding to me that games with some legit potential like this one can't get *some* kind of backing (starving college students with no credit history, maybe..?) I wish them good luck and the good sense to abandon the DLC nonsense this early. Its like a garage band who's concentrating on making T-shirts before they've played their first gig. The way it SHOULD work is the alpha should be free for anyone to test. Betas should be available at a discount - the $15 price makes sense for *that* - and the beta fee should be deducted from the cost of pre-ordering. Those who DO go on to pre-order should also get free DLC or perhaps a small discount off the total cost.
