Ok, some impressions after playing for like 3-4 hours... still have to finish Highpool and go to the Prison and Rail Nomads, so I can't say much about reactivity, but already visited the mine and did A LOT of random encounters. Overall it was a good patch; can see the potential to be a great game, but nothing yet has convinced me it will reach the level that Fargo promises and stand next to the classics.
GOOD THINGS:
- Graphics have seriously improved. Not only the glowing yellow is gone, but textures look sharper and the lightning on NPCs seems better as a whole. I can now see that Vargas model does have a revolver with a pearl-white handle on his hip, and it looks really good.
- AI is way better, especially how enemies now uses overwatch instead of just running towards you.
- Enemy positioning seems way better in Highpool, with places for both sides to snipe and all that.
- Higher encounter rate makes wasteland feels actually dangerous and you can't just starts the game and go anywhere from the start without facing some deadly fights.
- Blood and death animations are in. They are very satisfying , but I didn't see anything like decapitations, mutilations and overall Fallout-level gore yet.
- There's a lots of new maps and some new enemy types on random encounters. Some of them look quite good, especially the bridge map one.
- There's a merchant now right at the start of the game.
BAD THING:
- Loading times are massive. Although areas like Ag. Center load in like 15 secs, random encounters take like 30 secs, and a lone vendor on the wasteland takes more than one minute to load.
- Random maps don't feel fully used. There's one map with stairs and multiple levels, but it is always used only for wild animals encounter at close range... would be cool to face enemies with guns there, taking advantage of the terrain.
- Characters bellow 0 HP die too fast outside of combat. One of my rangers was shot down for -2 HP, and while the time it took for me to give a surgeon kit to the doctor, walk towards the dying character and use the skill was extremely short, it was enough for her to go to "mortally wounded" status and require fucking FIVE surgery packs to revive.
- Some combat encounters during levels still feel artificial... enemies are obviously grouped together, to the point that even if you silently snipe a lone guy from afar, his "assigned encounter group" will still immediately know were you are and begin combat (while other group that might even be closer won't notice you). Also while there are points were you can use terrain to your advantage, they feel too obvious... like enemies patrolling right bellow a sniping point, or a guy standing right next to the only exploding barrel in the entire game. Environment use should be clever, not just doing the obvious.
- Why the hell a wolf or a badger can attack with a BITE on diagonals, but melee character can't do the same, even with machetes and maces?
- The giant badgers on the mines are teleporting sometimes.
- Enemies in Highpool still shoot trough walls and buildings.
- The old-school Game Over screen was better.
- "Leve L'upe Mine", seriously?
- UI is better, but not there yet. Those 2 data screen on the lower corner are completely pointless in most screens, and that huge blinking "0" on the skills & attribute tab is annoying.
Here's the one by one:
Character Screen - This one is ok, and the only screen that really needs the tabs on the lower part. But the "Offensive" window doesn't show damage correctly.
Attributes - Obvious WIP icons apart, this one is good, but the lower area should just always display the "General" and "Offensive" tabs. No use displaying the attributes AGAIN and AFAIK the attributes don't affect the skills & vice versa.
Skill Screen - Again, attributes don't affect skills & vice versa. Better just remove the lower windows it and allow a much needed increase of the space for skills; or even better, a description of WTF increasing my skills does. I know from the "Offensive" tab that going from Skill 1 in Handguns to Skill 2 increases my THC from 50 to 58, but that should be always displayed on th skills screen, and doesn't work on non-combat skills.
Dossier - Instead of pointless LARP biographies, why not make it like a listing of kills, most powerful enemy defeated, time with party, largest damage, total damage dealt and all those stuff it was so fun to see in Fallout and Baldur's Gate? And again, the stats bellow are pointless.
- The grid inventory is a major improvement, but still doesn't feel right. I take that is due the items being too big while the inventory screen is too small... And the items need more "weight", like Arcanum (a.k.a. the best grid inventory ever) had. OK, rifles are 2 blocks wide, but ammo, painkillers, knifes and about everything else are the same size... Also, the inventory needs badly a "sort stuff" button.
And items stacks horribly. I'm playing with only 2 characters (only one using a gun), yet I sometimes see 5 different stacks of the same ammo:
That plus the small size of the inventory screen and the big amount of stuff you loot means most of the inventory is useless stuff or duplicates, especially the party inventory.
- Also, equipped items shouldn't appear on the inventory. That would even solve the issue of tons of pointless items like clothing and canteens crowding the inventory.
- Swapping character during trade screws the item comparison. I.e., I initiate trade with knife character. Even if I click on their portraits in the corner to swap the character making the purchase, the item comparison will still only show me the weapons of the character that starter the trade. I noticed this when all guns in the store had lower THC than my shitty rifle... it was because it was showing the THC with my melee character skill.
