Gosh I don't know where to start with this one! To be clear, I only completed the first act, and have ended up dropping it a short way into act 2.
Let's start with the positive shall we? I really liked the setup of the first act, the rival you start with is extremely hateable in all the right ways, and the idea that your choices in that early moment of crisis influences which party members trust your leadership enough to join your team is super cool. The story is one of the less eye-rolly I've played in the genre which I suppose counts for something. The character portraits are all very good and in general the design and atmosphere of these early areas I found quite nostalgic in a way I'm finding it hard to put to words, and is the main reason I find it a great shame that I didn't really have much fun actually playing the game.
Alright time for the negative... The roleplaying and dialogue options are severely limited by the alignment stuff (I've always disliked D&D style alignment so I'm somewhat biased here) and I was often presented with a set of choices that forced me to act out of character. I'm a bit of a role player even in games like say, the Yakuza series, so this is a pretty major downside for me. The character building is also extremely obtuse and filled with options that sound good but are secretly useless.
The combat is fine for this type of game, although I, like many people it seems, found the turn based mode to be the better way to play (despite a number of pathfinding bugs, ironically). The vast majority of encounters in the first act are either completely trivial, or borderline impossible unless you know this one weird trick that makes it completely trivial. This usually comes in the form of making sure you have a specific spell on hand (or more likely scroll in act 1) that nullifies whatever thing the specific enemy you're going up against does. Given how key preparation like this is for even the earliest fights/dungeons in the game, it's then baffling that the game purposefully directs you away from the quest that unlocks the merchant who actually sells those items, by pressing the importance of catching up with the rival rather than progressing the main quest. I don't necessarily dislike the idea of proper prep or character building being key to an adventure (I love the Etrian Series for example!), but I just don't find it fun or satisfying in this game. It doesn't really ever feel like you came up with a clever strategy to win a difficult fight in these instances, since it mostly just boils down to applying a bunch of buffs pre-emptively getting a sneak attack in and then just doing what you'd do in one of the trivial encounters. Winning an encounter that previously gave me trouble didn't feel triumphant, it just felt like I'd cheesed it.
The game also suffers from an unfortunate combination of being deliberately obtuse, and frequent bugs that mean any time something doesn't go the way you expected, it's hard to tell if it's on purpose or not. Did that spider react to a spell that has never provoked an opportunity attack before because it had some skill that let it, or because it bugged out? I guess I'll never know.
Turn based mode also ends up with many wasted turns due to a number of bugs/oversights that make knowing how much of your action a given move will take unreliable at best. I also had a number of moments where I'd click to attack an enemy, only for my character to run off in the other direction prompting multiple opportunity attacks on the way, which made a lot of encounters far more frustrating than they should have been.
Exploring the world map by forging these little pathways by picking which direction to go at crossroads was really neat I thought, but generally getting from place to place is a bit of a chore as none of the random encounters are particularly interesting, and the story encounters you have often foist ridiculous negatives on you (healer kidnapped by slavers followed by an event that causes the main character to be permanently fatigued until you backtrack to the start of the map for example), that just make the game a complete slog to play.
In general, I think a lot of the games problems come from being a little too faithful to the source material while lacking the thing that makes it all work: a human GM who wants everyone to have fun. It being so close to the ttrpg draws a lot of unfavourable comparisons, and the game often feels like it's being run by one of those GMs who thinks it's their job to do everything they can to kill the players, aka the type no-one wants to play with.
I only had a brief look at the barony management stuff so I'll reserve comment on it, but it did look like it could have gone either way.
None of the above is necessarily enough to make me feel badly about a game, and in isolation I've played and loved games that had the above flaws, but for me the good moments are just not interesting or fun enough to make me feel like continuing to slog through the bad parts. It's a game I really wanted to like though, so maybe I'll try the sequel in few years time once I've washed the taste of this one out of my mouth.
Let's start with the positive shall we? I really liked the setup of the first act, the rival you start with is extremely hateable in all the right ways, and the idea that your choices in that early moment of crisis influences which party members trust your leadership enough to join your team is super cool. The story is one of the less eye-rolly I've played in the genre which I suppose counts for something. The character portraits are all very good and in general the design and atmosphere of these early areas I found quite nostalgic in a way I'm finding it hard to put to words, and is the main reason I find it a great shame that I didn't really have much fun actually playing the game.
Alright time for the negative... The roleplaying and dialogue options are severely limited by the alignment stuff (I've always disliked D&D style alignment so I'm somewhat biased here) and I was often presented with a set of choices that forced me to act out of character. I'm a bit of a role player even in games like say, the Yakuza series, so this is a pretty major downside for me. The character building is also extremely obtuse and filled with options that sound good but are secretly useless.
The combat is fine for this type of game, although I, like many people it seems, found the turn based mode to be the better way to play (despite a number of pathfinding bugs, ironically). The vast majority of encounters in the first act are either completely trivial, or borderline impossible unless you know this one weird trick that makes it completely trivial. This usually comes in the form of making sure you have a specific spell on hand (or more likely scroll in act 1) that nullifies whatever thing the specific enemy you're going up against does. Given how key preparation like this is for even the earliest fights/dungeons in the game, it's then baffling that the game purposefully directs you away from the quest that unlocks the merchant who actually sells those items, by pressing the importance of catching up with the rival rather than progressing the main quest. I don't necessarily dislike the idea of proper prep or character building being key to an adventure (I love the Etrian Series for example!), but I just don't find it fun or satisfying in this game. It doesn't really ever feel like you came up with a clever strategy to win a difficult fight in these instances, since it mostly just boils down to applying a bunch of buffs pre-emptively getting a sneak attack in and then just doing what you'd do in one of the trivial encounters. Winning an encounter that previously gave me trouble didn't feel triumphant, it just felt like I'd cheesed it.
The game also suffers from an unfortunate combination of being deliberately obtuse, and frequent bugs that mean any time something doesn't go the way you expected, it's hard to tell if it's on purpose or not. Did that spider react to a spell that has never provoked an opportunity attack before because it had some skill that let it, or because it bugged out? I guess I'll never know.
Turn based mode also ends up with many wasted turns due to a number of bugs/oversights that make knowing how much of your action a given move will take unreliable at best. I also had a number of moments where I'd click to attack an enemy, only for my character to run off in the other direction prompting multiple opportunity attacks on the way, which made a lot of encounters far more frustrating than they should have been.
Exploring the world map by forging these little pathways by picking which direction to go at crossroads was really neat I thought, but generally getting from place to place is a bit of a chore as none of the random encounters are particularly interesting, and the story encounters you have often foist ridiculous negatives on you (healer kidnapped by slavers followed by an event that causes the main character to be permanently fatigued until you backtrack to the start of the map for example), that just make the game a complete slog to play.
In general, I think a lot of the games problems come from being a little too faithful to the source material while lacking the thing that makes it all work: a human GM who wants everyone to have fun. It being so close to the ttrpg draws a lot of unfavourable comparisons, and the game often feels like it's being run by one of those GMs who thinks it's their job to do everything they can to kill the players, aka the type no-one wants to play with.
I only had a brief look at the barony management stuff so I'll reserve comment on it, but it did look like it could have gone either way.
None of the above is necessarily enough to make me feel badly about a game, and in isolation I've played and loved games that had the above flaws, but for me the good moments are just not interesting or fun enough to make me feel like continuing to slog through the bad parts. It's a game I really wanted to like though, so maybe I'll try the sequel in few years time once I've washed the taste of this one out of my mouth.