I wasn't sure, after my first few hours of play, how much I'd like this. I had high hopes that it would capitalize on some of the unfulfilled potential of the first game, and my first impression was that it didn't quite. The first big monster encounter didn't really add anything to what the original was doing, and there's no trace of the cool rhythm-oriented attack sequencing that intrigued me so much.

But I kept at it, I switched from Fighter to Thief, and I came around. The exploration is very cool, capturing a sense of place and reward-for-exploration with the best of the open world games. And the more I played the big monster fights, the more I thought they were pretty compelling.

The rest of it is... mixed. I have a tremendous amount of affection and respect for the way it chooses to use friction in its palette: the limits on fast travel work fantastically, with my only complaint being that staying awake on an oxcart should be more feasible and not a totally endless parade of encounters that end up destroying the cart; the class system hits a good balance of rewarding multiclassing without making it free; the quests are mostly a pleasing level of kinda janky.

But boy, is this game huge. Even resisting the urge to explore comprehensively or track down every last side quest, I'm twenty-five hours in and feeling like I've barely scratched the surface. And while I'm not intrinsically opposed to a game of that size, I don't think the moment-to-moment combat or writing quite has the legs to hold up a game of that size. Not for me, not when I have so many other games I want to get around to.