I'm level 5 now and this is my first play-through. The combat is okay, though there is a lot of reloading. The story is okay I guess. Not much C&C as far as I can tell. A little on the boring side, honestly.
The main parts I don't like are the environmental graphics and exploration. The game's graphics are hard to look at for some reason. I get eyestrain or brainstrain. Maybe it's the bright colors and thick lines, like a cartoon. I have a hard time telling what I am looking at a lot of the time.
I don't like the exploration because you're "painting the map" like 90% of other RPGs with rectangular maps out there and I'm getting sick and tired of it. Fallout hid its rectangularity by blocking camera movement when you got too near the edge of town. Arcanum and PtD had seamless world maps (though it made little difference in Arcanum). JA2 had rectangular maps. But each map was a set piece that needed to be approached carefully and tactically. Most maps had a lot of empty space around the edges for you to maneuver in too.
I really dislike the UI. When rotating the camera, the cursor also moves at the same time. So you end up bumping the edge of the screen and panning instead of rotating. When casting a spell or ability I sometimes forget and try to click a button on the screen. (For instance a button for a different spell or ability.) The game doesn't register this as a button click however. Instead, the spell/ability is cast below the button, usually not somewhere intended and thereby wasting the spell. Next, sometimes the enemy character animations make it hard to click on enemies. They move and gyrate, and sometimes you "miss" the target and end up clicking the ground instead of the character, thereby wasting your turn.
Lastly, the high camera angle is frustrating for me. I keep wanting to look around at the scenery but the game won't let me. Again, I often have a hard time telling what I'm looking at because everything just sort of blends into itself.
If this game doesn't improve drastically in the coming chapters, I can't give it more than a
. Except for the horribad combat, I would rate PoE higher than this.