DramaticPopcorn said:
I am close to ragequit. Gameplay is duller than in a modded Oblivion, so far (not that I'm gonna play it, though). And gameplay is more important to me than area design.
i´ve played it for 6 hours yesterday and after the excellent introduction dungeon it went downhill fast. as you said, it´s simply DULL.
characters have nothing to say besides quest-giving, voice acting is subpar (understandably, but still), a lot of Oblivion mechanics still in, AI sucks, invisible colision boxes in this kind of game suck hard and what´s the (7-14 level) nonsense? one random dungeon i´ve been to was a standard Oblivion fare. monsters have been boring and unimaginative so far as well. instead of scamps we get nasty kobolds, huh.
also, quests feel very pre-scripted. i´ve played a bit of the main quest and so far there was no support for alternative solutions whatsoever. ok, so i´m supposed to "rescue" a slave from her master, screw the negotiation i say and i proceed to kill him - so i do that while his mates just stand there doing nothing, the result - "slavemaster" is unconcious, no dice. the only way to proceed in the quest felt very forced.
so far the only interesting aspect is a puzzle element and general lack of resources.
playing it mostly just reminded me how superior Gothic or well modded Oblivion are.
when treated as a mod it´s certainly an impressive achievement, when treated as a standalone game (which it for all purposes is) it, well, kinda sucks (so far).
maybe it´s yet to hit its stride and some issues will be reduced/compensated for later, i dunno.
i´ve been sent into the capital city and its exploration and getting there will take a while, but if the game doesn´t significantly pick up meanwhile, uninstall is probably due.