I've been playing for the first hour and, unfortunately, I have to call it a night but before I go I wanted to jot down my initial impressions.
The overall look and feel of the game is a lot more polished than I was expecting: more polished even than the recent videos had given me to believe. In terms of presentation it appears to be very strong.
I've only experience one major bug so far which was a CTD (crash to desktop) when I tried to return to the Main Menu from the Character Creation screen. That said none of the options on the Character Creation screen other than class selection appeared to work: clicking gender or any of the left/right arrows did nothing. I suspect that hasn't been enabled yet but I'm mentioning it nonetheless.
The game itself looks very pretty but my enjoyment of it was hampered by the control system. Nothing seemed to work quite the way I was expecting it to. I'm sure I'll adapt in time but right now they are detracting from the experience.
Changes or options I would like to see therefore:
- If ESC (escape) would backout/close any of the popup windows (i.e. inventory, map, etc.) and to only bring up the Game Menu (i.e. the one with Save, Load, Options, Quit, etc.) when all other windows are close.
- An option to use WASD to move the characters instead of the camera (we already have edge scrolling enabled). I like to be able to drive the main character using WASD.
- The ability to fix the camera to the current character or an easy way to center it if I scroll to far
- The ability to rotate the camera freely not just 30 degrees. The assets appear to have all their faces and textures so it appears possible.
- As you zoom in with the camera should pivot to become more OTS (over-the-shoulder) so you can see more of what is in front of you (at the very least you should have a similar field of view to when you are zoomed out.
- A hot-key to switch between characters (in other games this is often Tab (which is currently "enter combat mode").
- In combat option to hold down a key (shift, control, whatever) to display the movement point chain so it isn't constantly following round the screen. I keep fearing I'm going to make my character move if click on a quick bar button (a bug in Wasteland 2's beta which has a similar helper).
- A different cursor to indicate inaccessible areas i.e. where we can't walk
- Something to indicate the range and area of effect of spells.
- When the map is open mouse wheel should control its zoom the map not the camera behind it (the conversation window already scrolls with the mouse wheel).
Finally, one last niggle, in the first conversation (i.e. with Junius) you are given the option to "Ask a few more questions" before you have even asked one question! It's a bit like asking Alice if she'd like some more tea before she had had any!
