The "ludonarrative disonance" of this game is also amazing.
I'm not just turning people into explosives and spamming forbidden magic, but the MC is also some crazy mofo, dropping ice cold one liners "Your blood is on Ranrok's hands".
And then go pet some fluffy fantasy kiddy friendly furby look alike with my first year friends.
My favorite part is the "saving" animals part. Those evil poachers are capturing innocent critters. So naturally, I murder them, then capture the unicorns or whatever and bring them to my pocket world menagerie to harvest their body parts. Too many beasts? No problem, this nice lady will "adopt" them and pay me for my troubles.
I was about to post this. The game really wants that teenage audience and is very cheekily hiding the fact your 15 year old has a higher bodycount than the average GTA protagonist. You don't see blood, guts, dismemberment but I'm turning a guy to ice, then casting a slicing charm on it to turn him into ice cubes; the most high damaging combo in the game is turning a guy into an explosive barrel and throw it into his terrified companions. You can accio some poor sod by its clothes then "throw it against a solid object" - the game is rewarding you for snapping some guys neck by throwing them around like a ragdoll. One of your finishers is turning a human enemy into a chicken (presumably forever).
The MC is a legic psycopath. They have a magic book that keeps track of their homework and I have no idea if it's the character reminding themselves to do quests or they are set up by the teachers. One of the homework tasks? Use crucio on a guy, then set him on fire. And don't get me started on the one liners: "8 legs is simply too many" or when killing a troll, "Rest now, my large friend". Jesus, lady, you went into the mountains, into a troll's den, killed a bakers dozen and now you're acting like you had no choice? I guess that's one way of mentally disassociating from the carnage around you. XIX century scotland looks like one of the layers of the Abyss with the amount of horrors there's lurking around.
As for the combat, the only way to enjoy it is to go underlevelled into a fight to give your enemies some semblance of a chance. I was level 20-ish when some guy in a hamlet tells me that his business partner was killed by an Acromantula. The thing was 10 levels higher than I was but I wanted a challenge. The absconder was a nightmare because: A) There's a million summons all around you B) It's terrifying since the final boss of all spiders is not some magical spider, it's highly detailed, realistic tarantula the size of a bus C) It has no weaknesses, it charges you and it doesn't wait for other enemies to finish attacking, it's a fucking terminator.
Despite my arachnophobia, I managed to steel my nerves enough to spam all my vegetables (the venomous tentacula was great at taking the aggro of the adds in the fight and the cabbages are surprisingly strong), drink a thunderbrew potion and run in circles around the room while my AOE cleared all the enemies. Once the Acromantula as the only thing left I was opening with a Mandrake (that's the only way to stun them) spamming Focus + Maxima, Glacius and the Dismemberment spell over and over until it was dead. Wasted all my resources fighting it but it felt like a real victory.
The second time I fought one was in a Challenge Arena, the fifth wave had an Acromantula and I got destroyed. I re-did the arena, this time farming Ancient Magic on the fourth wave. After the beast appeared in the final wave I just used a Mandrake for an AOE stun and unloaded 5 sets of ancient magic. Didn't stand a chance.
Finally, the moment I had to fight an Acromantula for story reasons (a side quest you have for a house elf, to find a friend of his that is forced to mine rare ingredients in a spider's den by his master), after getting the loom and stacking concentration 3 I killed it 2 combos. Felt a bit disappoining.