Inside fort joy was kinda dissapointing for me. All the "prisoners" are just running around selling GOOD weapons to us and we are killing magisters with ease even with our power from source muted which makes us dangerous? Personally I don't think there should be any vendors in fort joy (at the seeker camp yeah). I think it would be interesting if you started out crafting wooden weapons/armor and then upgraded to metal once you killed a magister, which would be much stronger. Would actually feel like your a prisoner making a prison break, rather than how it is now where magisters just look incompetent and can't do anything right.
I would have liked the option to orchestrate some sort of prison break with the other prisoners as well. I think there's a ton of potential for a more interesting plot inside fort joy. These prisoners you help free could be your vendors on lady vengeance. I mean I walked around the island killing all the magisters and they don't even react. They are hostile towards you (even though they don't even know it was you) but they don't move or anything and just sit there while you murder all their friends like they don't know what's going on.
And then you just walk up and kill the judge, and kill every magister, and unlock all the doors and what not, and the prisoners are still there being imprisoned? What? Why don't you guys leave?
I really liked driftwood but damn was it annoying the first time around. It felt like the game was calling me an idiot for not following it's intended direction. "why are you going east you idiot you can't fight those magisters they are lvl 13, you gotta go kill THESE magisters over here who are lvl 9". You have to clear this cave of monsters before you're strong enough to fight those magisters duh. Nothing makes me remember I'm playing a game more than levels. If you are going to make some magisters levels different then they should look different/more powerful to compensate, otherwise my immersion is broken. Maybe some more interesting names (like a title) would do the trick as well to make them stand out and gives them a reason why they kicked my guys ass. But the thing is the game doesn't intend you to go to the black pits that early, it intends you do things in a rather specific order so that you have the levels and gear to keep doing things at its set rate.
And the thing that makes driftwood even worse is that there's no sense of story direction guiding you. When you arrive in driftwood and help lizard lady she tells you to go find sorcerers, which are in ALL directions. You can GO anywhere to find people to help you get more source, but you should probably go kill mordus first because he's level 11 and everyone else is like 13+... lol. Ryker is only level 12.... but in order to do his quest you have to fight past multiple lvl 13s, typically leaving you at 14 when you turn his quest in and making the fight with him really easy.
I was playing with ifan in party lone wolf and I wanted to go check out his story and the lone wolves are in the lumbermill which is north. It makes sense logically I should go check that out. Oh wait they are lvl 15 (or 14? don't quite remember) and attack you immediately when you try to talk to the boss, jk ifan reload.
I initially didn't free the lizard lady you need because I thought magisters would be hostile towards me if I killed the two who are setting up her execution... Turns out you just murder them and the other magisters don't give a fuck, and don't even bother looking into it or checking the lizard ladys house? She's just sitting there after magisters hauled her off to be executed and now everything is fine? What the hell? I mean I guess she's always in her basement they didn't know was there but it's laughable how easy she gets back into town. She just walks across the river and there's no guards or anyone overlooking this area. Voidwoken could just walk into town and start murdering people before magisters would act. Lmao.
Driftwood was just full of things to trip over which really hurt the pacing of the area overall and makes it feel tedious and annoying at many times if you aren't on its set path which is really hard to know what that path is because it's only indicated by the levels of the enemies you fight and NOTHING else.
I don't know if they intended to make the magisters look like monkeys, but they certainly succeeded in that regard imo.
Arx probably made the most sense from a story perspective, but it was the most annoying area to actually play. Tons of mysteries with vague clues left me heading online looking for help throughout most of it. The guards in this game need some serious help though, magisters and paladins alike. I went through the barrack and murdered most paladins to get to lvl 21 to make the final mission a little easier and no one even cared at all. I murdered one of the guards right in front of another guard then I persuaded her that it wasn't me. Aren't they facing voidwoken that are constantly attacking the city? What will arx do if all of it's guards are dead? I guess voidwoken won't come now surely they wouldn't take advantage of a defenseless city.
I also find it funny how a mercanary you hire passes lucians statue test... They are mercanaries, I mean sure they haven't killed or stolen anything since you've seen them but never? Really? I find that so hard to believe.
I grilled it quite a bit but overall it was a very fun game I enjoyed myself thoroughly both times I played through it and I'm still uncovering some new stuff and trying out different things in a 3rd play through, but there are plenty of times I need to suspend my disbelief. It's hard to say which area I enjoyed the most, all of them were quite flawed in one way or another, arx was definitely my least favorite even if I had the least problems with it story wise. As a game I still prefer gameplay over story any day.
