I try to structure my posts as reviews but truth be told I'm a little baffled as to how to approach this game.
I know nothing about DND, I've played only a few games of its genre, am not usually a person who values story in games, AND feel like it was overhyped to me. I'm probably not the person to ask about this game. That said, I've enjoyed it a lot.
It's one of the busiest games ever made. While I could spend some time just chilling in Yakuza or whatever, this game has had no downtime in my almost 90 hours of playtime. It feels absolutely enormous.
I've enjoyed the story and after both Original Sin titles feel like it's the strongest Larian outing to date. While not too different from those titles in presentation or story, it's just much more confident and a little less silly. I felt like Original Sin titles tried a little too hard, yet this game only had one really obnoxious NPC and they were a really minor character. Pretty much every story beat and joke landed, and there were some really hard-hitting moments.
I'm not sure I liked the combat, though. Divinity titles used a far more approachable system which I wish was the case here, but instead it felt like for half the game I was trying to understand it. At times it felt like reading Wikipedia with how you click on help and just mouse over words that lead to other words. There are several things to balance at the same time and it never feels like the game warrants it considering most of the time you can replenish everything between each and every fight and not even feel the minor resource drain. It also doesn't help that it seems DND doesn't have your usual RPG number-go-up formula which leads to some headache-inducing choices when it comes to equipment and, later in the game, led to me mostly ignoring tons of equippables I would pick up unless they were super rare.
The game knows that and does try to make each encounter unique, so at times it feels like a cRPG take on something like Undertale or Lisa: games where each encounter would usually be seen once and never again just to showcase a character, a gimmick, or a puzzle.
It's also a bit of a shame that the game is still quite janky. From often weird subtitles that either display wrong or lines that repeat to the stealth system which feels absolutely borked there are a few things that left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth. While game reacts to a LOT of the things you do, it's very noticeable when it doesn't (non-lethal takedowns seem to barely be accounted for, for example)
This post is kinda negative, but in truth there are only so many words with which I can say "characters and story are good". It's true that I've not enjoyed the game aspect of the game that much besides the exploration, but I still absolutely understand why people connected with it and can comfortably place it in my top 3 games of 2023.
I definitely hope that this game's success gets developers to make more RPGs of this kind and not water down their imsims and cRPGs thinking that causal gamers won't get it.
I know nothing about DND, I've played only a few games of its genre, am not usually a person who values story in games, AND feel like it was overhyped to me. I'm probably not the person to ask about this game. That said, I've enjoyed it a lot.
It's one of the busiest games ever made. While I could spend some time just chilling in Yakuza or whatever, this game has had no downtime in my almost 90 hours of playtime. It feels absolutely enormous.
I've enjoyed the story and after both Original Sin titles feel like it's the strongest Larian outing to date. While not too different from those titles in presentation or story, it's just much more confident and a little less silly. I felt like Original Sin titles tried a little too hard, yet this game only had one really obnoxious NPC and they were a really minor character. Pretty much every story beat and joke landed, and there were some really hard-hitting moments.
I'm not sure I liked the combat, though. Divinity titles used a far more approachable system which I wish was the case here, but instead it felt like for half the game I was trying to understand it. At times it felt like reading Wikipedia with how you click on help and just mouse over words that lead to other words. There are several things to balance at the same time and it never feels like the game warrants it considering most of the time you can replenish everything between each and every fight and not even feel the minor resource drain. It also doesn't help that it seems DND doesn't have your usual RPG number-go-up formula which leads to some headache-inducing choices when it comes to equipment and, later in the game, led to me mostly ignoring tons of equippables I would pick up unless they were super rare.
The game knows that and does try to make each encounter unique, so at times it feels like a cRPG take on something like Undertale or Lisa: games where each encounter would usually be seen once and never again just to showcase a character, a gimmick, or a puzzle.
It's also a bit of a shame that the game is still quite janky. From often weird subtitles that either display wrong or lines that repeat to the stealth system which feels absolutely borked there are a few things that left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth. While game reacts to a LOT of the things you do, it's very noticeable when it doesn't (non-lethal takedowns seem to barely be accounted for, for example)
This post is kinda negative, but in truth there are only so many words with which I can say "characters and story are good". It's true that I've not enjoyed the game aspect of the game that much besides the exploration, but I still absolutely understand why people connected with it and can comfortably place it in my top 3 games of 2023.
I definitely hope that this game's success gets developers to make more RPGs of this kind and not water down their imsims and cRPGs thinking that causal gamers won't get it.