im still torn by it, i find that i am struggling to find games that keep me hooked and i dunno if an old skool rpg will be the one.
Having said that listening to the early impressions here it sounds positive, are the majority of people here playing co-op or going it alone?
I love the little touches ive seen in some previews like being able to throw items around in the environment to make obstacles, start fires etc
Sum1 convince me this is the game that will keep me hooked where others have failed
Early impressions are positive not just here, I don't recall the last time I've seen a game mantain a 90+ user rating a week later, on Metacritic. That being said, my favourite parts are:
- The rich world. There's stuff to do and people to talk to everywhere. Some things lead to quests, other things lead to loot, sometimes there's a choice, other times there are several. In many games, the map is just a setting generically thrown around the story, not the case here. In the starting town, almost every NPC (sometimes even those without names), every chest, every locked door and many of the interactable objects (there are loads of them) are connected to something else, somewhere.
- The quests. In order to solve most of them you actually have to read what people are saying, along with any books/notes you find. The journal usually consists of one phrase that offers little/no hints. If you clicked the conversation with a quest NPC like a monkey, odds are you will either fail the quest or miss on alternative solutions and subquests. Sometimes (IE. something is burning) you have to find a solution on the spot as if you come back later, it's gone. There are no failed/completed quests - at some point they simply end and different choices made when working on the quests often lead to different outcomes.
- Traits. They provide small but sometimes important bonuses but you cannot actually choose the traits you get. Each trait has 2 sides (ie. Spiritual vs Pragmatic or Heartless vs Compasionate) and each side can provide a bonus. Each time a character makes a Spiritual leaning choice in a conversation they get a bonus on the Spiritual side. When one side has at least one more point than its opposite, you get its bonus. As a result, after a few levels and tones of conversations, my two main characters are each have an unique set of traits and I often found myself choosing the answers that I considered
fit each character, rather than choosing the "best" answers. In other words, the game kind of forced me to
roleplay, even if it has never been much of an aim for me in RPGs.
- Combat. Complex tactical combat, check. Meaningful - often mandatory - enviroment interaction, check. Decent AI, check. It's fun, it's tense and it often leads to disaster, on Hard.
- Puzzles. I have no idea how to solve some of these and that's ok. A good game should force you to think and it should sometimes let you fail.
Note that I'm only 15 hours into this game and I have barely explored the areas around the first town.
