Can't comment myself though, the demo won't run on my jurassic rig. But it seems a big consensus, for the Codex that is.
10 quotes? Big consensus?
I can easily post 10 from people who either like it or warmed up to it. Exhibit A:
"I can't think of a better organized way to put this than a list of bullet points, so here goes. So far, I have completed the IG questline several times, Merchant twice, Assassin and Praetor once, and up to the last part of the Thief.
1. General Style of Game
The "choose your own adventure" (for lack of a better term) style is relatively unique and I have warmed to it. It allows a large variety of skills to be usefull, and I think for the most part options are well done. I think adding partial successes in the newer build was a great move, because the binary results encouraged more min/maxing and reloading. The non-combat build, obviously, is made very viable.
2 potential problems come to mind for me- first is general game balance. In the first build there were very defined bottlenecks, where characters will come to need a new skill that they haven't had use for before, with little other options. The problem with the intelligence check in the IG questline in the original build was one, and the last fight of the Thief quest was another. I believe the Merchant quest had me quit and respec a couple of times. Sometimes using skillpoints towards the problem at hand, rather than building a reasonably viable build, seems necessary. I do not have a good counterpoint or other idea though. Perhaps if some ability check conversation options were not removed after failure, you could see that the progression of your abilities allows more access to wealth and power. You may have this covered in the full game, I don't know.
The second problem is a sense of progression with a noncombat build. This could be alleviated in the full game, but I wonder how the sense of increasing power and ability that is present in combat will be present in the non-combat parts. For the demo, there is no obvious sense of the character's increasing abilities in say the merchant path. The character just seems to bring more of his skills up respectable levels, which would seem to even out the praetor, grifter, and merchant roles to a common end. I don't know if this would fit into your game, but in my perfect world increased noncombat skills would lead to more power of some sort- Wealth to buy equipment or allies, persuasion to pit increasing numbers of allies against foes, etc. or simply talking and manuevering people into vulnerable positions. One of the main lures of an RPG game is the increasing sense of power of a character.
The difficulty of combat I think was a wise choice, although I think there should be more situations that diplomatic characters could get a more visceral feeling of their power, as I tried to explain above. I still think combat is extremely difficult compared to the diplomatic paths, and I see no easy way to fix this again given the style of your game.
Random Bits.....
I like the "teleportation", I have gotten used to it.
Some story stealth paths I think should allow more options- ie I can sneak up to the roof of the palace, but I am given no choice to leave if I want.
I would have wanted more environmental interaction in what I would consider an ideal RPG, but again I see the merits of the path you chose.
More freedom to accomplish quests, even if it is simply freedom to go against overwhelming odds. Maybe you can't do this, but I would love to be able to complete the IG questline by simply murdering Dellar, walking through the castle and kill Antidades (sp?). This is probably easier said than done."
And the low number of viable options at the start, which increases as the character progresses to the game is more "low key" and anti-awesome (as the whole game tries to be?). Or that's how I interpret it.
