I bought the game at launch, played 3 hours and it felt like it was missing too many things for me to enjoy, so I put it down for later. With patch 8 I thought it would be a good time to try it again, and the game has indeed received quite a bit of polish, especially on the UI side, good job on that. However I still have many important issues with the philospophy behind interacting with the world that struck me when I played at launch and still irk me now.
First and foremost, after crashing from the ship and teaming with Shadowheart I ended up in front of the rune both time, and we have an option to teleport to a camp with no explanation whatsoever, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It immediatly broke immersion for me. Where is this camp ? Why is it safe ? How do I have access to it and everyone is just chilling in it when we're supposed to be stranded with an emergency on our hands ? Even without the magic teleportation out of nowhere, it still feels so out of place.
The rune part could be solved through Gale ; we meet him later and he explains a bit more about the runes, but he should either come out of this rune and give his explanations right now (or come out of the first rune you come across, actually), or the beach rune could simply be idle until you meet him, or not exist at all. It still leaves the camp thing that, paired with the absence of resting limits, simply goes against everything the story is seemingly trying to build.
Then, it is a bit of a detail but when meeting Astarion he jumps on our PC without any reaction from Shadowheart. In my last session she was even visible in the background and that made the situation even more awkward, but it still feels wrong to have someone put a knife to our throat and not even getting a reaction from other party members, especially when she noticed that we tried to save her and she would remember it two minutes ago.
My next point could be a cornercase linked to the way I played my games. I went Shadowheart -> Astarion -> lockpick the Crypt door both times. Then when I entered the part of the crypt where the thieves are, they just attacked without a word, without any indication about why we would attack each other. It feels like a regression from even BG1, where you would almost always trigger a dialogue, even if all choices would end up with a fight ; if I'm going to kill people, at least let me know why. Are they bloodthirsty enough to simply kill anyone on sight ? From their idle lines it feels like they are simply looting a crypt, not that they are out for murder.
Finally, and this is where my first run ended and where I'm at now, I got to the Lae'zel rescue and it felt so... manichean. I chose the barbarian approach, the Tiefling shot down the cage and then I had to choose between killing thme of killing Lae'zel. Once again, if this is supposed to be a mandatory fight I don't mind, but I need to have a say in the way my character approches the fight. I have nothing against the Tieflings and I fhought with Lae'zel to escape. Why would I go for anyone's throat without discussion ? At least let me back up from this choice and have Lae'zel attack them, then let me choose who I side with. The way it is scripted right now feels like I'm forced to take the decision to provoke the fight.
Gameplay wise, i still don't understand how hiding works when entering combat since I had the same issue today as I had two years ago, with the character breaking stealth entering combat and all the others hidden ones remaining out of combat but without being able to act. They don't roll initiative until they are discovered, which can't be the way it's intended to work. Since this behaviour occured every time I had the group hide and attack someone, I guess it isn't a bug and maybe I'm doing something wrong but if it is the case there should really be a UI indicator pointing me toward what to do.
I don't get how changing the talking character in dialogues works either ; I get the option to, but when I do it either changes nothing (as in I don't get any modificator changes from dialogue options, nor does the portrait of the talking character changes) or I take control of the wanted character outside of dialogue and I can see that the NPC and my other party member are talking, without any possibility to join in. I guess it is a multiplayer feature, if so please find a way to remove those kind of functionnalities from single player games. It gives bugged or broken features vibes when it is working properly.
Finally, I don't know if this was a bug or not, but when replying to the undead's question about life in the crypt, when I chose "I only value my life" (paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact line) the undead basically says "Ok", then I have to choose a different answer. If this is not a bug, then why would you propose this choice ? The undead doesn't even aknowledge this a "wrong" answer, it is so weird. (If this isn't meant to happen, I was talking with Shadowheart and tried to get back to my MC to do the talking, not to avail). Also, when I tried to attack the undead just to see what would happen, it simply says two different lines and I can't enter combat through the dialogue screen. Once again, if this isn' a bug, why would you put the option in the first place ? This is the first NPC we come across with trade and attack options, and half of them do nothing without any explanation.
On the topic of explanations, if feels like the game really lacks user feedback on many topics. I never know when I'm using the keys I collect in my inventory, what a lever does if it doesn't change something directly in my line of sight, where are the traps I sensed if my camera angle didn't show them while they briefly glowed, where a trap disarming tool breaks because of a fail attempt, if the plaque I'm trying to read is unreadable period or because I lack the knowledge to, etc. The amout of interactable empty containers adds to the overall confusion, and really distracted me from the important things to look for in a room. I'm not sure if there is a purpose behind the hundreds of empty vases or book stacks in the crypt, but I think I spent a good 10 minutes just navigating from one to another, opening them and getting nothing in return. I get how you'd want to make the world feel "full and alive", but it just feels bloated the way it is ; when I push Alt to see what I can loot, I'd like to assume my characters did the skiming for me and I can focus on the exciting stuff. As it is it feels like the least exciting mini-game : I won a battle, now I get to spend a minute opening irrelevant crates ! Hooray ! Besides, some crates with things in them don't appear on an Alt press when empty containers do, which kind of defeat the purpose of the Alt key.
Anyway, maybe it gets better in the next locations but I feel like the first impression is really important there, the crypt being kind of a test run for what a dungeon looks like in the game.
All of the above go back to my initial observation about interacting with the world and the way it feels off. Instead of having a small set of working interactions than allow me to engage with the environment, the NPCs and so on, the first 4 hours feel like a giant sandbox where half of the edge cases generated by the multiple approaches aren't handled properly. 4 hours is already a long time to allow to a game, and I didn't feel like I had one meaningful action or decision done past the ship tutorial. I just clumsily stumbled through a crypt, fought a bunch of bandits for no good reason and had a mistery undead ask me questions then refuse to elaborate. Nothing felt connected to the parasite I have in my brain, companions just randomly popped off to join me and I could freely stroll around digging chests, but it just feels like artifical and segregated functionnalities rather than a story my character is experiencing. I'm really worried that if I feel like this on the scale of the very beginning of Act 1, a much larger setting will be even more disembodied.
