I hadn’t played the game since the initial release, so I fired it up recently to see how things were going. I’ve many opinions on the current state – very good overall, btw – so I’m just going to touch on the more important ones first, in the knowledge that few will want to read a post of this length to the final paragraph.
Some bugs I encountered (that I can remember)
1) During the early stages of levelling up, I was granted an extra attribute point to spend after I’d exhausted all other points (this occurred several times on random characters)
2) The flight skill for the polymorph only works for one battle: casting it during another battle fails to give you the flight option itself – it’s solved by reloading
3) The totems often failed to fire (it almost seemed as though their ‘turn’ would be skipped entirely at times)
4) Seems to be many instances of the enemy AI ‘losing it’, and just wandering about aimlessly during battle as though somehow concussed – consistent enough to be a notable problem
CC - My Major Gripe
With so much polish being applied to the various cogs of the game, it’s even easier than before to spot the one rusty dud that’s not doing its job.
This is a game, which implies you derive your satisfaction from actually playing it. CC prevents you from playing the game, because you can’t do anything with CC’d characters. I’m now leaning more towards the other comments I’ve read on the subject that suggest turning it into something that cripples your characters to various degrees but still allows them to act in some limited form.
A CC’d character should be permitted one last roll of the dice, in other words. I think the effects should remain devastating, but not to the point of loss of control. I’m thinking along the lines of severely impaired attack damage, spell damage, movement speed, movement capacity, elemental resistance (and so on), but still the ability to do SOMETHING, however minor, that might require some grey matter.
It’s clearly the most cack-handed mechanic in the game at the moment. I hope to god they address it, as it was pretty damn bad for me during my play through.
The Economy
This seems near-perfect, if possibly too perfect/streamlined. It could potentially use some roughing up, as it seemed as though diligent looting gave me just enough to always be in a position to buy something better. A minor criticism, but it’s much-improved over the last miserly experience I had with it.
The Hannibal Lecter Elves
No joke – I found the cannibalistic feature of the elves sickening and gratuitous. It doesn’t appear to play any intelligent role in the narrative surrounding them, and smacks of trying too hard to turn an old cliché on its head: the blandly stoic elves that appear in every other fantasy as boring perfection – beautiful, ‘cultured’, the height of civilised civilisation etc. It’s poor taste to have to go around picking up bloodied body parts for consumption – really sick stuff. Can this mechanic of eating the essence of others not take some less repellent form? Maybe soul fragments or something? It’s seriously wrong to go around picking up body parts in a game that doesn’t apply any meaningful or though-provoking narrative to the activity. You can do much better than this.
The Art
I really liked the new animations and spell effects: flashy without being garish about it. Leaping into the air with the wings never gets old, and it seems like some outstanding effort is going into the art in general – the Braccus statue on the beach, for example, and the sheer variety of armour and enemy variation. There’s very little sense of visual fatigue.
The AI
Apart from the random concussion bug mentioned above, I feel this is the biggest improvement overall. There’s bound to be bugs and shortcomings with something this complex, so I’m sure they’ll be ironed out in time. The enemy seems much more devious now, and puts up a very nice challenge. Looking forward to more developments here.
Levelling
Far too difficult in the early stages, without presenting a fair challenge. Level 1-3 is a chore, because you’re generally fighting enemies of a higher level and having to desperately scrounge for gear and spells just so you can actually present a strategy, rather than just hoping to get lucky during the next onslaught. There needs to be more immediate access to the tools that allow you to strategise – normal weapons and armour, a few more skills. The characters are too impoverished early on: this may make sense in narrative terms, but it’s a bore gameplaywise to have to wait until level 3 before you can start to think strategically about encounters.
Custom Party Characters
Brilliant idea, but too limited as is. There needs to be more options for tailoring the custom classes you ‘pick’ for your party, allowing you to at least specify the schools the wizard specialises in etc.
Shields
A quick note to say they’re awesome now, and really add strategic depth with the armour regenerating abilities – keep it up!
Summoning school
Really like the totems, but the incarnate is far too weak and underwhelming at the moment. Need to be able to level him up a lot faster. Also don’t like the idea of having to cast so many spells on it to buff it up.
Polymorph
The physical armour regen spell is way too powerful. Needs to less armour restored, I’d say – 50% less at least. The bull spell, as noted elsewhere, is too similar to other abilities and is not all that interesting. The wings spell, however, is perfect, and visually spectacular. May be too powerful for certain classes, but was just right for my shield and sword dude.
