Finished. And I’m not that happy with the game.
I don’t like where the game’s plot went on the second half of the game. I think there was a moment in the game, around 40% done, where at that point you have advanced enough to have some information that put your mind working on several crazy and interesting theories, but as lots of times happen, the real answers were a bit underwhelming in comparison.
story
-I don’t like their answer to the question of what was happening with the newborn without soul. “The bad thing was done by the bad guys, doh” is boring and uninteresting. Same with the how they did it, using technologically advanced soul-machines left around conveniently by a now missing “precursor race”, it’s too mundane.
-The main character’s series of flashbacks on the last third lost me a bit, I didn’t really care for it. The problem was me not having a real connection, or empathy, with my own character. It’s the type of game where they give you an empty box as character so you can roleplay whatever you want, but it feels too generic and abstract for me. I need to be able to invest into a character to then roleplay it. Even the Nameless One was different in the sense his backstory, his fate, his situation felt totally unique and his own, here I feel the main character is an interchangeable guy/gal which happened to be on the worst place on the worst moment.
-The final surprise was a “ok” moment for me.
“Oh noes the super powerful beings we know as gods are super powerful beings that were created time ago, and not real gods”. Of course they made your companions react in a big way to make you understand the point of view of the setting, but for me was just “ok?”. the problem is how accustomed I am to the interpretation of gods in other pseudo-d&d fantasy settings that are more like “super powerful mysterious beings” than “divine creator” of real world monotheistic religions, so the final discovery is just a subtle difference in that mindspace.
Structurally, the game leaned a bit too much into party RPG dungeon crawling for my tastes. The part I enjoyed more when there was a better balance between dialogue, story, quests, exploration and combat. A pair of parts of the game in special were for me so boring, like doing a long dungeon, then having several more combat scenes on the outside, then doing a second dungeon crawl.
C&C felt a bit mixed, there are parts where obviously there is a good amount of options and your stats and reputation have inputs in what happens, but in other areas are a bit sparse in comparison. For example there are some quests of “go and kill X character” and to my surprise there isn’t any alternative option, and you have to slaughter several people who weren’t hostile to you while doing it.
The combat, except for a few fights, I didn’t really care for it, too samey and repetitive, and with a good amount of uninteresting busy work (moving the dog to tank on front, use the magic projectile of the game where there is two or three enemies, move the priest in the middle of the party to use his aura spell, using this and this skill on the characters always, etc).
Character builds were super uninteresting.
