I disagree with time limits, but I realize some people just aren't happy unless beating their heads on hard objects all the time. DKS/FoV is the only game in my library still having time limits. My other games either don't have them at all, or I removed them. I play to relax - I get plenty of time limits during my work day, thank you very much (surely Larian can sympathize).
I want to like first-person view, but it's like wearing blinders what with the narrow field of view. Thus I always end up using third-person in CRPGs so I have a more natural field of view.
Fully agree with the comment on invisible walls and arbitrary ceilings. As a side note, WoW doesn't have it perfect either with flying in classic Azeroth, as there are places such as Ashenvale and Swamp of Sorrows where you hit invisible ceilings as low as perhaps 20 meters from the ground while flying. Dragon form would be a lot more fun if the invisible ceiling was raised to some uniform, high value, and the blur effect was removed or made adjustable in options. Also the area required for turning into a dragon is much larger than the dragon form itself, which suggests an overly large collision mesh (which further enhances the invisible wall/ceiling issue).
When I learned how rare Malachite Gems were (this game feels like an MMO sometimes - I mean that in a bad way), and after I failed to get additional gems from mining Malachite Ore (didn't care to use the save/reload exploit and I had lousy success), I settled with using much easier to obtain level 9 enchantments.
Combat is fun and requires me to be at my computer while it is happening, which is enough for me. (A necromancer player in Age of Conan can park in a respawn zone and leave his computer while his minions kill things by themselves.) Dodging seems useless in melee as you pointed out, though some magic attacks can be avoided, especially if you duck behind rocks and other scenery obstacles. I suggest people wanting a more masochistic combat system play one of the many console games featuring combat that require 15 fingers, five thumbs, and various contortionist positions. Oh, and you have to enter 128-bit hash sequences rapidly and accurately in order to execute a combo attack. I'm exaggerating, of course, but it is amusing to watch someone engaged in combat in a modern game on a console gamepad. It is *not* amusing when I try it; thus I remain strictly a PC gamer.
Hopefully Larian will have more time to spend on details in a future game, which should be possible if they can improve this game engine instead of writing a new one from scratch. I miss Origin Systems and the huge amounts of detail they included in their games... "We Create Worlds" indeed!
