A lot of puzzles in the beginning also were very easy, felt more like fetch quests. But right now I'm stuck on one, which brings some hope. Hope it's not a bug.
Nevermind, definitely a bug. The obvious thing wasn't working, and then out of the blue it did.
Finished the preview part. If it represents 1/3 of the game, as it says in the beginning, it won't be a long game - took me maybe 3 hours (except for aimless wondering due to the above).
My general impression is much more "Uanvowed with (actiony) combat" than "Quest for Glory". Hi-res graphics kinda adds to the impression, but it's not the main similarity. Your class choice has some effect on how the puzzles play out, but extremely minor - much like the choice of companions does in Unavowed. Only unlike Unavowed, you're stuck with your class for the whole game. I've encountered 4 puzzles - or more exactly interactions, as they were all pretty obvious - that required you to cast non-combat spells (or more exactly spell, as at the beginning you only get one). Of them, I'm pretty sure two will play out the same for any class, and two played out somewhat differently for fire and water mages. Oh, and the rate at which you acquire spells seems to be tied to plot rather than character development, so not much RPG here either. Another similarity to Unavowed are the two plot choices I was given with the promise of consequences - which, I assume, will all play out in the last act. Let's see how important they turn out to be.
Combat turned out to be actually a lot less annoying than I assumed from the videos. It does involve a lot of kiting, but at least it's possible to pause it to catch a breath. On the other hand, the
frequency of random battles annoyed the hell out of me. I was trying to map the forest area, and on average had to fight two battles per square while drawing the map. Combat is advertised as optional, but I found it to be much faster to switch to easy difficulty and fight it through than run from battles and wait for the interface to change. Also, I don't think you can avoid the one boss battle I had in this build - which surprisingly, seemed easier than the random encounters (maybe precisely because it was unavoidable). But since I've put the difficulty to easy anyway, don't quote me on that.
