Ok. I've played through about half of act 1 and will try to give impressions without spoilers.
I've only tried 2 chars so far in the full game, the vampiress and the battlemage. I learned the hard way that the battlemage is called the battlemage because he has to do a bit of fighting/tanking IMO. The skills 'stoneskin' and 'fire spiral' are very nice in combination for most melee monsters but you can specialise in what you like. Ice mage is my next plan I think. 'Ring of ice' is plain nasty, even with just one point in it. Kills and slows monsters.
Lightning strike is awesome against crowds but sucks vs single targets. (It arcs back and forth between multiple tagets)
You will get enough runes to exchange at the combo-master for the skills you need. (Really neat touch BTW) Before you level up a skill and increase the recharge time socket runes into 'itamz' to 'pump' the skill that is desired. This will give increased skill lvl with no increase in recharge. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />
Anyway, my preferred char at the moment is my second, the vampiress. All of her skills so far are very cool. With a 100 damage sword I can achieve over 200 normal damage in vampire mode! Over 400 with a hard hit! (and that's noooooblar <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />) I was really impressed with the 'vampire's kiss' skill which will cause monsters to slowly bleed to death. The graphics are very cool for this!
Ok, so overall I like this game a lot. It has made me laugh several times with the voice-acting. The mage will yell amusingly at you if you try to give him an item he can't use. The Vampiress' evil scream as she assumes vampire form is very cool.
The respawning monsters are a pain but are very good for 'item farming', the discovery of the waypoints has saved me a lot of grief in this area though.
There is a bit of a graphical slowdown in the town areas, especially with full zoom out. It was no biggie for me though. Also lower-area monsters will spawn at the same-ish level as you giving a minimum amount of xp as far as I've noticed. They become far easier to kill though.
Its fun, but tedious at times, there are a few bugs with the quests. Mounting a horse in combat is not a good idea. It happened a few times with my vamp. She would hop on but the horse would run away leaving her 'mounting' mid-air! Funny, it should be patched at some point however.
Do I like it as much as my other new game Spellforce? Maybe, I have to try out all the characters and finish bronze difficuly fist to get a good idea of what its really about. I'll be playing it a lot for sure. (Took a holiday from work yesterday and did a 12-hour stretch so it definately holds my attention!)
I will also be making a battlemage that works properly too!
What's your handle on the Ascaron forums Cleg? Just curious.
You others should import the english version. The gore is very fitting to the game. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />
