I am currently in the middle of Act 4 at level 16 as a true neutral Witch Aeon, playing on Hard. My party mainly uses Seelah (mounted), Greybor (mounted), Camellia, Daeran (pet wolf), and Nenio.
My impressions are quite positive, and I definitely enjoy the game. The writing gradually improves and becomes fairly good by Act 4, although the start of the game is cringe with the SJW bombardment. In general, the game starts slow and keeps getting better, in contrast to Kingmaker, which is shockingly good early on (it felt like the second coming of Baldur's Gate after the prologue). I prefer each consecutive act and did not like the beginning, except in terms of combat. In fact, the early combat on Hard was so tough I even sacrificed some content to gain an edge by killing the elf woman to get her +3 bow - I liked that.
I would very strongly recommend getting the
autobuff mod. No reason to skip it. With regards to difficulty, I think mods and changing difficulty make Steam achievements unreflective of preferences. Polls suggest many people
play on Core.
Pros
- Itemisation is spot on. This is rare. Lots of memorable unique items for interesting combos. They are distributed well rather than simply getting more powerful all the time. There is reason to keep items from early stages.
- Lots of build diversity. Plenty of space for creativity. Good interaction between items and class abilities. Mythic levels make it even more diverse, all the while maintaining challenge.
- Fun strategic combat and many challenging encounters. I tried switching to Unfair, and it was a bit too tough, although I tried it in a tough area (Blackwater modified demons).
- Characters can make good combos with each other. E.g., my Greybor is pointless without the Paladin's finger, but he is extremely strong with it.
- Length. I like long good games. Complaining about it being long is preposterous, given that it actually gets better over time. If you're tired, drop it, you don't have to be completionist.
- Good amount of reactivity when it comes to mythic classes (although little reactivity with regards to non-mythic).
- Non-obligatory, missable joinable NPCs. Although it's still at the level of BG2 rather than BG1 in that sense (but then BG1 NPCs are bare-bones).
Neutral
- The setting is so over the top it was ridiculous at first. But then you get into the power metal groove.
- The theme of changing other characters is a bit cringey - however, it's not obligatory and you can change them for the worse.
- The writing is OK, starts bad but improves. There is sufficient branching. I keep Camellia around just because I like her, she's actually not that useful (I'd rather have Ember).
- The strategic layer is OK, it adds a bit to the atmosphere, and it's good to have a wacky module like this. The interface for it is straight up dumb though; why do you need a loading screen for every post. It's also far too trivial.
- The mounted combat seems a bit silly at first, but it makes sense given the huge size of the demons in the same areas. Mounts are OP for melee, however.
Cons
- Encounters towards the end get too heavy on early nuking and initiative, as in most turn-based games.
- Except in a couple of places (early tavern and end of act 3), there is no reason not to rest frequently.
- Trash encounters are a thing. The worst part were ghouls in the southeast in the chapel. But it matters less as nuking intensifies.
- Exploration is worse than in Kingmaker, although it is still not too railroaded.
I would not call it more of the same when it comes to P:K. P:K played just fine as RTwP, but here turn-based is the way to go for the vast majority of encounters.
