Guys, I live in Ukraine and I've played the Russian version a bit today. I wanted to share some of my impressions with you.
I won't tell much about localization, save for mentioning that it's awful and I'm looking forward to get the english version
I hope you all know how the game starts, so I also won't tell you much about an unnamed hero being stranded on an island after a shipwreck (though he's got a girl for a change)
The game in general reminds very much of Gothic 3 (the same engine, actually), so I'll keep comparing them here.
First - the fight system. Here it's something between G2 and G3. The camera isn't as freewheeling as in G3, it locks on enemy. The hero can block and can strike. Several strikes form a combo. At first there're only 3 moves in a combo, though in the char screen more moves are promised on further levels.
Every hit or block is registered with a blood splash effect which is more satisfying than no effect at all in previous G-games. Also the hero can evade strikes in a fast-strafe moves and jump back instantly. Not very realistic, but effective. Otherwise the fights look very much like G3.
Of the monsters I've seen Scavenger, wolf, some kind of bloodfly and a spiked rat. They all look much better than in G3. More shaders on them, the animation is more detailed.
However, all in all the animations are good old G3. The jerky moves of the hero, frantic jumps from any inclines, monsters standing upright on inclined surfaces and turning like armored vehicles - everything you got used to while playing G3. Facial animation is also minimalistic.
The graphics has moved on. The shaders are more complex (water looks quite good actually), more effects are present, like fog, smoke, rain, cloud shadows, various material shaders. Shadows are more detailed and smoother, the textures are more detailed also, the lighting has improved. On the following screen you can see the effect of sun rays traversing fog (god rays):
One thing I liked is that during travels through dense forests the foliage close to camera kind of dissolves unobtrusively, thus not getting in the way, which makes forest travels more pleasant than in G3.
When I got to a bonfire, I tried to use it to fry some meat - the hero told me that he needed a frying pan. I rejoiced at the obvious step towards realism and set off to find a frying pan. After I did, I returned to the fire and was rewarded with a nice scene of hero, frying an
empty pan
The inventory is better than G3. The images are nicer, everything is organized, an inventory doll is present.
The leveling system is the same - skills bought for learning points and money, however skills are much different from G3. There are like 7 levels of swordfighting and 7 levels for axefighting, each extending combos (and I hope, improving the fight animation). Other skills are not as numerous as G3 and I didn't get to see much of the magic system, however I suppose that it will be more like G2 - with runes.
The performance is actually an improvement over G3 (taking into account that we see the same engine). My system is XP SP3, 9600GT 512MB, Core2Duo E8200@3.2 GHz, 4Gb RAM, I set everything to maximum, 1680x1050 and I got 20 to 40 fps in the first region (forest, night, fires), which is rather playable, though I haven't been to cities yet.
PhysX was installed along with the game, however I haven't seen much of physics let alone any hardware-based effects. Though ragdolls seem much nicer than G3.
Much frustration was caused by a slow running hero and absence of sprint function, I hope this will be improved during levelups.
Crouching (stealth) was removed. Along with them was removed my favorite trick when you could skip item pickup/chest opening animation if doing this while crouching
To sum all up - the gameplay mechanics and graphics seems to be an improvement over G3. The world looks nice and tempts to go exploring. If the dialogs and quests are good than this could be as deep an impact on RPG world as G2 and G1 were.
Thanks for reading
P.S.: If you try to swim away from the first beach that you get stranded on, a huge teethed claw-tentacle rises from the ocean and carries you to the shore