Is the game good yet?
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TL;DR: I'd go with the classic "Good for what it is/wants to be".
So far my impression is that it's exactly what is says on the tin: a budget, Eurojank Baldurs Gate 1. The character attributes and combat mechanics were inspired by PoE though.
Story thus far has been low key, personal level stuff. Companions don't have much interactivity yet (I read that is something that should come later during Early Access: personal quests, more dialogue etc.), essentially you pick them up with one line/exposition scene, can ask them 4 or 5 lines and that's it. I believe I had it occur only twice in 7 hours of game-time that a Companion chimed in at a conversation.
A handful side quests, mostly one straight forward and short solution, but there was the occasional exception.
Exploration has been mostly outdoor/rural areas with one semi-big main city (4 screens of varying sizes), sadly I haven't encountered something I would call a real dungeon yet (neither the indoor, nor the outdoor version like for instance the Gnoll Stronghold). Some locations "speak for themselves" by telling a story through the environment / witnessing events and you form your own conclusions, which I personally found quite neat.
Combat wasn't challenging yet and mostly has been zerging down enemies. Variety of creatures/models is alright, but combat encounters mostly played out the same because there were no unique tactical compositions of enemy troops or circumstances (unless you count unreachable enemies you have to dispatch with spells/ranged attacks as tactical challenge).
The unique Drying-and-Brewing-System I only tried out a couple of times before I already decided not to bother with it further and just sold the components instead because they take up a huge amount of inventory space and organizing them is a living nightmare.
I found about I'd say 15 different recipes + the same, if not more different types of ingredients and all of them take an inventory space! You have no recipe book, each recipe is a single scroll you have to keep in your inventory and click through each time you wish to find something or look up how to create something. So essentially for practicality reasons you would have to create either an out-of-game Excel Sheet or look up a Wiki Online every time.
Having a recipe book were you could transcribe found recipes in-game would have been a much needed convenience IMHO. Perhaps even with the ability to click on a recipe and it automatically adds the components to the Drying/Brewing screen.
And for the ingredients an extra tab/bag to keep them organized. The way it is implemented right now I go out on a limb and predict not many players will bother with this system, which is a shame really since after all it's one of few truly unique features of this game.
Itemization is - depending on how you look at it - either on the bland side, or what you would expect from a game like this: I found some items that give +stats, apply effects with X chance or cast spell/per day. No talking weapon or Sphere of Annihilation. At least yet, considering I'm only 7 hours in there might be some surprises to come in the item department.
As far as bugs are concerned I had no show stoppers yet. Some quest lines seemed to be not implemented fully yet, which is obviously not a bug but rather due to being Early Access. Other stuff is minor like for instance this one: each character has two weapon sets they can switch through and my thief was equipped with A) a sword which applies a burning effect on hits and B) and ordinary bow. When I switched weapon sets during combat from sword to bow, the bow applied the burning effect as well. So the ordinary bow became effectively a bow of burning. Like I said, it's only minor stuff like this that stood out thus far.
Visuals are alright for a budget title and IMHO there's even a decent amount of voice acting (which itself is pretty decent quality wise). Being a Unity game you never know what to expect performance wise. Unfortunately I had to tone down the graphic settings to keep my Computer from exploding. But optimization might come down the Early Access line. It was perfectly playable on lower graphic settings and my rig is already like 7 or 8 years old now.
All in all I'm excited to play more of this game and it's a pretty fun experience so I would recommend it if you enjoy games like Baldur's Gate, Pathfinder or Pillars of Eternity. Going in you just have to be aware that this game didn't have the budget as the aforementioned titles and therefore you should limit your expectations somewhat. Or in other words: it's the same sport but not the same league.
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