I was suprised positively
...
Second - combat is not improved, as they claim. Its identical, except its now broken. You now can't parry with the sword (at least I couldn't, maybe doing something wrong).
Maybe I will give it another try, but the initial reaction was so bad.
I have to say, that the combat is much better now, because
endurance matters now. If your endurance goes down, you cannot attack. And npcs have now endurance too. So there is now a hint of strategic options in combat, you cannot no longer just hack-n-slash around endlessly, because you will run out of endurance.
My first impressions after 1 hour of gameplay were suprisingly quite good, though there were some issues.
+ Better combat (!)
+ Better graphics
+ No crashes! (patch 2 installed)
+ Smoother performance than in the original (atleast on my comp)
+ New content that seems ok...
- ...but not sure about it in long run.
- Too few quests (and NPCS with name)
- Dialog is a bit clunky (but not that horrible)
- Game balance (ex. too much loot!)
- Every idea seems to be copy-paste from original (start is the same, quests feels the same, no new skills and orc slayer at start!!)