I just got this. I quite liked Conquistador but that game felt apart for me after the prologue, I also remember exploration and campmaking was a bit of a bother.
So far, I am quite impressed. Prologue was even better than in conquistadors, the character system feels way better and camping feels like its in a good place.
The visuals remind me a bit of Icewind Dale, which brings back some good memories. Overall, a noticeable improvement.
A few nitpicks:
It feels like some of the dialogues could use an additional pass. Viking speak in the prologue felt okay, but England feels a bit too modernized, it felt really off when one pict started telling me about "some bloke".
The character building system, while a marked improvement, doesn't really offer a lot of choice apart from the main stats. In the end, you will get a similar set of perks on all chars, the only difference being in weapon skills and skills unavailable due to stat requirements.
I often took perks I didn't want to only to go over the spent points limit and unlock the next level of specialization. While I believe this limitation should be kept as it is for balance reasons, it feels like a bunch of perks could use an extra level of specialization,
if only to have something to spend points on.
I didn't notice an option to customize the UI buttons (could be PEBKAC), we've had that back in the 90s with infinity engine, could sure use it here.
Combat difficulty is not that great. Only battle I actually reloaded and decided to avoid was the one when getting the cure for Helsott.
Guess I'll have to up the difficulty a notch for my next playthrough.
Forcing the player to customize ~5 characters in one go to fill all hird positions in the prologue was bothersome. We could use some presets.
It also could be great if hird members that are unavailable could be removed from the screen to avoid clutter.
Overall, it feels like a computer game version of Vikings (the series), not necessary a bad thing as it is a bit easier to relate to than Conquistador,
but it also feels like it's a bit too familiar: been there, done that, as it were.
That said, I am having fun with this, more than any other recent game. Good work, devs.