So, after excessively playing the early access these last days - I have the time because I am on maternal leave - and now finishing one of the playthroughs that I started, I thought I would write a little review.
Overall, this already feels like a great game. It has the special something that many RPGs are lacking in my opinion: an enticing story hook. I also love the origin characters, love the music, love the landscapes, the combat system - basically so far there is little that I don't like. There are of course still some bugs that frustrated me a bit, but I won't focus too much on that.
There is a bit of critcism I have and some suggestions.
One thing that did not make so much sense to me was fighting at the goblin camp. I went into the Temple of Selune, freed the druid and then proceeded to take out the three goblin leaders. I tried to be sneaky, and thought one good thing would be to destroy the wardrums so that they couldn't alarm everyone. That did not really work. The drum was destroyed and people took notice of my vandalism. I talked my way out of it, but as soon as the fight started, one of the goblins still went to where the drum used to be and made the sound. That might be a bug - I know - but I had the feeling like destroying the wardrums should give the player an advantage, and it doesn't really work, yet, as intended maybe? The other thing was that as soon as the goblins inside the temple turned hostile on me, those outside that were partying as well. And that makes no sense. They might have heard battle noises, but they kept partying outside and didn't come inside. They didn't see that the culprit was me and my party. I think they shouldn't turn hostile. They are drunk and wouldn't notice what's going on. The goblins on guard duty were still friendly after my party slaughtered their entire camp. Also, I have no idea whatever happened to the owlbear cub during that fight. It vanished. Didn't take part in the fight either.
As of right now, it seems I can fast travel from everywhere, which also isn't always logical. If I am in a dangerous area with no magical rune on the wall I shouldn't be able to simply escape from there via fast travel.
Another bit of criticism: That moondisk puzzle is just a tiny bit too annoying, in my opinion. The disks turn so slowly and only in one direction, that makes it a bit bothersome.
Some suggestions: a more organized hotbar would be nice, or a way to autosort it and not having to sort it manually. It gets rather cluttered. And I can only imagine how confusing it will look for a lv. 10 wizard who can upcast spells, etc. Maybe have the upcasted spells in a pop-up, similar to what you did with the Hex spell, and not as separate little icons. We don't need 5 different Magic Missile icons in the hotbar, etc. (it's going to be such a mess!). Also, it's still a bit too easy to confuse recasting a spell with activating it or reapplying it (thinking of Witch Bolt, Hex, Hunter's Mark). The icons are slightly different and reading helps of course, but maybe there is a way to make it even more visible by having special positions in the hotbar. Most of all I am just too lazy to sort it all myself...
When it comes to character creation and level-up, as of right now everything is always kind of set at the suggested options and one can change it. And there is a button to set it back to suggested. That's okay, but I think it would be good if everything was empty at the start. It would also make more sense to have the choice of new spells above the prepared spells for casters.
That's as much as I can think of right now.
