I'm just going to say straight off the bat that I enjoyed the first chapter very much, and the thing that interested me the most was the story and how it can be completed in many different ways. Story is the most important aspect of this game for me and I have no complaints in this department, I am completely happy with how this side of the game was made and looking forward to new adventures that are as varied and detailed.
Now I am going to talk about things that I personally think could be improved:
1) Stat system:
This was discussed on the forums quite a few times, but I want to bring a little different perspective to this particular topic. People were mostly talking about how it is unsatisfying to become weaker, specially when multi-classing as you level up because the amount of points required to maintain a certain bonus goes up with each level. This was addressed by Larian, and it was said that the stat system would change to one that will give a flat bonus depending on level.
But this will probably mean that in essence the progression will be the same, it will just feel different and more rewarding. My issue is more about the fact that you need to increase a stat by 4 points each level to keep it at the same relevance level, and we only get 2. Which if we count ONLY Strength / Finesse / Intelligence means that in order to stay at the same relevance in a particular stat we are supposed to get a whooping 10 points of stat increase from gear PER level, so at level 7 in order to keep the same stat relevance gear is supposed to provide extra 70 points, not counting stats besides the main three, my character managed to squeeze out 22 and that is 48 short. That in my opinion is unreasonable.
2) Racial skills:
Some of these do not work very well compared to others.
Flesh sacrifice works well, because it gives a scaling bonus of 25%. Metamorph works well as well, because it is an utility skill.
The above two work well because their usefulness stays constant regardless of attributes and regardless of level.
Dragon's blaze doesn't work very well because the damage scales with intelligence.
Encourage actually does scale with level but in my opinion very poorly and could use a significant buff.
3) Armor system:
It's alright to have this system of protection in which armor protects the wearer from negative effects but for this to be an effective system armor needs have have a significant enough value, imo AT LEAST 50% of the total HP pool. Right now being decked out in the best gear possible, while being under fortify and frost armour the total armor AND magical armor both add up to about 30% of the total character HP pool, which means that 70% of the time the character is prone to being chain CC'd.
To make it better I personally suggest armor to take a certain high % of damage while letting some of the damage slip through to the HP, that way armor will run out slower and will be more meaningful. For example armor could take 66% of the total damage received and let the other 33% affect HP.
4) Combat abilities:
I'm not exactly sure what was wrong with the cap of 5, and why it switched to these astronomical caps of 15, where each point is much less significant than it was in DOS1. Imo it's much more rewarding to have a meaningful 1 point in any given combat ability than having to take baby steps each level that you hardly notice.
Civil abilities are still capped at 5 btw so.. ?
5) Source skills:
When a skill requires a source point to use AND requires multiple memory slots, it should be quite more powerful than basic abilities. Overpower for example does exactly as much damage as Crippling blow, yes I know that it also destroys enemy armor if your armor is greater but accomplishing that is a feat in and of itself, that is just the attached utility.
I think that Source skills should either take only 1 slot of memory like any other skill, since they are already limited by source points OR they should be much more powerful than they currently are when compared to regular skills.
6) Bless:
It makes every detrimental surface completely irrelevant. I'm not sure if that's very cool. I can just cast bless on my character and rush through anything without a second thought.
That's my two cents for now.
