So I picked up the game last week and there are some issues around the user interface, and possibly content, that have me doubting my purchase. In order of least to worst:
1) When selecting an action button (jump, push, attack, ranged attack, spells, etc.) I often then receive information that makes me want to do something different. The instinct from other games is to toggle the button with a left click, then try right click, then check the key binds for a command (but you can't press ESC in this mode). Frustratingly, I am stuck with the selection and can't easily deselect. ESC + right mouse to cancel action doesn't work. The best I've been able to find is to toggle into and out of turn-based mode. Is there an easy way to do this? It really should be to just press the button again, either with a left click or a right click.
2) The words I most dread to hear are "that's interesting" or "hmmn". It means my character or one of my companions have seen something that I personally don't. I can't ask them what they've seen. I can't ask myself what I've seen. Thus I begin a bizarre search for something to mouse over that I personally cannot see because of the limitations of the display. It really breaks the fourth wall when my character is supposed to know something, but the devs won't tell me as the player!
3) So I think I just recruited a pet dog near a goblin village. I'm a paladin who's on a mission to protect some tieflings and druids from a group of goblins looking to murder them. Seems pretty much in line with my oath to defend the light. So I climb up some vines and kill a sleeping hobgoblin. No problem. Then I sneak into a building from behind and see a goblin in ambush mode facing down at the main entrance. I put a crossbow bolt in his back and he dies, and again no problem. I've noticed a guy on another roof, so we climb back down the vines and sneak around looking for a way up onto his roof from behind. I end up spotting two guards on another gate facing away, so popping back to camp for Astarion I have him execute a ranged sneak attack on one goblin. This starts combat with the other, but not before briefly starting to show a cut scene, which is then cut off. My team hit him with arrows and cantrips and I move in to finish him off face to face. That's when I get to see the cut-scene for breaking my oath. Unlike in real D&D, there's no way to tell the computer it's a bad DM and pull out a copy of Aristotle's "The Ethics" to back me up. Why do cut-scenes not account for combat that's already started? It's ethical to kill someone, so long as they didn't deserve a cut-scene? Seriously, getting through an entire game with a paladin character without a cut-scene interruption seems so unlikely as to prevent me from ever playing one on release. This aspect of the U/I is totally broken.
