Ok, the game is good. Mechanics, content and polish-wise Larian did a very good jerb. But it also has it's share of annoyances.
- It's pretty hard getting into that pixel-precise location behind an enemy to get the backstab effect. This annoys me really often. I really don't like spending my action points dancing behind the enemy, searching for the right position.
- From what i've read so far by the end of the game you can only max out 3 skills. If that's true then it's a really dumb idea IMO. There's a lot of skills so that means you'll either max out the necessary ones (Knight for example - 2h weapons, armor and man at arms), or you'll gimp yourself wasting stuff on cool, but optional shit like crafting, blacksmithing etc. That sucks. And don't tell me to fill the blanks with item bonuses. Items are so fucking random i'm mostly using really old stuff just because it has decent stats on them. And this leads to another point...
- Itemization. Shit, how i hate Larian's random loot. The game could definitely benefit from some hand placed items now and then. And they should do some item balancing (Diablo III style) if they really love their random loot so much. Full plate armor with intelligence and perception? Robes with strength and 2H weapon mastery? Fix that shit! 90% of the loot i find is pure and utter garbage. And what's the point of buying treasure maps, if the loot inside most likely won't be any better than what i find in a random barrel?
- Story and setting. Here's the biggest bugbear for me. Yeah, the game is funny and shit. But that just doesn't work for me. Because of all that humor and the light-hearted nature of the game i really don't care about the setting and the plot. So there's some evil shit going on, and the whole world everythingness is endangered. You're even supposed to make some moral choices from time to time. But every sense of danger and tension is just completely trivialized by slapstick jokes, interent-meme-speaking animals, satanic snowmen and pop-culture refereces. Some occasional humor wouldn't hurt, but at this point it just destroys every single moment the game would like to get more serious, or make you stop think about your choices. Oh, and there's Phelot just outside Cyseal gates. You just can't make a coherent setting when you're filling it with so many in-game jokes and references. It's just like Fallout 2 all over again.
It's a great game, but despite it's solid mechanics and the overall polish i really can't put it next to, let's say, Mask of the Betrayer. It might do a lot of things better than Obsidian's masterpiece, but it can't make me feel even half as engaged and invested.
