Posted: Oct 18 @ 11:49am
Updated: Oct 19 @ 1:15pm
So...I've just over 350 titles purchased through Steam over my years of gaming. This isn't a humble brag, rather a picture of perspective. I have never written a "review" for any of those games, but I want to write a bit about this one.
Look...the game starts off sucking. I don't know how many times I said to myself "This game is SO bad" but, I don't like losing to challenges. That's what this game is. A challenge. A challenge of fidgety controls, a challenge of stiff combat, a challenge of convoluted quests, and I should preface this by saying I have never played any of the Gothic games to completion, but I have played the Risen series, and came to very much enjoy those.
The game starts off with these milestones that seem unreachable at first, requiring seemingly way too many stat points to learn any skills, get any upgrades, or progress your character at all. Right around the 6 or 7 hour mark it was like...all these milestones came at once, and then all of a sudden, the game was playable and started making sense. I hate saying this about games, but you have to put a little time into the game before it gets good, and I guess you could argue that this is the "Piranha Bytes" way, but I felt it more in this game than in the Risen titles. So give the game a try for a while and power through the garbage first 5 or so hours, get your first companion, and THEN you will have much better grounds to make a decision. I am SUPER glad I didn't push this one to the side.
UPDATE: So a little over 20 hours in, and I have to say, the game has done nothing but get better and better. I am at the point now where the world building is incredibly well done, and I have had so many awesome experiences with the quests moslty due to the lack of "Here's the morally good choice, and here's the morally bad choice". There are SO many more grey areas than that, and choices that you made at the beginning of the game come full circle 20 hours later, and I am hoping the game continues that trend. I also want to note the companion system. I LOVE these guys. They have their own motives and views on the world, and will change their disposition towards you if your choices conflict with their goals. The companion quests, so far, have been really interesting as well. I havent cared for a companion in a game this much since KotOR, I just wish that there were more banter between your companions themselves. I feel like that was a missed opportunity that could have been interesting, and added even more to the world building. So far if I could sum this up with some cheesy quote, it would be "Shoot for the moon, because if you miss, you could still land on a star" and then I would add "...And eh....if you don't land on a star, theres all kinds of other cool stuff hanging around in space".