I will try to organize this review, and give it structure, but no promises.
Spoilers GaloreSo last night I beat Act 1 of this game with my long term friend, who I have played 100+ hours of the first game with.
He played a dual-wield strength warfare dwarf, as he was testing if dual wield as a non-rogue seemed worth it. I played a Ranger elf, with a point into scoundrel from character creation. We also had Lohse, who was made into a sort of utility, healer, support, tank, thing.
We spent 28 hours playing in the past 4-5 days, about 85% of those were on on this playthrough, though we did play on some other characters beforehand. Meaning we had an idea of what we were getting into when we made these characters.
Summary of our playthrough, will elaborate on some points later on: I was going to keep it here, but it is really long and I worry some people don't care. So here is a url to an image of it, read if you wish. The important parts will be discussed in the next sections.
Summary Part 1 Summary Part 2 Big take aways:Remember how archery was pretty lame in the original game up until you got to mid game, then it was the powerhouse? Dear god, it could not have change more. It was gloriously powerful, maybe almost a bit too strong. By level 7 I had like at least 23 finesse and 14 wits, and I still had 12 constitution and 13 memory. My elf couldn't have succeeded on her own, at least not easily, but the tanks let her go crazy.
I felt like there were less swarms of enemies, and more just controlled and balanced squads, when it came to fight composition.
Some of the puzzles felt not so puzzling thanks to exploits that tended to be about the use of teleport, or teleport style spells such as phoenix dive.
I didn't mention it, but loot was so freaking weird and inconsistent. Both of my characters, Lohse and the huntress, ended without ANY rings, they never used any, and both got their first belts soon before the final fight. Wands also didn't feel too useful, and very often came with odd stuff like strength or finesse or even warfare on them.
I didn't understand attitude when it came to vendors, though in all fairness I didn't look too much into it. I also felt like there needed to be more distinct vendors. The people who looked like vendors often weren't, and the people who were vendors seemed random at times. Such as the pyrokinetic vendor being the lizard with the oranges (I am bad with names it seems), who you have a chance to become hostile with, or butter, who is seemingly randomly the hunstman vendor.
Repair hammers were one time use, but tongs were infinite.
Crafting felt lacking, but I assume that is alpha related. (In fact, a lot of this is, but I am voicing the big stuff I noted)
Source powers were cool, but also some felt odd. I expect more are going to be added, but I wanted to see like a super fireball for pyro. And for the hunter source power, I get that arrows are aoe, and that ricochet and hunstman's fang are potentially multi-target. But I was expecting like an arrow storm, as in a volley of arrows in a circle, or a super snipe. The arrow spray felt like a great option to have, but as the only hunstman source power it felt lame. While jumping into someone's face was fun, the archers are about getting on high ground and having great range, but in order to use arrow spray you have to be pointblank, if single target, or at a medium distance if multi target. I made it work, and I'll be honest, the dynamic of going in and out of combat was REALLY fun when I had 6 movement speed. But when I think of a hunter I don't think of a 60deg cone spray and pray.
Specific things that felt overpowered:THIS MEANS things that we found that we felt made the game easier than we felt it should be.
We could teleport objects from anywhere to anywhere if we could see them. This felt like an exploit for chests behind jail-style doors, or for the meat golems, as mentioned.
In general, hunters. NOW, maybe this was because strength-dual-wield dwarf isn't that great in terms of damage, and same thing with a utility lohse, but I felt like a I was a tad bit stronger than I should have been, even when compared to innately weaker class setups. I think the largest reason for this was that blood sacrifice and adrenaline, which were easy to multiclass into at the start of the game, paired with high initiative allowed me to start off every fight with the first turn, and the ability to damage boost myself, and buff to 6 ap, which allowed for ricochet and marksman's fang (the penetrating shot), or just two normal crossbow shots, turn one. If I had a bow it allowed for three attacks. I simply didn't feel like I was getting terribly punished for how much damage focus I was doing when it came to gear and stats. The only time this wasn't the case was when I got my butt handed to me at the historian fight. The skeletons were tough, and the one that bound or health pools forced me to be very concious of my attacks, and weighing the risk of attacking him and maybe critting myself.
Specific things that felt like bugs or problems that need fixing:The bracchus rex maze, the flenser meat golems. The ice dragon, shane?, t-posed for a second or two after he changed forms, both into lizard and into dragon.
When you do the arena and beat your companions, the game force revives you. This is a problem because you can have a blood rose elixir active by this point, and this means that even if you don't die in the arena, you lose the permanent buff.
If you save the game in the middle of an action, it cancels the action. This is big because my friend quicksaved in combat as I was using my arrow spray. I got off three arrows and then the attack just stopped, taking the source point and three ap with it.
REALLY BIG EXPLOIT. For the noxious bulbs. If you have multiple blue bulbs, and at least one bulb, you can set them up so that they infinite loop. The fire bulb leaks fire and hits the blue bulbs, causing them all to spew water and electrocute it for a surprising amount of burst damage. In combat, if the bulbs are setup but not cycling, and you hit one, and still have an extra ap, the bulbs cycle as if the game was in a procedural combat. We replicated this glitch multiple times, in at least three different areas with three different setups. We would hit the bulb and have one ap left, and then we would just stand there, every two seconds or so the bulbs would explode in a burst of damage, and this would repeat until we ended our turn. The bulbs could do negligable damage to an enemy, but as long as we didn't end the turn the enemy would eventually die. Honestly we didn't do this too often, as we wanted to enjoy more of the fights. But this exploit was really fun to do, as it was funny to watch enemies shred, and we also wanted to test how far we could push it.
Not so much a bug, but a suggestion. For the elf's ability to eat flesh, I disliked that I couldn't tell which body parts gave me powers. I know the mystery is part of the fun, but the limbs provide very very powerful health potions, but they could also give me abilities. I never actually did this, honestly, but this could promote quicksaving, eating the limb to see if it has powers, and then reloading if it doesn't. I know it is more the player's fault in that case, but the current unlabeled system somewhat promotes this save scummy behavior. Minor thing though.
I'm gonna end this here, but I may add edits below. I think I covered all the big things, probably repeated myself. I wanted to post this in the hopes that it could help any devs that see it. I may not be the first to report a lot of this stuff, but I hope it helps show if something is prevalent or not. This game was money well spent, and it was only a somewhat incomplete act one. Tack on a harder difficulty and I would call it a fully game on it's own. There is a lot I hope to see change, either because I feel it has issues, or I just want a new experience, but I am loving what I have seen.
