Ugh....
Fine... here we go again. Just give me a bit to re-install it and I'll take a look at it.
I hope the framerate isn't as shit as it's been in the release version.
So the beginning of the game is pretty different.
The tutorial's been changed
Marcaul is actually under siege. There are undead walking around outside
Looks like the mission board is gone. The grand staircase is under Marcaul (where the statue of Typhon was), but you require a key to get into upper erebus. I first started a new game+ but reconsidered because I feared some old data might invalidate stuff here and fixing up NG+ in accordance with their latest changes probably wasn't otherside's priority (In fact getting the key from the lizardmen's leaders was a bit of a problem first - you need to visit both the skill trainer and the midnight forum; the earlier didn't register properly at first, but after revisiting resherak it was working and I was given the key)
So whatever, I start a new game - and mind you, I haven't played since release so some stuff might be old news:
Combat seems a bit better (enemies can be thrown down - also in earlier patch i think they made all attack movements (e.g. stabing) available from the beginning - so you don't need to put skillpoints in that anymore)
Framerate was at least stable for now (we'll see about that in the last few levels)
The story is better explained/exposition is better, i.e. the narration has been re-arranged to make a bit more sense.
also there are tons of skeletons lying around everywhere now
fall damage seems more balanced (or let's say it exists)
Cabirus is no longer like "I'm NOT gonna hold your hand!" - which is in line with what he's doing throughout the tutorial.
Parts of the tutorial map, as well as marcaul, have been changed
The Runebag seems to work, even after loading - so you can actually play as a mage now.
There are healing potions.
Skeleton eyes glow in relation to their current health. It seems like weapons have been balanced somewhat.
So far all memoras seem to be voiced - as they should have been I believe (in the original release pressing play on some would just play a default sound effect)
That one wall in the tutorial (right in the beginning of the room with the chandelier) still has no collision, but after diving outside the map at least I died after falling a while. So I guess they put a kill-volume around the map. Also the horizont color of the scenes is now black, making holes in the geometry less apparent.
Some chests still violently vomit their contents at you (here's a tip otherside, and this one's for free: Just deactivate physics on those items until the player interacts with them. Just make this static. And lower the scale of those default backpacks to like 0.5 - in combination with phyisics interaction these almost always jump out of the chest - one escaped me before and fell into lava)
There are some minor audio mixing issues (walking on those newly added skeletons sounds like loudly punching a box of cereals)
Ishtars challenge is no longer needed to get into marcaul, which makes kind of sense as it was nothing more than an additional tutorial.
The grand staircase seems to be a bit at the beginning of each level, leading down to the next. Missions are given in a camp at the beginning of each level instead of the mission board - you still get them from a board right next to a portal to marcaul though (meh)
So much for the first two hours. It's definitely better so far. I might give another update once I'm in Titan's Reach, which is essentially where the original release finally broke apart for me.
It's still rough around the edges from what I can see, but a tiny bit closer to what was promised/expected.
Jesus Christ if it released like this it might not even have mostly negative steam reviews.
If they keep fixing it like this I'd recommend a "Director's Cut" re-release á la Rome:Imperator Edition in like half a year or so.
