What the fuck is this review?
I might be the only one around here spending time with the game (not a lot, poking around here and there, but enough to gather impressions), and I think I can decode this. In the first place, as has been noted, people have no idea what RPG actually means. I think you might end up hearing the phrase "it's a fine RPG but a bad Dragon Age game." This is nonsense - unless an RPG means literally nothing other than a skill tree, then there is nothing remotely RPG about this title. I'd honestly rather they'd have had straight up cutscenes than being forced to pick dialog, because none of it, and I mean
none of it, seems to ever correspond to what comes out of your mouth.
And first I thought I might see how far being a jerk could get me, but that turned out to be pointless because the "stern" options are just "dad nice" instead of "mom nice." Then I started just randomly picking dialog options, and it genuinely took me a while to realize I kept hitting the "humor" option because - well, I'll just say it'd make you miss Dragon Age 2. Yes, that bad. I didn't think they were bad jokes, I just didn't realize they were trying to be jokes at all.
But what the person means by "feel" is that, at least this much is kinda true and probably more true the more normie you are - graphics are nice, gotta hand them that, and combat is .... kind of interesting. For a while at least. You get a big weapon, you're getting new abilities on the regular out of the gate, there's at least some level of engagement while you get acclimated to the controls. Every encounter is piss-easy, naturally, but the "feel" is there. I took at glance at Asmongold's stream and he was feeling a a decent 6-7 after a half dozen or so hours with the game.
But all that, at the pace I'm seeing, can only hang together for a while. I don't think it's long before you fall off the SkillUp cliff, which he pegged at about 10 hours.
That's also why there's nothing to talk about. There are no stats. There's a suggestion of something wearing the skin of "builds" but I have profound doubts that any of it matters. Roll and light attack will almost certainly carry you through every encounter with marginal difficulty. Outside of the infamous mirror scene early on (I actually tried to go trans because fuck it, why not, I'm getting bored anyway, but ended up reaffirming what a great dude I was, so somehow they even fucked that up) there isn't anything "woke" in the opening stretch or even anything remotely interesting or controversial. Things happen on screen, people yell and repeat what's happening on screen, you smash some baddies, cutscenes, quip, repeat.
People talk about you as friends and all I can think is ".... I just met you people?" Your dude says "Well, we have to do something, because no one will!" (direct quote) My dude is a grey warden, I know that whatsapp ran a little slower back then but maybe put a word to your buddies? I could go on.
The tl;dr is that
it presents itself as something competent with nice graphics, flashy combat and a story that tells you what great pals you all are ... but falls apart if you think about any of it.
That's why our boy in the review says "feels." He knows something is wrong, he's just lacking that little critical nub to get past the presentation and grasp that the core is profoundly hollow.