I just "completed" as far as I think I can go in my playthrough. I was prevented from doing all of the content due to bugged quests. 

 

Party: Druid (PC), Fighter (Hired), Fighter, Priest, Rogue, Wizard

Difficulty: Normal

Time Played: 10-12 hours

 

1. CLASSES:

A. Distinct and Useful:

-I feel like each class plays different and that each brought different and valuable tools from the others. Though arguably all the casters feel the same but with different spells.   

 

-Melee characters are a huge liability compared to ranged characters (see combat)

 

B. Progression: 

-Felt fine. I enjoyed choosing talents and making the trade off of which to choose

 

-I Really liked choosing my wizard spells. I wish I had the same decisions to make for priests and druids instead of just getting them handed to me.

 

C. Too High Maintenance:

-Not really, but I think this is to due the nature of combat. My very first combat go (the mobs next to where you spawn) I was scared due to seeing Adam die horribly to beetles in the demos. As soon as combat started I felt like I had to cast every single buff/debuff I had available or I would die. I was frustrated because everything was going so fast. (found the slow time option later) Until I realized I wasn't taking that much damage. Soon I realized while the game punishes bad play, it's pretty easy to avoid bad play. And for 95% of the fights all I did was auto attack because I didn't need to do anything else (see combat)

 

-That being said for the fights that did pose a challenge the wizard was pretty annoying to use. Most of his abilities are short ranged compared to other characters. Additionally, Most of the spells we were given I couldn't use because they would have caused friendly fire. I rarely casted most spells for that reason. (He ended up being high DPS anyway due to blast damage aoe)

 

D. Too Uninvolved:

-Fighters are not high maintenance enough. They have no decisions/tradeoffs. 

 

-Melee characters in general: 95% of combat ended up being CC mobs and use ranged abilities. You take a lot of damage if you engage in melee. You take almost none at ranged. It's just not worth it. 

 

-Early on wizard was the top damage despite rarely casting spells and relying on auto attacks. 

 

2. RACES:

A. Distinct:

-Subtype: Yes because they each got different abilities (not humans)

 

-Culture and Location: Not at all. Each was essentially just +1 to an attribute. And only really mattered if on the extremes (ie if you really wanted 19 might)

 

B. Models and Textures: 

-Looked plain during character creation But I liked how they looked while playing. No complaints.

 

-Aumaua Skins look awesome, but get covered up in game

 

C. Bonuses seem worthwhile:

-Yes. Difficult (fun) decisions were made.

 

3. ATTRIBUTES:

A. Invaluable/Dump/Skew:

-Nothing was "absolutely" necessary. I would say CON, MIGHT and DEX are Tier 1. INT Tier 2. And PER and RES far tier 3.

 

-CON: Important because damage in the game is so bursty 

 

-MIGHT: Obviously for damage

 

-DEX: Might as well be Might as accuracy is just another means for damage. (could mathematically be better than might)

 

-INT: Only because duration increases "seemed" good. But the aoe was too generous. My aoe circles were huge on most abilities with mid level intelligence

 

-PER: Didn't seem important: When you have 10 mobs beating on your tank or CCed doing nothing, random chances for interrupts was just not compelling. And I have no idea what the baseline for interrupts is anyway. Other stats are better.

 

-RES: The only characters that would be interrupted are melee. So this is worthless for ranged. And I would much rather have other stats on melee

 

-Fort:Reflex:Will: These are all nice, but no reason to prioritize one over the other. And again only really matter for melee toons that were taking all the damage. 

 

-Skills: Stealth is a very cool mechanic, I like how it was implemented. However, even toons with 1 point in stealth were able to get very close to mobs. Otherwise it just feels like I need to have one character with a high amount in one of the other skills for conversations/Scripted events. No real decisions to be made.

 

4. EQUIPMENT:

A. Variety:

-Too many currencies: Felt like clutter

 

-Not enough variety: Everything was a weapon or an armor. I saw very few rings/necks/capes. No decisions to be made. I had a ton of money and nothing to spend it on. And once you had the armor you wanted for your toon,  all you really looked for was a "fine" or "superior" version of that. 

 

-Food/Potions and Scrolls:

    a. Variety within each set was fine

 

    b. There was no variety between sets. That is, what makes food different from potions? They are essentially the same thing. Personally I would like to see food being a long term buff applied out of combat, with potions being short term buffs in combat. 

 

    c. No tradeoffs/Decisions to be made: Since you can have multiple stackable buffs with no cooldown there is no reason not to just buy out the entire tavern and take it with you. Before battle each a bunch of food and be an uber toon. This also results in skyrim style meta-gaming where I can just chug gallons of potions during the fight for insta heals with no cooldown. 

 

B. Invaluable:

-Food/Potions. Having a bunch of instant/stackable buffs with no cooldown is ridiculous. 

 

-Guns do way too much damage (I think) My naked priest with the gun seems like she was destroying people (UI was bugged so I couldn't tell for sure)

 

C. Useless:

-All Armor for ranged characters is useless: With few exceptions melee characters were taking all of the damage. Because of this I took off the armor on my ranged characters so they would act faster. If I really had to I could use my "oh ****" beetle shell or similar abilities. The AI really makes almost no effort to get to your back line and blindly attack the tank or are easily CCed. 

 

-When my UI was working (4 hours in game) my wizard had taken a total of ~140 damage. As this was because I accidentally targeted a poison on my group with my druid.

 

5. CRAFTING/ENCHANTING:

-Enchanting did not work for me. Looking forward to it.

 

-Wanted to craft, never found all the ingredients. Was easier just to buy stuff. 

 

-However, I liked that if you want this stuff you have to buy it or craft it instead of finding a bunch of it out in the world as random loot. 

 

6. CONVERSATIONS/QUESTS:

A. Enjoy?

-Yes. I liked the variety of options to tailor to your role-playing. A lot of little things were done right. The grey-out when you've asked something. I saw a lot of times where talking to one NPC would open up dialogue with another that I had already talked to. Being able to talk your way out of situations. 

 

-If felt great not feeling like I had to kill everything. I loved letting the Ogre and the undead/spider thing go unharmed. 

 

B. Didn't enjoy?

-Not that I can think of. Seemed very solid to me. I had a really good time in Lle a Rheman! (Combat and storywise)

 

7. COMBAT

A. Overall experience:

  a. Generally:

-Tank and Spank: The quest to find the daughter, beetles and all... combat was pretty easy and straightforward. 95% of the fights felt like tank and spank. My tank stood still and got hit while everyone else got naked and used a ranged weapon. If there were a lot of mobs I would use CC. In the attached screenshots (POE1/POE2/POE3) are examples. Spider's were CCed. Fighter's standing around doing nothing while NAKED ranged toons auto attacked away. If I let the CC wear off then the fighters would soak up the damage while I auto attacked some more. POE3 is a good example of the mobs simply focusing the tank even with beetle shell up while my ranged just beat them to death. 

 

-Ranged OP: With decent positioning Melee takes all the damage. The mobs go straight for the nearest toon and stick to them if they engage in melee. At that point ALL of the abilities/attack/aoes are targeted on the melee. It was very rare for the mobs to hit my back line 

 

-Decision making: Where are the AI mobs that heal... that force you to go to them? OR that place AOE on your back line... making you choose to move or heal through it. Where are the mobs that ignore melee engagement on your tank? Where are the mobs that do... anything except focus the first thing they run into?

 

-Damage is either all or none. And can be very bursty when it happend. My tank took a 16 graze from a crystal eater follow immediately by a 71 damage frost pillar (which of course only hit melee toons). If the mobs did get into my back line they did a ton of damage. Really very little incentive to be in melee range.  

 

-Abilities: I was doing a lot of auto attacking. And would save my spells for when I "needed" them. Which wasn't that often. 

 

-Overall: There are a ton of cool abilities: But I didn't feel I had to use them. My naked priest shooting her gun did a ton of damage. The only spell she was casting was her 3x per rest super heal if things got dicey. AOE CC is far too powerful. Priest Hold and Rogue Cripple are much for fun to use and require decision making on who to use them on. 

 

  b. Pacing:

-Macro pacing: The quest to find the daughter (only to bridge with grappling hook due to bug): Combat was straightforward. Which was fine for the start and normal difficulty. But I started to get bored because 95% of the fights were "tank and spank" where I took very little damage. I never used a resting supply until after the daughter questline and entered Lle a Rheman. The pacing is Lle a Rheman was perfect. Played a little lazy, but the combat did feel better than "tank and spank" because of some surprises thrown in or the way mobs were positioned I felt like I had to coordinate my CC.

 

-Micro pacing: Combat is very fast at normal speed. However, the slow time option is AMAZING.

 

 c. Everything else:

-Unclear what contributed to my defensive stats. Couldn't tell why my 18 CON fighter had less health than my 16 CON druid

 

-I could tell mobs were resistant to certain damage types. If I really had to min/max I would have looked at the lore tab or used a different weapon type. But never really felt I had to. Was easier just to keep auto attacking. 

 

8. USER INTERFACE:

A. Character Creation: 

-Was enjoyable

 

-Culture being after your attribute distribution was odd because it gave you a attribute bonus. I found myself going back to redistribute my attributes after selecting my culture. As mentioned above the culture + location bonuses only really effect the extremes and are essentially just a +1 to any stat.

 

-Clear? +40% to AOE or +40% to interrupt are meaningless without a baseline. 

 

B. HUD:

-I had trouble knowing how long a status effect lasted on an enemy. I'm not sure I was supposed to know, but I had no idea if my effects were still effecting them. 

 

-AOE radius circles: The MS paint radius circles leave a bit to be desired visually

 

-The Journal, character sheet, inventory feel like they need some polish and were all very buggy.

 

-Traps: I wanted to detect traps. I tried to detect traps. I hit every single trap. I had to result to extremely slow stop/move/stop move/ Baldur's gate style to detect them. Although they did trivial amounts of damage.  

Edited August 19, 201411 yr by Bazy

I'd just like to +1 pretty much all of this. If you do combat "right" you won't have any trouble with the AI attacking your back line, and I didn't find myself doing a whole lot of spellcasting (though I did like to start fights off with a fireball since I knew they'd sit still until I finished). All in all the combat lacked much strategic depth being "just junk it", though I'm not buying the game for the combat so I can't say I find this to be a terrible thing. Still, if Obsidian wants the game to be about the combat and not just the story then they're going to have to think real hard and scramble to adjust the fights.

I agree with the combat review as well. My warrior with +3 engagement allowed me to the rest of the characters as ranged except the rogue. The rogue because of flanking ended up with about 20 percent more damage then all my other characters. 

 

Right now there should be some form of a system where the mobs react to incoming skills and damage instead of staying on the tank full time. 

 

As to not wearing armor so you have a faster attack; mobs should 'want' to attack the party members without armor (if the mob is considered above a certain intelligence level). 

How did u manage to move on with a bugged out inventory? I just quit as soon as i see an item disappear.

How did u manage to move on with a bugged out inventory? I just quit as soon as i see an item disappear.

I had a fun time when the armor on my tank disappeared and didn't realize it until he was punched in the face.

Some classes are not supposed to be high maintenance and rely more on passive abilities. That's a good thing.

Some classes are not supposed to be high maintenance and rely more on passive abilities. That's a good thing.

Agreed. But with the fighter (and all other classes generally) 90% of the game was about positioning correctly. After that everyone could just autoattack. 

 

I was watching watching http://www.twitch.tv/pwootage/b/559515380 and at one point the player says "it seems like the only way I can kill anything is by preventing it from doing anything to me." I think that sums it up pretty well. 

Edited August 20, 201411 yr by Bazy