Some Assorted Feelings from my Playthrough

[Novem]

Just so you know, I'm LOVING the game so far, but I'm guessing that negative feedback is more useful to you devs so I'm going to do my best to tear this game apart. Please don't think I hate the game.

 

I played a Troubadour/Sharpshooter.

 

1: I want a bird companion. Why don't we get a bird companion? Gimme Senu from Assassin's Creed Origins damnit! Bird hopping man, I want to have a bird so I can see that sick hopping feature in action.

 

2: I think you should reduce the total number of possible injuries before Permadeath to two. Getting up after fights I think is actually a cool mechanic that makes for some epic last stands and I don't want to see it go, but being able to go down more than once in a fight seems really cheesy to me. Also I think some things about it could feel more natural. The enemies returning to where they were standing before fighting you feels pretty artificial and "gamey". And if your characters are going to stand up, I'd rather them do it with style like with a yell before charging back into battle. And instead of just people out of range getting back up, I'd like everybody to have a chance of getting back up (maybe depending on an attribute check?). I just like the feel of it. It makes death feel less punishing when it does happen and it can put you into some really interesting tactical situations that are really fun to play out of.

 

3: There's still too much loot in this game. It makes finding gear less special when most of the equipment isn't differentiated from each other. I like the idea that enemies are going to drop whatever they would realistically be carrying, but I'd honestly prefer a weight limit or something so that you have to be more selective instead of just clicking "take all" every time the loot window comes up and going through everything later. The Unrestricted Stash option turned off is kind of like this, but because everything you pick up just goes straight to your stash anyways, it doesn't really end up playing like that. If it's not too difficult and you'd like to stick with this loot system, I'd really like an option that only allows you to put loot into your individual characters inventory slots to better suit what makes the game fun to me. Of course, only if enough people feel the same way, obviously I don't want you to design the game around me or something LOL

 

4: Playing a Troubadour doesn't feel as impactful as I thought it would. The Brisk Recitation modal doesn't speed up my chanting enough for me to feel it. I really loved the idea of this subclass, but currently I'm not feeling like Brisk Recitation has that big of an effect. To explain, the identity of the Troubadour to me is a subclass that plays around the situation, activating Brisk Recitation to get invocations faster while forfeiting the full effect of your chants, and deactivating it if passive effects are more important or all of the important invocations are already used. But stacking up phrases with Brisk Recitation still feels slow instead of rapid, and I'd like it to be a lot faster with a greater distinction between when it's on and off. I'd actually even love some kind of penalty when you switch between the modal being on and off, to reward skilled use of the modal and keep things balanced. 

 

5: In the same breadth, I don't think that the Sharpshooter subclass should have a modal. I think i'd prefer if there was just a straight up ability it granted that guaranteed a hit and then went on cooldown. This would make the Sharpshooter subclass feel more impactful in my opinion.

 

6: So overall in my opinion, I think that since you introduced Subclasses as a way for players to more thoroughly personalize their characters, a greater focus should be made into making sure that Subclasses abilities can be felt. Building around unnoticeable passive effects makes using a Subclass unsatisfying and doesn't satisfactorily contribute to providing the fantasy I had for my character. At least as far as my experience with these two Subclasses are concerned. By the way, adding additional visual effects would be a great way to make these feel more impactful without tweaking numbers too much. Like, the chanting window for a Troubadour who has Brisk recitation active could glow and leave an afterimage for each chant's icon to further imply speed, for example. I don't know how difficult that would be to do but it would really help as far as I'm concerned.

 

7: The level up window seriously needs a display for how many talent points you have available. It's weird not knowing whether I can unlock more abilities.

 

8: Having to leave an object you're interacting with in order to move out of range characters into range in order to use them for the skill check is really tedious and inconsistent.

 

9: When an enemy uses an ability, I would really like a way to get more information on what's about to happen so I can react accordingly.

 

10: Not being able to use the scroll wheel to access the text log anymore is kind of annoying.

 

11: The lore-tagging is not extensive enough. There were multiple times during my playthrough where I encountered lines of dialogue that read like complete gibberish, like one time Vektor starts a sentence with Pagrun. I had no idea what the heck he was talking about at the time so the entire rest of what he said was entirely lost on me.

 

12: Character creation should have an option to use your character model's face as the portrait, so that I don't have to do it myself in a roundabout manner by using screenshots and custom portraits.

 

13: Level scaling should have the option to scale levels down as well as up.

 

14: Characters shouldn't play a voice cue every single time you examine an object in the world.

 

15: There should be an option to distract characters while you're stealing their stuff. 

 

16: I have no idea how the new concentration/interrupt mechanics work.

 

17: The rest bonuses in the inn all say "temp rest bonus", so I have no idea what I'm actually paying for.

 

18: Normal saves and Quicksaves should be listed above Autosaves in the load game window.

 

19: Maybe I'm just missing something, but the time it takes to cast a spell should be listed in the tooltip.

 

20: This is my personal opinion, but consumables should be instantaneous with a cooldown before you can use the next one rather than require an animation. In the current system, I never can figure out the right moment to use consumables that aren't health potions/traps/scrolls, and punishing me less for using them would make me more willing to experiment.

 

21: The mechanics tooltip still says it helps you spot traps.

 

22: Being able to autosave on a timer would be nice.

 

23: The UI thing for chanter phrases on my character portrait should be bigger and more showy, so I can tell when I gain a phrase more easily. It's almost impossible to tell at the moment and it further contributes to the feeling that I'm not gaining phrases for my invocations very quickly.

 

24: Considering how much junk is in this game, bringing up a window to ask me how many things I want to sell from the stack really slows things down. 

 

 

POSITIVE FEEDBACK TO REDEEM MYSELF

 

1: Music still great. Thanks Justin Bell.

 

2: Graphics are incredible. The fog effects, the water, the shadows, all gorgeous.

 

3: Story still great.

 

4: Combat much improved over the first one. It's much easier to understand what's going on at any given moment and spells feel impactful while also not feeling overpowered. 

 

5: Exploring feels good, though I think it could use some more visual effects. It doesn't have enough personality to it. Travelling also really doesn't feel as dangerous as it should, but I'm sure that'll be resolved when you add random encounters.

 

6: I love the new resting/food system. I never used food in the first game, but now it is much easier to use through a natural process. Awesome stuff.

 

7: I loved the different ways you could resolve quests in the beta. My personal favorite moment was saying nothing and through doing so preventing a man's execution.

 

8: Character creation is awesome. I really feel like I'm creating a unique character. I also like how many different skills and playstyles there are to choose from. Lot's of fun.

 

9: Loved the dungeon. It really felt like I was constantly being asked to do something different, rather than doing a lot of one thing at a time.

 

10: The new dialogue window looks fantastic and much less intrusive than the one from POE1.

 

11: The class specific interactions feel incredibly special and I f**king love them. The chanter interaction with that girl with the drum is one of the most beautiful, poignant moments I've ever had in a video game. Whoever wrote this is a f**king genius and deserves a raise. More please!

 

12: Choose your own adventure sequences were awesome enough already, but I love the guesswork you have to do to navigate them even more! All the different ways they can play out and the subtle ways to indicate which skills you should be trying to prioritize for a check are great.

 

13: Those gunpowder barrels in the dungeon were expertly placed. I loved how you could intuit that because the enemies they were placed next to are immune to fire, that they weren't placed there for the fight and must be for something else. The encounter design is also just better in general and a big step up from the first game (and PARTICULARLLY WM1).

 

 

I'll make another post if there's anything else I can think of. Thanks for reading :3

Edited November 16, 2017 by Novem