This is the closest to perfection a game in this genre has ever come. Possibly the best game I've ever played.
A gritty world with mostly outstanding lore and characters with difficult decisions that have consequences for your story. Highly temtped to give 5 stars, but the issue of the DLC being buggy and feeling like filler for half of it's own story dissuaded me from doing that. All-in-all the best cRPG I've played in quite some time. Your decisions are impactful, the characters and setting feel original and interesting. No ham-fisted humor, no reliance on fantasy tropes, almost no idle chatter, and a great spell creation system. Voice acting, artwork, music, environmental storytelling are all top notch. Some conversations with companions could use more voice lines as they sometimes feel cut short, and the companions are interesting in their own right for the most part. The world feels consistent and the reputation system reinforces that. There is replay value and next to no filler in the main story. Progression feels rewarding on all three fronts of combat stats, storytelling, and expanding of your influence and abilities. Sexuality, cursing, and gore exist in the world but feel well used and complimentary rather than as a shock value which is refreshing. Moral ambiguity is ubiquitous and the politics of the world are interesting rather than 'good guys must defeat bad guy'. You are presented with hard decisions and quests very often have more than one way to be resolved. This game manages to make a linear story feel very open and your character actually feels important in the game world rather than all the npcs simply telling you that you are. Allthough you can be a savior, you don't have to be and nobody expects it of you. Choice and nuance are the name of the game. Combat is smooth and the spell creation system is great. How exactly each stat and skill translates into combat is not always clear and using the wiki/google will be neccessary to fully parse how each is weighed. Very well made game that deserves a sequel and a play through for rpg fans
Story - The Polish to English translation is lacking and make the story in English lose some nuance and detail that would otherwise be there. Overall the story is mediocre and I lost interest about halfway through the game. Levels/Maps - Easy to navigate, pretty, with a variety of themes that work well Puzzles - Generally very easy with answers force fed to you via notes/journals/signs, etc. Some puzzles require significant amounts of back tracking and are clearly there to eat up time rather than give a sense of accomplishment. Battles - There are several types of encounters, with almost all of them posing no real challenge on the 'normal' difficulty. Some battles involve being swarmed by a single enemy type, and those can be difficult as only a few enemy types ever try to take out your casters or DPS characters in leiu of unsuccessfully hacking away at your tanks. Leveling - Leveling is done quite well by requiring 'blueprints' that you find in game as well as costing gold. As there is a large yet finite amount of gold availalbe in game, you are effectively power gated at each level of the tower. You get stat points to put into your vital statistics a la D&D, and also skill points to buff your spells and abilities. These can both be re-rolled at any point in the game for a small cost and allows you to explore different party compositions and strategies without worrying about min-maxing start to finish. Definitely a strong point in this game's design. Crafting - Items you acquire can be both upgraded and enchanted. You can also craft your own items, up to item level 4, with these often outclassing the level 5 items found in the maps. Green, blue, and golden items cannot be enchanted, while purple items can. Blue items can be turned into purple items at forges found throughout the tower (there are not many, maybe a dozen). It's a bit clunky but not difficult to figure out.
