Yes, but in the alpha that was not the case. You could use the skills as long as you had obtained them at some point, assumingly that would have remained with elves, otherwise their passive goes from being decent/powerful, to utter shit lol.
I can afford a skillbook rather easily, I don't get to determine what skill (if any) I get from eating someone.
If I can't auto-use it, then there's not a use for it at all. I'd rather get 5% increase crit chance and 2 free initiative like the humans, better resists like the lizards, or 10% increased health and 5% increased dodging.
Let's be real here, we're sacrificing an awful lot for the ability to occasionally gain insight into a quest, I've encountered exactly one time where I've gotten important quest information from a corpse, and by that point I already knew what I was going to do anyways. There's the Elf who you can munch on in the starting area for a free treasure location, but that's equally revealed by a rather low check.
The free abilities, they would be cool except for how ridiculously random they are. A lot of people thought the old version was wrong, I disagreed, I simply thought the other races needed a buff. As it is, it doesn't make much sense to play Elf, they're not unique in the slightest due to the Shapeshifting Mask and abilities being largely unusable.
It'd be one thing if there were unique spells you could learn, or something otherwise interesting about it. As it stands, the glamour has kinda worn off. Compared to the Alpha, it's just not interesting. While I agree, it might have been ridiculous if for example, cutting Alexander's head off would grant me a t4 source skill from another tree that I had 0 points in, it wouldn't be too ridiculous as I'd still have to pour 3 points into memory to use it. While I agree with people that at times it can seem ridiculous, gaining access to skills that they haven't had to invest points in for, these skills still take up slots, and more importantly, they scale based on stats that the person isn't likely to build. Oh no, as a Ranger I get Adrenaline level 1 for free, it takes up an extra slot, it has it's own drawbacks. Oh no, I get a combat spell, oh wait, it scales off of intelligence, and does 1/2 or less the damage that my mage would do with the skill, it's a waste of space essentially.
Gives extra exposition, though for the most part it isn't well made compared to the start of the game. I feel like they needed more people to test the parts of the game that are later, they're quite unbalanced, and not really that fun to play, that goes for the rest of the game too. It's rare that I got anything of note from eating flesh in the mid-late game.
For the most part, talking to the spirits IS the exact same thing as eating their bodies, they'll give you the same information. It seems that the spirit talking has completely subsumed the flesh eating after you obtain it.
This is coming from someone who has put 60 hours into the game since it released.
