I had to stop playing for two weeks, but yesterday I resumed it. Steam indicates 20 hours played. Comments to follow:
-The setting is growing in me. The first hours I said to myself “at the base level, this is generic fantasy world number #34345 / D&D with the serial number filed off but with slightly more involved (or we could even say realistic) history of nations, races and backstory, eh”. But I grew to appreciate the sense of a real world that all the past events before the game, the different cultures and races that appear, the history of the nations and how it permeates all the game.
-At this point I’m interested in the plot. Did they really kill a god with the holy bomb, or just returned to the divine plane (if that exists)? Is the Walder’s Legacy a straightforward curse of the gods because the killing or is there anything more? Was it really Eothas? A conversation with one of my companions indicated he wasn’t acting very Eothas-like, at least what the religious customs said about him. What’s the meaning of the flashbacks with a horned leader figure? Why is the enemy cult discrediting Animancy? I suspect they aren’t really the typical bad cult who wants to conques or destroy the world, in the other hand they want preservation, they are more hardcore traditionalists with the backing of some god(s).
That was an interesting twist, because until now what I heard about Animancy is that mostly it ends with zombies in their hands, as if it was really impossible to handle souls correctly, but after the Asylum encounter it seems it’s really possible but they are being sabotaged. Surely it’s a) the gods don’t want puny humans to meddle in souls affairs, they see it as intruding in their competences. If they let it be, who knows if in the future humanity will replace the gods themselves!. Or b) gods don’t want puny humans to manipulate souls, but because good reasons, they know it’s way more dangerous for humanity itself that anyone would think.
-The game isn’t being very hard for now, I feared it would be with all the old-school aspect the game carries. I suppose it’s one of the “modern” aspects of the game. For reference, I only played some hours of BG1, I didn’t play BG2, IWD1/2, and I finished PST but in the easiest difficulty, so in other words I’m not a veteran of these kind of games. I wonder how the difficulty will scale up later.
-I really don’t like this style combat a lot. I like RPGs, and I like tactical games like Xcom, JA2, Frozen Synapse, Blood Bowl, etc, but I don’t like this mix of RPG and tactical combat. It may be because I find it weaker when it’s fantasy and not with modern firearms or sci-fi, the type of tactics change a lot, instead of explicit, on-the-field tactics, it’s more implicit, build-focused tactics. And just seeing the guys hitting each other with sticks while the bars are slowly depleted is boring. I also prefer classical turns instead of pausable realtime, the exception is when pRT makes sense as in games like 7.62mm, where they are all about realism and detail so the correct use of real time instead of abstract turns and action have a reason, here I don’t see a lot to gain, and makes the combat more confusing and messy.
-Continuing on that, I find so boring having to think the correct combination of skills, talents, spells and the right loot for each one of the characters. Searching for guides for character builds made like this aspect of the game even less, not more.
-The need for micro every character and the abundance of combat in some sections is a problem, as after a while you start using the same tactics. Tank here stopping enemies, cipher going around and using this ability here, archer using his per-encounter abilities, etc etc. Except some specific encounters it’s samey.
-The game’s visual feedback needed a pair of passes more. While it has icons of abilities being used, bars indicating waiting time until next hit, enemies engaged by each unit (the green line), I find it’s stuff I notice if I explicitly look for it, it doesn’t jump to the player in a clear way. Lots of times the combat feels more like confusing and messy, as I said before.
-The controls and UI have a series of little problems, like selecting, attacking and moving are all done with the same button, making misclicks a thing to pay for. Selected and unselected character both use the same green circle indicator, making even more misclicks possible (how they didn’t notice this, I wonder, it isn’t like there aren’t more colors to choose from). I would really like a way to quick select and switch between ranged and melee weapons.
