Buggy, unbalanced, still needs a lot, i mean A LOT of work. Its ok for now. The price is high for what you get, but think of it as an investment, you never know, it may get better and better if they commit to work on it.
I normally don't really care ofr RPGs but i played a little of dnd so i was curious.
I think that's a fantastic game, packed with content, choices and huge secrets so huge that it seems strange that the devs put so much effort in things you will probably miss.
I highly racomand this game!
I have only two criticisms:
1: Lack of a prper tutorial, i struggled only a bit but only coz i know dnd rules, someone who doesn't know them, or doesn't know them well WILL struggle A LOT and will need a youtube tutorial
2: Lack of optimization: In DX11 the game is hyper choppy, the camera is stuttery and the game it's unplayable (at least for me running an RX580 8GB) and in Vulkan it just crashes like a lot (even after the 1# patch of the 25/08/2023)
Overall I can see people that will not click with it but i love this game and i really hope they will fix at least the crashes
Everything in this game says that too many resources were spent on too many things as such the end result is an "ok" game.
In short:
- Gameplay: boring, horrible D&D gameplay. D&D ruleset just doesn't work in a CRPG. You can't roleplay someone when everything you do is not decided by your abilities/skills, but by a roll of dice. Getting a critical failure on a very easy persuasion check with all bonuses is as bad as getting a critical success on an impossible one with no bonuses at all and some argue that this is exceptional roleplaying. Whole game gameplay is just a glorified slot machine and developers made sure that you remember this at every step with the roll dice animation.
- Graphics: at first glance game looks very visually impressive and huge in scope, but sadly it has same issue as Elden Ring - very soon it becomes background noise and you just focus on game itself and every next area I was looking for closest waypoint to not waste any more time on useless "sightseeing" as most of maps are empty in terms of useful content, but cluttered in terms of objects of no importance (and there will be no Vaati here explaining why near that river those two fishing rods are left under that specific angle)
- Story: too much Mass Effect "homage" and lots of "see it somewhere before" quests, with few exceptions, but what really got me was the ending. In this game with so many "decisions" and characters the game just ends with credits roll, obviously we can't expect from "best RPG of decade" to reflect on player's decisions made on the way to the end, no, is up to our own imagination.
- Companions: as much as they tried they aren't as memorable as companions in Mass Effect or Dragon Age Origins and some were too much "inspired" from other media, like making a companion reject all they believed in to accept the opposite
Overall a good value for its price, but not even close to a masterpiece, worth to play once (even though at this time less that 10% completed the game).
This game is such a disappointment. So many things that DOS2 got right which this gets horribly wrong. Combat and general mechanics are alright I guess (glossing over the bugs) but the interface is painful, world scripting is spotty, you'll often be talking to the floor, and they apparently don't test their patches at all.
It's just a mess. I do enjoy the story but even that breaks down in places. They've leveraged the copious pre-existing Forgotten Realms lore well enough at least. That's the only reason I'm playing it now, but if the game save (516) bug they just added isn't fixed soon I'll be forced to drop it like a hot rock.