As a fan of the books and a supporter of the Kickstarter campagin, this game is a huge letdown for me. The fighting system feels super spongy, and for the most part, forces you to spam all the skills available, after the cooldown expires - all the time. The story telling, or at least a good chunk of it, is reduced to a small textbox, whilest 80% of your screen shows the map you are traveling on, which is a "I want to rip my face off" waste of space and potential to create at least some sort of atmosphere. Interaction with your environment feels like a ultra low point and click adventure. overall it feels like a rushed, unfinished, mulligan of ideas, that haven't come together once.
I almost always love dwarves in fantasy games and stories so I jumped to buy this but after a couple hours I just lost interest. I found the combat to be a repetitive attempt at herding cats. It has the mmo feel of waiting for cooldowns to expire to use your special attack only instead of 1 hot bar you have 4. Your units always wander off in combat if you ignore them for more than a few seconds. There's really no item collection or kit building and character creation is minimal. It is very story driven, and it seemed like it would be a great tale, but the designers should have wrote a book instead of a game.
They delivered!
I just started playing but am already hooked. The game is close to the book in a very good way and still leaves you room to explore and make decisions!
Gameplay is just as expected, a more strategic approach than i actually expected.
So far, no bugs, just fun!
This review will contain some spoilers and no nostalgic feelings because I've never read this series.
So let's look at this game from different angles:
Option menu :
Settings are extremely limited. Graphical settings includes only window mode, resolution and presets. Zero control customization. Sound options are okay, only problem is battle music seems unnormalized - it is too loud compared to everything else.
Optimization:
For some reason game start to load and overheat GPU from the main menu. Quite regular crashes to desktop during world map travel - game load time are small but ctd is still unpleasant. Once changed audio and subtitles language to the German between cutscenes.
Sound:
Voice acting is hands down best part of this game. Metal cnanks and orcs screams are really enjoyable.
Graphics:
My PC specification are average, but it runs well on maximum (whatever that is). FPS is stable most of the time, besides some random drops with no apparent reason. Graphical fidelity is satisfying. Grass is lush, dwarves are hairy and metal is shiny, everything as you would expect from fantasy world. Character models are pleasant to look at, while enemy model are on the simplistic side, but who cares about expendable orcs?
Animation:
Abilities animation are showy and over the top just enough to please your eyes from bird eye view, but auto-attacks and spells are lackluster. Same with cutscenes, half of them have almost top-notch animation, especially action oriented, and half filled with emotionless faces and zero to none animation.
Locations:
There are not too much locations, but ones that we have are detailed and either fun to explore (with little parts of lore and story here and there) or have nice layout for combat.
Story:
Main story is predictable (at least to the point where I am, so it's subject to change) but characters make it much better.
Combat:
Combat is dynamic and have tactical flavor, but don't give you feeling of accomplishment. Enemy variety is low. Camera acts weird, stuck to character and you can rotate it only through middle mouse button. No mass highlight button - so it's harder to notice prone enemies, especially important with zombies. Abilities hotkeys are too close to character selection.
Just completed game...in 12 hours. Well game had big potential...exploring the world, reading the dialogs, characters are interesting, story is great. And that's all.
About gameplay there is not enough different enemies, too less bosses. There are not many items in game, you can use only one item at once. I didn't use any potion for whole game. I completed game without using some heroes. Money doesn't metter. There is no equipment for yours dwarves.
This game could be for many hours if it would be designed different. It's worth to play, not worth to buy in regular price. When it's 70-80% off it's good time to buy it, play it once and uninstall.
