Graphics is nice. Not that nice that in Pillars of Eternity 1-2, but it is 3D.
There is almost no balance. You meet some goblins, smash them to pieces on your current level, and then at next turn you meet some owlbears that rip your party to pieces.
There are terribly long loading times. Stages load for several minutes. Even kingdom interface loads every time about 1-2 minutes.
For now there are some game breaking bugs that prevent me from advancing.
There sometimes are awful level monsters designs, making game almost impossible to walk through without cheats.
Some dialogs are terribly dumb and bad-written.
But at least main NPCs are good enough to tolerate them.
I'm really enjoying this game, it's reminiscent of Baldur's Gate without being too much like Pillars of Eternity. Graphic wise it looks a lot like Tyranny. The rule set is different from Pillars, a little more D&D like, but applies the whole disengagement rules that Pillars had.
Characters are interesting enough, the art stylings are good. There are a few half-asseries, namely the number of character portraits and design options, however, you can add your own if you want more variety than stock.
The combat is difficult for those unfamiliar with this kind of "true CRPG" that follows a tabletop rule set. There is a lot of behind the scene dice rolling (RNG) that simulates a player rolling a die. As a result, don't expect your characters to have consistent damage like some other RPGs.
So far it is a really fun game, I was apprehensive about the kingdom simulation portion on it, but it doesn't detract from the dungeon crawl gameplay. The story hasn't developped enough for me to really comment on good/bad, from the way the dialog is crafted I'm thinking there should be an interesting one with some twists.
I got in on sale, give it a go if you are looking for some modern day CRPG gameplay that has that true old school feeling, and isn't another PoE even with the same engine.
First impressions were great, the starting/tutorial area is fun an promising.
But you realize quiclky into the first Chapter that everything falls appart, Combat is really badly balanced and noty interesting. I started in an harsh difficulty and your character pretty much miss 50 times in a row, but when they hit they just one shot the enemies. So it feels really random. The enemies suffer from the same, so you sometimes instantly lose a fight reload and instantly win it without any strategy involved
The UI is not good at all and a lot of information to make decisions are missing.
Some part on the game are voiced but not others. Areas are also not interesting and filled with tons of uninteresting monster
The story is not bad but not very interesting either.
In conclusion, after others CRPG like POE ou DOS everything in this game feel so clunky and buggy it's hard to praise it.
First of all: this is an hard game, compared to contemporary rpgs.
It requires mastery of the system to be enjoyed and well played. It's not a 'plug'n play' experience for casual gamers.
This said: it's an authentic gem.
I was disearthened at first reading about bugs and whatnot plaguing the title, but I took the jump considering the numerous patches this title had: I regret not a single cent. The game runs fine, and haven't experienced a single crash so far (well over 20+ hours of gameplay).
Being a tabletop gamer, this game goes smoothly, implementing almost everything in a more than satisfying way.
The only thing that irked me a little are the 'hidden' mechanics: maybe I am at fault, but the tutorial doesn't point exactly where to click in order to, for example, activate the spontaneous conversion of spells for clerics/druids.
This said, it's an absolute worthwile game for any 'Veteran of the Long War'. ;)
Three thumbs up.
