Explored the first town, village and dungeon level. Towns are basically menu towns with chance of finding recruitable characters in various locations. Recruited a 14 year old Amazon Priestess with 4-6 in physical stats and 26-30 in INT and WIS. When entering the local tavern and drinks it was the best drink she'd had in years.
It's totally random which party member comments or talks with NPCs.
There's lots of text for a RTB, but the writing is...variable. It's kind of poetic, in a badly translated (from Croatian) way. Also, some very annoying anachronisms refering to nuclear reactors and cable TV, which rather ruins the otherwise nice atmsophere.
Also, dialogue text is very slow, as if it was intended to be voice acted.
Nice cast of characters. Some will join if you help them, some are pure mercs, one at least is on the same quest, and some can be tricked into joining. I liked that.
The dungeon crawling is pretty basic so far. I use the magic map spells, since I can't play it windowed and I've grown too used to using Grid Cartographer these days (welcome to the 21st century, old man Octavius).
Like Dungeon Master you need food, water and light sources. Unlike DM, light is binary, though.
The game seems to be quite a bit faster than DM, and combined with a more clunky UI, I don't have "time" to cast combat spells; I just whack the ghosts in the first dungeon with a Vorpal Sword.
Keys are left in the locks when used, which is a nice touch. You can either leave them there, or pick them up again in case it fits more doors.
Doesn't seem to be a way to save in dungeons, so I exited after clearing the first level, and I had to remove items from characters' hands.
No idea how leveling works. Is it XP based, or based on skill use? Does stats increase?
So far "Conan" has done all the fighting, while the Amazon has done all the spell casting, so if based on skill use, some will advance quicker than others, thanks to the game being too fast for all to do anything useful in combat.
Music can't be turned off, which is a bummer.
Verdict so far: best NPC interaction of any RTB I've played, but the core of any RTB - the dungeon crawling - is not as good as in DM.