OK, I suspect now I am halfway done with the game or so. Just joined the Guardians and got to try out crystal magic.
Basically if you want the 'stripped down' feel which in G1/2 extends to visuals/atmosphere as well as gameplay (i.e. infrequent flashy magic, mostly about mano y mano fencing), that's not what you get. Instead it's about adding various components to give players more options. Whereas in some cases in older PB games magic took so long to cast and was so rare it was useless in some fights and took a lot of care to use, it is now much more versatile - for crystal magic you can learn 'melee' damage spells to substitute for swordplay (though not quite as powerful I think), and actual 'spells' now have much faster casting time so you can actually jump into the fray, cast rain of fire, then whip out your fire fist and fight. There is crystal magic, voodoo and rune magic it seems, though I assume I now can't access the latter.
So on one hand this versatility - I'm not even counting firearms here, I haven't invested points so I don't know if it's as OP as in R2 - means the game is easier. You don't die again and again to enemies like you used to when you first played G1/2. But it also means that, even in terms of melee combat, there's a lot more stuff you can do. I wish they had restored the old PB style, but for what it is, it works OK and is fun to play - because there's also some good old PB'y magic like turning enemies berserk, telekinesis, or flying (which you now do in the form of a parrot).
Exploration also I would say is better than R2, if not quite the old PB standard. The islands are more packed and there are some cool areas like the voodoo village composed of networks of rickety wooden bridges over high altitudes. You also find cool stuff hidden on places like the top of the roof, again in the good old PB style. And as I said before, it's really cool how every island is designed visually and questwise in alignment with its backstory, and how backstories fit in with other islands & Previous games.
There is also a lot of quests and content in this game, I suspect more than R2, which belies the bare bones asset recycling impression that the first two places you'll probably go to (Tutorial & Antigua) give you. (Seriously, why would you do that? It's one of the worst intros ever in terms of misrepresenting your game.) Talanis alone, if you join the guardians, throws something like 30 things to do at your face. Hell they even have minigames again (knife throwing, fist fight, etc) as if this was some kind of Witcher lite.
So yeah. The old PB is definitely gone, and this is definitely not a 'hard' game. But it is still a fun game to play which retains flashes of good old PB quests / exploration.
