I wanted to spend at least 100 hours before giving this game a review so I would have better understanding of mechanics and overall game play.



First off, the game is massive. Now that I've gotten 100 hours in game, doing all side missions I find, progressing main story as well. I am just about wrapping up 3rd act, or better said, first act where the game really opens up. Without giving any numbers to keep this spoiler free, I've spent most of my time in 3rd act.



Game doesn't force truck loads of lore on you if you don't want. There's a lot of dialogue options and additional lore and info in books you can find. Also these books serve for giving hints of what's to come later on in e.g. dungeon you are currently doing. Most of the time you can also go talk with the person X,Y,Z, etc. later on to catch up on their lore/info if you're not up for it right away. Which leads me to the next point, voice acting. Game is partially voice acted, mainly with the main story, some side missions and occasionally during camping. Sometimes I wish more of the game would be voice acted, or sometimes when voice acting just stops in quest without a notice, it feels out of place. But anyhow, game's voice acting is top notch, up to par with top rated games. Dialogue can sometimes feel little odd, with tongue on the cheek written one liners here and there. They usually bring a wide smile on player's face but sometimes feels they're little out of place. Companions feel like they really have their own personality rather than being written with just few differences, and I feel like they follow up on their alignments. Companions personalities might interfere with your own, I had one occasion where my party member blurted out rude comment while I was trying to convince enemy not to attack me, and then I was given option to tell my party member, ''Do that once more and you're out''.



There are some mythic paths you can choose from, e.g. angel, demon, Legend, etc. Most of them have to be unlocked as story progresses, but these three seem to be open by default. These paths can affect massively on your story and how the game plays out. Even the game reminds you, there are no wrong choices. They give game a lot of replayability. I've spied from different streams that are running on different path than I am, how these can affect, and the game play/story has a lot of different choices/outcomes than mine.



Game has insane level of class customization. There's 25 classes, with each one having 5-7 sub-classes. Want to roll rogue monk? Go for it, want to roll alchemist druid? Be my guest. You get to choose feats every other level, level up your stats, pick new spells, etc. Mythic paths add up on top of these choices and can give some really strong or fun combinations.



Character customization on the other hand is really lacking. Granted you're not going to stare your character up close most of the time, but few more options wouldn't hurt. There's generally 3 body types to choose from, few faces and few hairstyles. You can also choose different character voices, which will play during battle, each one having their unique charm and giving more personality to your character. Or you can choose ''no voice''.



Unlike Kingmaker, this game has dynamic tutorial, which really helps out during all parts of the game. It can give you tips on how to deal with certain conditions, or how armor class affects you, etc. So no more googling for hours just to find out what all these abbreviations mean or how they're calculated.



Puzzles are fairly made and rewards exploration and attentiveness. Most puzzles I've encountered so far have felt fair in a sense that if I paid attention, or was willing to backtrack a little, I could easily find the answer. There has been 2-3 I had to look up answer for. Most puzzles could be brute forced, but it is strongly discouraged, since it's either going to take u a lot of time or punish you with damage.



Hooray, no more needing to buy rations from vendors to travel long distance on the map. These have been replaced with corruption, taking approximately 2-3 rests before reaching first level. Corruption gives you stat debuffs and can even kill you if it gets too strong. But it is quite forgiving in my experience and rewards little bit of planning. You can cleanse this corruption by resting in your own city.



City management is back from kingmaker. In short, you can manage your city affairs, build buildings in your city (doesn't give any visual change though), and recruit armies. You can automate this process if you want, but it will apparently lead into you missing certain path choices or key elements of the story. Personally I'd recommend sticking with crusades and city management. These things give the game it's own unique spice and once you can get the ball rolling, it comes like 2nd nature. Obviously crusade mode could use some enhancement, like giving tanks taunt or area of denial to prevent enemy rushing past them like there's no tomorrow and making them next to useless. City management doesn't punish you so hard in my experience and there is quite a lot of room for error, so it's nothing to stress about, unlike kingmaker.

Continuation in comments, since steam's review has limited characters.