-I'd say the story is more interesting than Pillars of Eternity but that's not saying a lot. The soul-powered world idea was dumb. This game has weird factions and characters that were way more interesting. I also liked the tooltips which link to the lore database in-game, in case you forget what the 'Glanflargblarg' are mid-conversation.
-Stat system is the same as PoE with a couple changes. One of the stats actually affects accuracy now, another powers-up magic. So no more stacking Strength to get spell damage anymore and no more constant missing.
-Skills go up via use, ala Skyrim. It works okay for weapon/defense skills, no so well for magic skills since almost every spell has it's own accuracy skill. Mages end up with 8+ different skills for hitting things with magic.
-Spell system is interesting, everyone can use magic, just need enough Lore, handy to put healing spells on everyone. Mages have fairly limited slots though so its a trade-off between specialization and versatility, which is the best kind of trade-off.
-Six party members (that I've found), 4 party slots. 3 fighters, 3 mages, only one qualifies as a tank which makes him feel pretty mandatory. It's the DA: Origins Alistair problem again. So far two melee + two mages works pretty well for me.
-During Act 1 you have to pick between 2 factions, there is a person in your party from both factions, so the choice pisses off one of them. I chose against Barik, he tried to leave, I convinced him to stay to the end of the Act, he's still there past Act 1, no dialogue explains this. Now he's fighting his own faction with no comment, for such a story-heavy game this is very odd, it's the KotOR problem again: "You're obviously an evil psychopath but I'm going to stay in your party because the combat requires my tanking abilities."
-There's a second layer of attack mechanics added in. After the initial hit roll there's a 'precision' check which can upgrade the attack one stage (miss to graze, graze to hit, hit to crit) and then a 'deflection' check which downgrades the attack back one stage. Deflection mostly comes from light armor, while heavy armor still has direct damage reduction. With a full set of light armor you can get around 50% deflection, combined with high defense stats it's possible to make a 'dodge tank.'
-Speaking of tanking, Barik's taunt skill seems to work less than 50% of the time, which is lame. The player character can use a Tanking Stance that runs constantly, why doesn't Barik have this? Engagement mechanic still sucks, enemies ignore it and rush your back line if they can, engagement attacks just aren't that big of a deal, especially with plenty of defense/armor/deflection.
-Party members get 2 skill trees (except for Lantry who gets 3 for some reason). These trees are meant to go with 2 builds, for example Verse can go dual-wield or archer; Barik can go offense or defense. Either way fighters seem to get very few abilities, even at level 9+ my fighters only had like 2 attack skills each; compared to mages who get tons of inherent abilities in addition to magic.
-Faction system is over-complicated. You have Favor and Wrath bars with all factions, Loyalty and Fear bars with all party members. Each is a separate bar, both give you bonuses and it's possible to increase all bars through various choices. So instead of saying "I'm going to go a loyalty playthrough" or "This time I'm going to go for Wrath" you can just min-max and get most of the bonuses. It feels less like role-playing and more like being the world's most apathetic manipulator. Maybe that's the idea? The faction rewards aren't that great anyway; passive abilities and active attacks you won't have room for on your skill bar. Party member reputation just gives you combo skills, most of which are usable once per rest, which means they almost never get used.
-You can use a forge to upgrade your equipment; first upgrade gives a nice boost to damage/armor, the second upgrade seems to do nothing. Bug?
. And yeah how was that humanly possible to make party of 4 a lot harder to control and micromanage then the party of 6. A mystery!
