I am enjoying the game a lot, huge thanks to Larian for a stable and fun Early Access experience: but I'm being mostly critical in this post from now on to help shape improvements.
1. Overall: the start feels a LOT like DOS2. Shipwreck and a deserted beach, with removing the collars as a burning mission goal? Meet shipwreck and a deserted beach with removing the tadpoles as a burning mission goal.
2. My facial animations during dialogue are already repetitive, sometimes quite poorly matched to the mood.
3. There are SO MANY empty chests/bookshelves and SO MUCH clutter. Who actually finds accumulating SO MUCH junk and carting it around fun? There has to be a more fun way to reward exploration and build up gold than this.
4. Menus, equipping stuff and selecting characters and taking actions all feel non-streamlined and clunky. If anything there's a crazy amount of hotbuttons on screen and it must be off-putting for anyone not from a hardcore DOS2 background.
5. The crypt where you suddenly have a million traps to disarm is really laborious. One extreme to the other. Find the trap, Right click, select disarm, roll, rinse repeat. About twelve times in ONE ROOM. It's too all or nothing. Traps are good, make each one important though and give XP or some other reward for disarming.
6. Attacking from everyone in Stealth is odd: characters get skipped in the initiative queue and the party ambush seems over complex to pull off.
7. The narrator voice over: she has a stunning voice and does a fab job. But often she is voicing stuff that the animations are already showing us. If someone doesn't speak, but you hear their voice anyway, we don't need a narrator to tell us that. You are guilty of telling us rather than showing us. More powerful to show, not tell. Don't over explain.
