And so with ca. 95 hours I finished the main questline and the not boring sidequests I could find.
Like my predecessors already said, the game is great at the beginning, but grows somewhat stale and boring in the middle, but I seems to pick up at the very end.
The visuals:
+ looks gorgeous, the objects have realistic textures and proportions, varied forests, which can be the best looking forests up to date (but modded Crysis still wins in the vegetation texture department),
+ weapons and armor porn is nice,
- texture loading needs work, but can fortunately be moded,
- face cloning, some faces are more recognizable than others, unfortunately.
The sound:
+ dynamic music, and no single track got on my nerves so much that I wanted to turn it off,
+ good and appropriate sounds all around,
- fucking greetings,
- in larger skirmishes you will hear this general meele clash sound being played, but the actual sounds from combatants and weapons are rather quiet and less impactfull,
The story and quests:
~ it's ok. Nothing special, has it's ups and downs, rather predictable and surprisingly linear for all the talk about consequences
+ many quests with surprising outcomes,
+ there is some nice reactivity in the quests,
+ you can really approach the quests in many ways and they will work (unless bugs will prevent you from proceeding, witch in not that uncommon),
+ quests teach and use the game mechanics,
- even though you have a lot of choice on how to tackle various issues the consequences are rather limited and hardly affect the game world and story,
- there are mandatory fetch sections of some quests, and a lot of the so called "activities" are fetch quests, but can lead to some side-quests,
~ the writing is all over the place, just compare those two drinking quests: Father Godwin and Hans Capon.
One is genuinely funny and has stages with potential fail-states and alternative approaches, the other is a boring string of (for many people buggy) fetch objectives. "Arse'n'balls".
Characters, voice acting:
+ decently written (except for the antagonist), distinct, mostly well acted,
Combat:
+ nice system for duels, your moves are tied to your progress and you unlock more moves by fighting more and unlocking combos,
- it all goes down the drain quite quickly for a few reasons:
a) the progressions is fucked, as there is only a brief moment when you are on par with your enemies. Before that they can one-shot you, after that you became a god among mere men,
b) you will hardly ever fight 1v1, and the forced lock-on system will make you pull your hair when fighting multiple enemies at the same time. 2v1 fights become manageable with time.
c) stats bonuses trump equipment. Without mods you will be able to kill everyone while naked and armed with a stick.
d) master strike and perfect parry are too prominent in the unmoded game forcing you to cheese the fights somehow if you want them to end quickly and not turn into boring snoozfests (cheesing, as in going for clinching and head cracking all the time for example),
+ it was nice, when I was still in the "difficult" period, as the game forced me to think about approaching bandit camps on my own.
+ archery seems to be ok, I never bothered to cheese it like dragonul,
Some other thoughts:
+ the world is well built and believable, people in communities have proper daily routines,
+ the game will not wait for you if you decide, for example, to pick flowers along the way to a time sensitive quest,
+ the game can even teach you a thing or two about how the authors imagine medieval life went, the immersion factor is high, great potential for autistic LARPing resides in that title,
- the game is in a very bad technical state, sadly, there are many bugs in side-quests, some game-breaking bugs in the main quest, and countless bugs and visual glitches,
- the AI routines can work against the game at times and contribute to the actual mess. After some time you constantly wonder if the NPC can't be found because he tricked you (people lie in that game, yayy), spawned in the air and died, or glitched on a tree or gate on the way here and will teleport through the obstacle shortly.
~ Stats and perks are ok, but some perks double others (literally, I don't know how it slipped through), but the progression is too quick,
~ Mechanics like sleep and hunger are ok; they can be difficult only in the very beginning, but they don't become annoying later
- limited saving is a nice feature, but coupled with the bugs it makes for a terrible experience at times. Fortunately you quickly learn that this is not really a problem in the long run, as you'll be quickly able to save almost everywhere and anytime you want, once you learn the systems,
- basically no HUD customisation options, so you are stuck with quest compass, unless you use the console,
- a lot of little immersion breaking things,
Overall I admire the audacity of it; the scope, the approach, the promise. I think it can be compared to Stalker - a game that tries to do many things, but ultimately falls a little short of the goal. Nevertheless I had good fun with it and I see the potential for greatness, once the many issues are ironed out.
