I mean, there's a notable point 40-60 hours in where it runs out of steam but that happened in Elex and Gothic 2 for me as well so that's true to form.
To me it's been progressively running out of steam ever since I entered Archolos city proper. At this point side quests make me groan because they are all the same, all banal, and many of them annoying - especially the ones in the city, since the majority of them involve running around in circles through the whole fucking city. And don't even get me started on the ones where you have to follow an NPC somewhere. Or on that shitty fucking guild quest where you have to follow WALKING NPCS THREE TIMES BACK AND FORTH FROM THE HARBOUR TO A RANDOM HOUSE IN THE SLUMS.
WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA
Also I swear every two-bit NPC here has IDDQD and it bothers the fuck out of me. Just as much as the cutscene deaths. And the omnipresent "this can't be opened" closed doors that in some cases have no reason to be there either - like the door to Helga's basement which had to be 100% superlocked because at some point a guy spawns there as part of a shitty sidequest to tell you something. WUT.
I enjoyed lawnmowing the world, but everything else about this is just not good. Now that I've lawnmowed everything there is, there's simply nothing of interest left for me to do. This was NEVER the case in Gothic, particularly since Gothic was much better at soft-gating your progress by locking certain ability and armour tiers by chapter - meanwhile here you can become a master alchemist and pump up your main stat to 150 already in chapter 1, while getting the heavy leather armour from the guy at the fishing village (also chapter 1) sets you up for life.
