Recent reviews by [DA]Envy

I've been a longtime Tales fan, and have spent a fair bit of time with this title, making sure to 100% the achievements and do as many of the in-game objectives as possible. I wanted to write this to address a lot of the negative issues people are highlighting to give a post-game context to them. I'll try to be spoiler-free as far as plot is concerned, but will be talking about post/late-game content that is unlocked:

1. DLC Titles/Artes
For those who don't know, the DLC costumes will unlock titles for your characters, several of which contain unique artes for those characters. They also do provide some stat increases upon learning all of the skills. While the stat bonus can seem unfair, they skills aren't cheap to learn and also don't contribute to the achievement progress. While I used some of the artes in the beginning of the game, but the end-game I only used one DLC move on Alphen.

2. DLC Exp Gain/SP Gain
The DLC give you bonuses to the EXP/SP gain, about 20/30%. I still found that even with this bonus, leveling took quite a while. Speaking with a friend who did not activate these bonuses, we were really only off a level or two at certain story points. For many of these fights we both found them equally challenging or perilous. I need to get his opinion on the end-game fights when he gets there, but we were having nearly identical experiences. I will also note that there are in-game artifacts you can obtain which provide similar bonuses, especially noting that you can get +100% xp gain through later-game questlines. Also worth noting that for anyone who unknowingly got this bonus and does not want it, you can disable them from your artifacts page for the traditional experience. SP gain, as a whole, absolutely sucked and even with a lvl 100 party I still had missing skills for everyone except for Alphen.

3. Battle System Limitations
I thought that the combat felt very limited and restricted by Tales standards. Starting with 3 basic attacks and 3 artes felt awful. But you do unlock a second set of artes, allowing you to quickly access 6 ground and 6 aerial arte assignments. You will also get more basic attacks in your chain as a result of quest completions or title unlocks. Once your party is assembled and you get some of these things, combat feels pretty good and the combos you can work out are pretty fun.

4. Difficulty
The difficulty in this game seems all over the place, as some boss encounters are a cake walk while some are brutally punishing. There were some bosses that gave me some serious Vesperia difficulty spike vibes. It encourages some grinding and re-thinking, but I found myself constantly tweaking what artes my AI companions should completely ignore to leverage them as safer supporting roles. When fights in this game get hard, they feel very hard. For anyone offput by this, they do have a 'Story' difficulty that makes combat easier and quicker and it does not invalidate any achievements or unlockables. Someone can enjoy an easier time with less grind and still accomplish as much as someone playing on a harder difficulty.

TL;DR
DLC offers some quality of life bonuses to people willing to shell out the money, but it doesn't fundamentally break anything. Even with these bonuses progression still felt very slow for most of the game. Using in-game bonuses felt much more noticeable. Difficulty seems inconsistent, but can provide a good challenge. Post-game content was short but fun.

Pros:
- Love seeing one of the coolest tabletops in a fleshed out game.
- Night City is super immersive, with a lot of activity happening around every corner
- The world opens up and offers a lot of quest branches for the player to pursue at their own preference (outside of the main story drip)
- Taking the time to finish side quests often comes back into later quests in interesting ways

Cons:
- Bugs, but nothing that couldn't be worked around by either loading an earlier save of a community-sourced solution.
- Can't change character appearance after game starts
- You will near-constantly look like a future trash hobo as matching outfits are a rarity
- Driving controls are not the best I've seen.

As of writing this I'm ~20 hours into the content and think I'm coming up on the end of what's present in EA.

Pros:
- Voice acting, even at this stage, is quite compelling. I haven't noticed any lines that made me roll my eyes in terms of delivery
- Companions are set up to be really interesting over the course of the game. Even the small events/conversations around their pasts sets up the potential for a lot of exploration. Excited to see this over the scope of the whole game
- Graphics are really pretty for a game at this stage. Environments are lovely and I love the feel of the Underdark.
- As expected, there are multiple ways to navigate encounters and scenarios. I've seen complaints that a lot of interactions result in combat and I've personally talked my way out of most of them. I've save-scummed most encounters just to see the different ways they can play out.
- Smart environmental usage (no, not environmental effects). I've found success in tough fights by things like: destroying a web a spider queen was one causing her to fall and take massive damage AND get knocked prone, shoving someone off a cliff into a pit of neutral spiders, sweep attacking crowds of gnolls and letting a crit kill the entire group
- Combat is VERY Larian, but not in a bad way. They've traded the AP system for standard D&D fair: actions and bonus actions. Handled very well and fits the system. No complaints here.

Cons:
- Environmental effects seem a little heavy-handed in terms of how often they show up. Most people seem to agree on this point. However, while they are present, I didn't really feel like they turned the tide of the battle one way or the other.
- Rest system: Being able to camp whenever I've had to blow through my spells or am too low to effectively heal up takes away some of the perils of dungeon crawling. I'd like to see a restriction on where you can camp.