[ MAJOR spoilers below]
Hi there, I'm dudeface
I've long loved dnd and rpgs, liked d:os2 so decided to drop in on this EA and see how it was, and overall I've been very impressed and excited about the potential of this game from what I've played.
I've played through as a warlock and am starting a second playthrough as a ranger, but since that epic ending video asked for some feedback, I came here to share some thoughts
My general way of playing through these kinds of games is a goodie two shoes with a hunger for power, sort of neutral good, so warlock fit perfectly. The way the class plays particularly with eldrich blast and the knockback from it was fantastic. There were two main issues with it though that often took the wind out of the sails.
1. Eldrich blast's knockback seemed to work almost every time against humanoid enemies, but often didn't work at all against some enemies like spiders or larger creatures, and when it did knockback some enemies, it didn't do fall damage. This was also the case for La'zel as the battlemaster achtype with her knockback strike, where if the ability hit and did damage, the enemy would not take fall damage when they hit the ground, but they would with a simple shove off the same ledge. The enemies this was most aparent with was the druegar in the underdark village.
2. I don't know if it's in the DND corebook, but a feat swap for more partron abilities would be really cool. It was a difficult and interesting choice to make, but it would be nice to swap a feat out for some more of them.
P.S. The Dark One's Blessing that is supposed to give you temp HP often didn't when I had other temp HP from another source
Otherwise Warlock was a ton of fun, I really appreciated the patron dialogue options that made me feel like my character has been around the block before in terms of dark magic and delving into secrets, such as the patron assistance when reading the thay necromancy tome. Also, never used a summon familiar spell before in any dnd game but this game makes it cool, they are so amazingly useful, Imps for days yo.
Encounters
Most of the encounters were amazing and I loved how stealth, verticality and setup really paid off and made you feel smart, but there of course were a few hiccups
1. Knocking out the well meaning tieflings that are guarding La'zel instead of killing them, just has them dying anyways after she is freed. Feels bad man. Did La'zel murder them after I took the time to knock them out instead of kill or was it game shenanigans? Would at least like an option to talk her out of it or oppose her because it was quite coldblooded.
2. The goblin shaman that takes you aside to an empty room to do some magic on you after you enter their fort can't be silenced by the silence spell and still casted spells and shouted for help despite being in the zone
3. When you are in stealth, the fae witch ferry godmother lady will pop up next to the cauldron of soup in her basement after you interact with the skull or the mirror there, not see you, trigger no dialogue, become uniteractable, but still go hostile to you if you leave and go to some other place
4. The burning building with the flaming fist mercenaries should be the perfect place to enter turn based mode to efficiently find survivors, but it acted super wonky. In turn based mode, the councilor will give the characters the quest to find their boss, then after that dialogue has ended say they need to rush to get outside before the can talk about their boss. The guy you save under the rubble on the other side can't be taken to safety by the building to the south, because there is some kind of invisible barrier on the first floor that can't be traversed.
Some other random thoughts from the playthrough
1. Us was a really neat character, was kind of sad that I didn't run into it again as a henchman or something, if that's even feasible considering what he is, but I can see myself taking it over La'zel for certain playthroughs
2. This has already been said in other places but I thought there were too many scrolls around
3. Speak with dead would have been cool to use on the girl who ran out to avenge Kanon, to give hero closure or get some information on the goblins that killer or something. Also would have liked to have been able to speak with some of the dead in the necromancer's lair, maybe to get a clue as to where the gem is
4. The amulet of the absolute that is supposed to heal you 1d8 when you are below 25% hp and do damage didn't work with my warlock's spells at all
5. Some scrolls were mislabeled, I have a group healing scroll on gale at the moment that does bane. If this is intentional and I missed a passive roll or something I apologize but it seemed weird. There were a few others that were mislabeled as well.
6. I still can't defeat the minotaurs, are they meant to be this beefy?
7. Warp spiders teleport seem a bit much, maybe every other turn would be more balanced
8. Would like more solutions to problems if I choose a nonviolent end, I'm just starting my playthrough as a bounty hunter ranger but there doesn't seem to be much reward for trying to take foes alive
9. Would love a way to quickly jump the party across a gap, it took forever to get some places
10. Sometimes stealing and getting caught made somebody hostile, sometimes they just gave some minus red and didn't care, a case that comes to mind is the paladin leader with tyr's sword
11. The expressiveness of the character in dialogue was fantastic, it really drew me into the world like few rpgs have
Anyways thanks for making this game, it was a fanastic playthrough I really really enjoyed and even though I don't often play through rpgs more than once I am already starting a second one
