Alright, started as an assassin with 39 dagger and 10 DEX, died in the very first fight, though I nearly killed him. Got through on the fifth try, not that bad, then several characters followed who didn't last very long in general. I've now fiddled around for a few hours and tried a few characters, though never 'finishing' the demo.
Generally, a very fun, quite polished game that has its own style and delivers on the kind of experience it promised. Still clearly needs some touching up, though.
Writing and Quest Design
The writing in general seems fine. Nothing silly, nothing stupid. Occasional grammar errors or awkwardness but not enough to break the mood. I haven't seen anything that's really impressed me or made me laugh, but it does its job well, and there is plenty of flavour text that is really important for the gameworld.
The quest design is generally interesting, makes sense in the world, has multiple choices that are not obvious, and at least at the start, seems to have a design where different characters and different factions often show different sides of the same event or mission, which is great. I don't know if it's *more* reactive than RPGs we know and love, but it certainly seems to do a good job of all this in the confines of the demo.
Several people, in the beta and now, have raised the question of whether it's a good thing to cut out the 'fluff' of walking around and fade in/out straight to action. It's pretty surprising, and jarring, when you start; I tried assassin, mercenary and praetor, and in every case it's a lot of read, click continue, fade, teleport. Sure, it cuts down on the 'pointless' exercise of walking to the next building or opening a door and going in to talk to someone, but actually, that 'filler' can be a positive thing when used in moderation. I don't see why the game has to zip me through from an audience with Antidas then Linos instead of letting me walk there and take detours. If I wanted to do it quick I'd use fast travel and it would hardly take any more time than now, and if I wanted to I'd do it the slower way, still not waste that much time due to the compact town design, and feel like it's actually a world and not a flow-chart. Now, I expect this is related to the idea that there is no filler combat, the typical thing inserted in such walkways. I don't think the 'teleporting' should be eliminated, but right now it is too much, at least at the start - it does feel like there's a little less of it later on. But the set piece combat design, which is good in itself, means that you're never really experiencing that sense of approaching a new/hostile area, scouting things out.
Character, Combat and Gameplay
Doesn't seem overly difficult, but then I toiled through the combat demo so know what is what. I think the opening fight could be a tad easier, as in the long run making that hard is not really doing anything for the hardcore players, and it can just frustrate newcomers who haven't had a chance to learn the system yet. It's not a question of stupidity, it's a question of not yet knowing what each weapon does, etc. In general, though, I thought the battles weren't that difficult, and work well.
Hard to say too much about the character development system in the demo, and I haven't finished yet.But every skill seems to have a reason to be there. The one downside perhaps is that often you end up hoarding a few skill points to use to solve the next text adventure quest - e.g. in the
one I don't know how many multiple solutions there are, but it all seems to come down to do you have enough points in this or that skill. Not a 'problem' per se, but we'll see how it all pans out.
Graphics, Sound, Interface
Looks somewhat like a mix of early 2000s first person 3D RPGs (say, in interiors) and late 2000s advanced lighting, grass, textures, etc. elsewhere - fine, works for me. The portraits are excellent, but we knew that already. Music is forgettable but doesn't seem to get in your way so much. The interface is generally pretty good. I'm not a fan of the fluorescent solid colours used in battle grids and such, especially in combination with the stone and brick feel of the rest, but the opacity on the grid can be turned down. What interface is there works well; would be better if there was a bit more of it, e.g. a button to highlight interactibles or in-world tooltips.
Small Suggestions and Fixes
- As others have said, an alt/tab button to highlight everything you can interact, short tooltips on characters when you hover would help. Also, something to replace that terrible, terrible neon green blob when you click to move.
- The Take All button in looting should automatically close the window, too. Or have an option for it.
- The minimap really needs a here-i-am.
Bugs
Playing on 1200x600 Windowed, 32bit Windows 7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570.
- The weird tooltips / buttons in char screen bug happens on 1280x720 windowed. Switched to 1333x768 (i think, the next up 16:9 ratio) and all was well. Not to mention the fonts actually got bigger and better!
- The known bug that after several deaths to the first enemy, you just keep dying immediately after the first convo. This actually seems to happen later in the game too.
- In the opening assassin fight, if I knock the opponent down on the far corner with the vase, even though I have 95% chance I missed 5 times in a row. Either bad luck, or some kind of bug.
- The AOD cursor seems to change into normal cursor in some places like death screens, main menu and character menu.
- One crash with Visual C++ runtime error, after lots of playing and reloads.
.
it shows a mouse pointer on a black screen and that's it.
