Best Decisions
1) Splitting the game up into different acts. It facilitated testing and patching enormously.
I agree it is easier for the developers. But I Had the feeling with <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> that theire where 4 seperate gamses with a main quest. I have nothing against acts but:
You should always be allowed to return to every part of the game. People who missed the crystal bag for instance can't get it when they are in act 2. I liked the acts system of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" />. it had some sort of semi acts. The world was sepperaed but also as a whole. (you had rivellon, verdistis, elven forest, hall of dwarfs...). Some say that those could also be called acts. since the enemies were to difficult if you hadn't solved some quests.
If the first suggestion can be (hopefuly) completed maybe some act crossing quests <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" /> (I loved the necromancer quest in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> <span class='standouttext'>Spoiler : </span><span class='spoiler'> but it's kind of part of the main quest to </span> )
and last but not least. A world map. In <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> you had the world map with the teleporters on it I missed in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" />. Now the four acts were to much sepperated. Because every acts plays of on Nemisis (almost all the time) a world map would be helpfull and also reinforce the feeling that acts are connected other then the main quest.
Key Strengths
1) The humor. There are some very funny moments in the game without it becoming ridiculous. As this was one of the design goals, I'm happy to see that it worked out.
2) The ending. I really like the ending of the game. I realize that it is a bit controversial and some people might have problems with it, but I really like it.
3) The freedom of character development. Few systems allow you to develop your character in such a variety of ways. While one can argue about some parts of it, I think, in general, it's a pretty solid mechanism. Maybe it's a bit too complex from time to time, but we'll work on that.
Areas for Improvement
1) The battlefields. The idea works really well, but for a variety of reasons, we didn't implement them the exact way we had wanted.
2) The party interface. It's far from bad, but we could have done better.
3) The dialogue system. To prevent some of the problems we had with Divine Divinity, we limited the options the designers had, but in doing so, we sometimes went too far. The result was that some quests weren't implemented the way they should have been.
A nice analysis. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />
<span class='standouttext'>Spoiler : </span><span class='spoiler'> I loved the ending <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> It hes that 24 season ending feeling. Personally i think happy endings are overrated </span>
Personal Thoughts
One day, I would really like to make a game without having to worry about funding the next month of development. I find that too many parts of our design are compromised by these worries, and that's a pity.
One of the pains of being a small company but it's better then spewwing games out that are avarage at best like EA. In this case th cure would be worse the illness.