The plot is both predictable and contrived and you play the role of someone who's purpose is to make everything worse for everyone. Also the weapons are terrible and unsatisfying and the mandatory crafting isn't particularly compelling. The gameplay is also frustrating, especially because it's too obvious that things happen because of reasons like "here the should be some tension so trigger a boss fight" instead of organically, like, I can accept that the writing team would want to stick to what works but it's far too predictable. The weapons are especially terrible and the main character has no stamina at all, as a hardened mercenary, this is worrying. Another thing that the game does too obviously because it was done in Dead Island (a much better game). The plot really is grating. It's rapidly obvious that a lot of the problems in the game could be fixed with some lateral thinking, but you're cutscened into making the very worst possible decisions over and over just so the game can go "oh no, time for some 'tough choices'".
Other reviewers have pointed out that the plot is not great, which in a RPG is problematic, but there's other issues too. Firstly the interface looks nice, but can be annoying. It's not completely clear what your actions will do, for example you can trigger attacks of opportunity without realizing very easily and immediately lose the battle. Secondly, the format of the campaign is too restrictive in your strategic options. BG let you back away from fights and re-equip, or to rest inside the dungeon if you had to. Also, making the combat not be a special interface meant you could do hit and run attacks or position yourself before or while engaging. None of that happens here. Stealth will never be useful, the maps are much smaller, all the fights are forced and once you're in a "quest", you're stuck there until the quest is done. Also you use food to rest and can't get food during a quest so if you run out you may have to restart from the beginning, hope you saved. Also, the fights are just annoying. Like, "why am I bothering" annoying. For example there are enemies that will cast fly, then move to somewhere where sight is limited, and then fire ranged attacks while you try to crossbow them down, these enemies also resist magic and reflexively dispel. Like, I know that it works as a strategy, but it's just tedious to deal with. In BG fights were quick and dirty, you either won or died, they didn't take ages and ages of whiffed rolls and slow animations while you chased the last enemy around the map.
5 stars for being Skyrim and awesome. It's great, I put 100+ hours into the original game and still haven't seen everything. But. The GOG version is not compatible with all the mods. A lot of mods use DLL hooks and the version number on the GOG version is higher than the Steam version, so some mods won't work, and other mods depend on those mods, and Vortex collections bundle them all together so... Also if you're thinking "it's just a version number, it'll work anyway", it doesn't seem to load on start. 9/10ths of Skyrim's replay value is based on the huge amount of DLC sized mods, so beware. No you can't downgrade to match the Steam version, and this has been a problem for over 10 months so it's not likely to get fixed anytime soon. Also, there's an ad for the anniversary edition right on the start screen and it comes with its own keybindings? What were they thinking?
For me it was mostly bug free with one crash that started after installing a hotfix. Otherwise the game is excellent, like really excellent. The plot is great, the gameplay is awesome and the graphics are incredible. The default controls can be annoying, like the double tap to dodge, but you can turn that off. I've seen other reviews complain about the gunplay but it works great if you treat it like an RPG and upgrade your items and stats. The hacking can be incredibly powerful if you put points into it. The worst thing are the bugs. The major patch might get some testing but the hotfixes definitely don't and often made things much less stable. Also the driving is terrible and there aren't as many conversation options as I'd have liked. It's definitely railroaded, the game is semi open world, but it has a main story to tell and it's going to tell it.
The other reviews have gone into this, but the problem is that it's not great as a game. The art direction is great, and you can see what the designers were going for and the idea is brilliant. The problem is that this is a Diablo like where the combat sucks, largely because melee is unresponsive and you'll rapidly start getting swarmed by some very powerful enemies that you can only beat by cheesing them. The game is incredibly text heavy and most of it is completely pointless. The idea is good, but you'll rapidly get annoyed by talking to a character, reading 20 pages of basically nothing, only to talk to the next character and getting another 20 pages. There might be one clue somewhere in there but you'll rapidly start glazing over the actual text written down and just scan text, then scan conversation options. Gameplay wise, the walk speed is slow, which rapidly gets annoying and there are sections where you can only progress by having one specific spell that you won't know about ahead of time. if you have too many levels and not enough remaining skill points to make the spell castable, you'll need to restart the game from scratch.
The gameplay is good, but the story is incredibly melodramatic. Everyone has a deep, dark and incredibly contrived secret and once you start thinking about it, it gets hard to take them seriously. The fact that the cutscenes are long, relentless and unskippable makes it especially painful. One other thing that bugged me is that the whole game is about clever squad tactics and the moment the cutscene begins everyone starts making terrible decisions to slow motion and melodramatic music.
The art direction is incredible, but it's also overly cluttered and the flashing and screen effects are very distracting. The game would benefit more if the effects were toned down so you could focus on the art, which really is very good. That actually summarizes the game well, there are good ideas, but it gets in it's own way a lot. Other reviewers have complained about the controls, they really are terrible, especially on mouse and keyboard setups. It doesn't help that the platforms are not easily visible and the game starts throwing trick jumps at you very early on. I gave up on it when I realized that the jumps would have been simple on any other game and the real enemy was just the lack of another QA pass. It has a lot of potential though, and could be good with another few patches to tone down the effects and update the controls.
The story is super contrived to the point that it just becomes completely impossible to take it even remotely seriously and the game-play parts don't mesh well together. The graphics are great though.
It's a game version of the books, which is what everyone wanted, and it works really well. It's fun to play, I've been enjoying it so far and still have most of the content to go.
Most of the game is slowly walking around the map and playing card puzzles. I thought you would just be playing Gwent, but no. It's also got moral "questions" where everyone is just generally terrible and you get to choose between supporting two different kinds of horrible people.. or just playing something else and not dealing with any of that.
