I spent 30 hours to finish the early access. I did most of the side quests. Might have missed one or two. My overall thought is that this early access is mostly a very unenjoyable experience and I wish I never got it. I spent 30 hours on this only because I make contents on YouTube so I did it for my audience. If not for them, I would most likely have stopped playing after about 10 hours. First of all, there are way too many bugs in this early access. You can basically expect a bug in EVERY scene, EVERY situation. I really think Larian should have waited one more month before putting this out and got rid of most bugs first. I thought early access was supposed to give people a good idea of the gameplay and get feedback on that. However, this early access is filled with so many bugs that I think most feedback they get will be about the bugs. Which makes the whole early access kind of pointless IMO. Secondly, it's one thing if the bugs are just visual ones. But there are some game breaking bugs that really hurt the entire experience. For example, one particular character freezes every time it's their turn so I had to quick save/load for them to move again. But when I reload, some of my magical effects I applied on enemies disappear so it makes the game extra difficult. Another bug is where you drop your companion in camp but after you can no longer talk to them or recruit them again. These bugs are just too frustrating to deal with. Thirdly, I think the game difficult is also too hard by default. Even by the end of Act 1, I never felt like my characters are heroes. Every battle feels like I'm taking on a boss fight. This could be down to personal taste but I would prefer easier difficulty to hit that perfect "just right" spot. Overall, there are some parts I enjoyed (story, characters, some gameplay) but I will NOT recommend this early access to anyone. Just wait for the full game when most bugs are fixed. Otherwise prepare for a very frustrating experience.
