All right, finished, 97 hours clocked in. Jesus. One long ass game that's for sure.
Well it was a bloody fun romp, no doubt about it. The combat held it's magic till the very end, even though the game stopped being a challenge somewhere half way through. Still, from a certain point, it was the only thing holding me in.
Many observations and comments, but to name just the major ones:
- What I loved: Larian is very good at freshening up an old formula with a lot of new ideas and gimmicks. I like the idea with the Homestead, the teleportation pyramid shenanigans, the many secrets that you totally can miss on the first playthrough (or never discover at all). Combat mechanics was close to perfection, maybe magic with mana (or other resource) would be even better but in the end I didn't really mind the cooldown system. And oh yeah, sound and music is great and the game is absolutely gorgeous to look at. Would be interesting to see the inXile and Obsidian take on a modern isometric design in comparison. But they have a high bar to jump over.
- Stuff that was meh: The lenght of the game would be fine if the story was anything to write home about or midgame/endgame continued to be challenging. But it isn't. From certain point on I sortta glided on with a mild disinterest. I wasn't annoyed enough to dump the game half way through, like I did with Divinity 2, but I wasn't coming back all hot and excited to play again either. The level design was quite good but there were too many corridors and narrow pathways for my taste. Last but not least, the loot system wasn't neither here nor there. Some people hated it, I find it acceptable (except the lack of hand placed valuable loot).
- Stuff that annoyed me to no end: Story and writing. Yeah. Not Larian's strong suit. Haven't finished Divinity 2 because of that and DOS came close to being dumped too. The combat saved it. Please Larian, can we have something for gamers over the age 9 next time? Nngh. Loading screens. Really? In the 21th century, with my rig? Does it really have to take 5 minutes from the moment I click the icon till I can start to play? Slow animation. I got used to the slowish running speed eventually but the slow casting animations annoyed me to the very end. Some spells, especially the summoning ones, take 7 - 8 seconds. Why? WHYYYY?!1!1 Back to more serious issues though - the character system is not very good. Yes you can feel growing stronger and more able but a good half of the ability tree is completely and utterly useless. Sneaking, Lockpicking, Pickpocketing, Charisma, Lucky Find, Teleportation, Blacksmithing (except the 1 point for boosting weapons) - you haven't thought those through very much, Larian, have you? And last (but definitely not least) the economy - completely borked. For a good 3/5s of the game I was lugging around tens of thousands of gold with me, with nowhere to spend them. Only at the very end, when the skeleton merchant with a bag full of awesome legendaries appeared, I was kindda glad I have something stashed in. But even then I finished the game with over 90k gold.
We're on the Codex but still, I don't wanna end on a bitchy note. I had fun. It's a fun game. But it could've been so, so much better. Especially the writing and character system is letting the glorious combat and technical side of the game down hard. DOS is still a formidable contender though and future cRPGs will have to fight a really good fight to be able to stand side by side with it in the halls of incline.
shooter 
