I figured I would throw together a review of this game since I just concluded my third playthrough and my appraisal of the game differs wildly from the mainstream.
Stability: Firstly the game runs perfectly fine on modern hardware with only occasional slowdown mostly on the inventory screen. The game as of the 1.4 patch is bug free and I've experienced about 10 crashes maximum in my 120 hours or so across 3 playthroughs. Crashes typically occur when you reload too often in too short of a timeframe (like 4 or 5 times in 5 mins), to mitigate this just allow yourself to die and allow the death cutscene to play, reloading from the main menu doesn't seem to crash the game. The delete system32 bug doesn't exist with patch 1.4 either, I've uninstalled the game twice to test it.
Level/map design: The maps are gigantic and will probably be overwhelming for most people on a first time playthrough especially since there is a bit of backtracking and on first playthrough you don't know the optimal paths to take to mitigate backtracking. The scale adds a lot to the game though in that there always seems to be something new to discover, on the other hand most of the areas of the game have absolutely nothing going on in terms of story and reward your thorough exploration of the various dungeon levels solely with equipment much of which may even be outclassed by stuff you've already acquired.
Encounter design: The game is generally pretty easy, if you know which tactics to apply or are even remotely familiar with the 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons ruleset and construct a competent party you'll only have trouble with a handful of the battles in this game. You can successfully employ the same handful of tactics to all encounters in this game and come away nearly unscathed. This is because the game (understandably from a lore perspective) frequently gives you extremely powerful items. Unless you miss all of the extremely powerful equipment the game will be a cakewalk 95% of the time.
User interface: The ui is very good, you can easily find all of the information you want and it's all explained clearly. Your spells and equipment are easily accessed even during combat and the combat text (once show dice rolls are enabled anyway) does a good job of telling you exactly whats going on during battle.
Combat: I think the combat in this game is great, we don't get many turn-based games and this one has faithfully adapted the 3rd edition ruleset. My only gripes about the combat systems are that you cannot select which feats you want as they're auto-assigned and the list of spells available is pretty short. The game is so easy though that the rather meagre list of spells available won't hinder you in any event. People complain about the time limit to make your moves and I would rather that be an option rather than the mandatory way to play the game but I actually enjoyed the limitation because it added tension to the game.
Presentation: This is of course completely subjective but I think the game looked beautiful, especially the cutscenes, because the colour contrast is very sharp (outside of the dungeons anyway). The soundtrack was great and everything definitely matched the Dungeons and Dragons aesthetic.
If the game were more far more difficult I'd give it a 10/10, as it stands I'd give it an 8/10.
Stability: Firstly the game runs perfectly fine on modern hardware with only occasional slowdown mostly on the inventory screen. The game as of the 1.4 patch is bug free and I've experienced about 10 crashes maximum in my 120 hours or so across 3 playthroughs. Crashes typically occur when you reload too often in too short of a timeframe (like 4 or 5 times in 5 mins), to mitigate this just allow yourself to die and allow the death cutscene to play, reloading from the main menu doesn't seem to crash the game. The delete system32 bug doesn't exist with patch 1.4 either, I've uninstalled the game twice to test it.
Level/map design: The maps are gigantic and will probably be overwhelming for most people on a first time playthrough especially since there is a bit of backtracking and on first playthrough you don't know the optimal paths to take to mitigate backtracking. The scale adds a lot to the game though in that there always seems to be something new to discover, on the other hand most of the areas of the game have absolutely nothing going on in terms of story and reward your thorough exploration of the various dungeon levels solely with equipment much of which may even be outclassed by stuff you've already acquired.
Encounter design: The game is generally pretty easy, if you know which tactics to apply or are even remotely familiar with the 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons ruleset and construct a competent party you'll only have trouble with a handful of the battles in this game. You can successfully employ the same handful of tactics to all encounters in this game and come away nearly unscathed. This is because the game (understandably from a lore perspective) frequently gives you extremely powerful items. Unless you miss all of the extremely powerful equipment the game will be a cakewalk 95% of the time.
User interface: The ui is very good, you can easily find all of the information you want and it's all explained clearly. Your spells and equipment are easily accessed even during combat and the combat text (once show dice rolls are enabled anyway) does a good job of telling you exactly whats going on during battle.
Combat: I think the combat in this game is great, we don't get many turn-based games and this one has faithfully adapted the 3rd edition ruleset. My only gripes about the combat systems are that you cannot select which feats you want as they're auto-assigned and the list of spells available is pretty short. The game is so easy though that the rather meagre list of spells available won't hinder you in any event. People complain about the time limit to make your moves and I would rather that be an option rather than the mandatory way to play the game but I actually enjoyed the limitation because it added tension to the game.
Presentation: This is of course completely subjective but I think the game looked beautiful, especially the cutscenes, because the colour contrast is very sharp (outside of the dungeons anyway). The soundtrack was great and everything definitely matched the Dungeons and Dragons aesthetic.
If the game were more far more difficult I'd give it a 10/10, as it stands I'd give it an 8/10.
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