Let me be perfectly clear, this game is awful.

Something is clearly wrong here for this game to have such positive reviews. It's not even a matter of something not being my taste, because this game proposes an idea that I am very much down for, and in fact I suspect that is probably the source of the cognitive dissonance between how this game is perceived by it's die-hard defenders and the reality that is the objective quality of this game.

I really tried to enjoy this game, I gave it a fair shot, and this game commits so many cardinal sins of game design that sapped the enjoyment from the entire experience. You may look at the time I invested and think "well at least he got his money's worth, maybe it's worth a shot" but please understand, my overall experience was worse for having played this game. It is actively infuriating, and I finally called it quits while running through the expansion area and found myself actually saying out loud "I am not having fun" it was a completely frustrating experience if anything because what the game pitches as it's idea is so appealing, and under served in the gaming market. With that said though, I'll keep this somewhat brief and just run down a list of things that were solved in game design over a decade ago that pop up in this title.

-Unreactive input buffer that will commit you to actions you wanted to perform seconds ago but would like to cancel now, often leading to death
-Input reading enemies that can even potentially dodge roll on button press infinitely, often leading to death from a second enemy or just because you finally run out of resources trying to actually land a hit
-MASSIVE resource dependency on basic actions, as someone here said well, "I was still going to win, now you just forced me to kite for an extra 90 seconds so I could swing again" this kind of stuff does not equal difficulty or realism.
-Game balanced around player resource management, yet enemies do not adhere to these same resource rules. Which is actually a huge issue when this game wants you to feel like a common adventurer, yet a common bandit that is allowed to run on infinite stamina and mana and has telepathic dodges. This actually just leads to you not feeling like a common adventurer, rather a severely lethargic person in a world full of hero player characters.
-Robotic timed quests across the board. This one is done well in very few instances, such as "if you didn't do this quest within X days of starting it, the corruption has grown too strong to purge" Ok cool, makes sense, waits for me to start the quest, doesn't counteract the games strengths. The vast majority of other quests are literally "I will attack this town/destroy this city in X days unless you stop me" Ok, as comedic and jarring as that is, it takes away from the games one thing that it almost does well which is exploration and freedom of choice. Because now by issuing the player an ultimatum, you are enforcing a play style that is completely contrary to those things.
-General enemy cheese. You're forced to cheese as hard as you can in this game, because the enemies will cheese you. There is no invincibility frames on roll/knockdown or anything and knockdown is incredibly common. You WILL have to patiently crawl through an area, pulling one weak enemy at a time, get a strong one stuck on terrain, snipe it with your bow. poison the strongest and run in circles for 15 minutes for it to die, simply because those are all actually optimal choices compared to participating in what this game calls combat.

Look there is a lot more wrong with this game than I put here, that's not the point. A lot of this games ambassadors will respond with something like "Mad cause it's hard" "It's supposed to be like that" etc, but that's simply not true. There are so many ways to make a game with the ideas that this game is proposing while still adhering to general good practices in game design.

Killing and hindering your players is not hard. You're the game master, at any point you can just kill off your players for any reason. That probably won't be fun for any of the players though, the skill in being a GM is in understanding what your players want to do and giving them the opportunity to meet those challenges. -First thing to learn about game design from some tabletop book a read a long time ago

Let me be perfectly clear, this game is awful. Something is clearly wrong here for this game to have such positive reviews. It's not even a matter of something not being my taste, because this game proposes an idea that I am very much down for, and in fact I suspect that is probably the source of the cognitive dissonance between how this game is perceived by it's die-hard defenders and the reality that is the objective quality of this game. I really tried to enjoy this game, I gave it a fair shot, and this game commits so many cardinal sins of game design that sapped the enjoyment from the entire experience. You may look at the time I invested and think "well at least he got his money's worth, maybe it's worth a shot" but please understand, my overall experience was worse for having played this game. It is actively infuriating, and I finally called it quits while running through the expansion area and found myself actually saying out loud "I am not having fun" it was a completely frustrating experience if anything because what the game pitches as it's idea is so appealing, and under served in the gaming market. With that said though, I'll keep this somewhat brief and just run down a list of things that were solved in game design over a decade ago that pop up in this title. -Unreactive input buffer that will commit you to actions you wanted to perform seconds ago but would like to cancel now, often leading to death -Input reading enemies that can even potentially dodge roll on button press infinitely, often leading to death from a second enemy or just because you finally run out of resources trying to actually land a hit -MASSIVE resource dependency on basic actions, as someone here said well, "I was still going to win, now you just forced me to kite for an extra 90 seconds so I could swing again" this kind of stuff does not equal difficulty or realism. -Game balanced around player resource management, yet enemies do not adhere to these same resource rules. Which is actually a huge issue when this game wants you to feel like a common adventurer, yet a common bandit that is allowed to run on infinite stamina and mana and has telepathic dodges. This actually just leads to you not feeling like a common adventurer, rather a severely lethargic person in a world full of hero player characters. -Robotic timed quests across the board. This one is done well in very few instances, such as "if you didn't do this quest within X days of starting it, the corruption has grown too strong to purge" Ok cool, makes sense, waits for me to start the quest, doesn't counteract the games strengths. The vast majority of other quests are literally "I will attack this town/destroy this city in X days unless you stop me" Ok, as comedic and jarring as that is, it takes away from the games one thing that it almost does well which is exploration and freedom of choice. Because now by issuing the player an ultimatum, you are enforcing a play style that is completely contrary to those things. -General enemy cheese. You're forced to cheese as hard as you can in this game, because the enemies will cheese you. There is no invincibility frames on roll/knockdown or anything and knockdown is incredibly common. You WILL have to patiently crawl through an area, pulling one weak enemy at a time, get a strong one stuck on terrain, snipe it with your bow. poison the strongest and run in circles for 15 minutes for it to die, simply because those are all actually optimal choices compared to participating in what this game calls combat. Look there is a lot more wrong with this game than I put here, that's not the point. A lot of this games ambassadors will respond with something like "Mad cause it's hard" "It's supposed to be like that" etc, but that's simply not true. There are so many ways to make a game with the ideas that this game is proposing while still adhering to general good practices in game design. Killing and hindering your players is not hard. You're the game master, at any point you can just kill off your players for any reason. That probably won't be fun for any of the players though, the skill in being a GM is in understanding what your players want to do and giving them the opportunity to meet those challenges. -First thing to learn about game design from some tabletop book a read a long time ago