So my overall impression so far now that I have got a decent way in is mostly positive. Companions do not irritate me too much. There is a lot of space for character customization (as expected of a pathfinder game) which is great. The amount of reactivity currently implemented is adequate and there is a wide variety of item choice. The wide variety of item choice is actually really impressive and the bonuses are also quite varied as well, much better than the choice in kingmaker for sure. Whilst if you do decide you want to use some obscure exotic weapon it may take you a while to find one, you can almost be assured that one of that item does exist and is fairly powerful. The game also has some challenging boss fights which you will occasionally encounter as you progress the story, definitely a ramp up a notch in difficulty from most other cRPGs so again, a positive there. The game is fairly buggy, however, as it is not yet finished I will not hold that against it yet. If it has the same level of buggyness upon release however (which is a possibility, given kingmaker), I will be holding that against it.
Onto downsides. My first major complaint is how shallow the strategic layer is. Army management is easy, so easy to the point that it undermines parts of the story element of this "difficult crusade against evil" due to how easy it is. The AI on the strategic layer is not good and furthermore, it also has no response to many of the abilities you can assign commanders. With very little investment you can steamroll every strategic layer fight and as it currently stands the strategic layer might as well be nothing more than a superfluous chore. Demonic armies should launch attacks against you more frequently and in higher numbers. Armies should have an upkeep cost. Soldiers disbanding their units due to morale etc, should be something which occurs frequently. There should be multiple places you are expected to defend and once you start taking locations from demons, there should be some expectations that you keep demonic hordes out of them and penalties if you fail to do so. My current feeling about the strategic layer is either it needs to be improved dramatically, or it needs to be removed. It looks very poor in contrast to the rest of the game and in my opinion drags it down because of how shallow it is. I really enjoy games like HoMM, if you want to include elements from those types of games you should do it properly and not half arse it like it currently is.
I do also have issues with the enemy AI in normal combat, however this is a much more minor problem and I do expect this to be fixed. The enemy AI is often unaware of how to deal with immunities properly. If you have a deathtouched animal companion for example, you will have enemies repeatedly using negative energy attacks against that animal companion, restoring its HP. I would understand if they did it for a single round, to simulate the idea of them "not knowing" that the enemy is healed by that damage type. But I experimented with things like just leaving a companion with a specific immunity in the range of an enemy with a damage type for multiple turns and after 5+ rounds they were still actively helping the party by using a damage type which is helpful to me, when they do definitely have other options available to them.
