I did play this game in versions 1.06 and 1.07 and left a negative review after playing for 15 hours. The game was (and is) very buggy, the more so, so more you progress in the story.
What is more, the game is quite unbalanced and in many ways is very hostile to fun and enjoyment, many systems being designed to annoy players. Let me give you examples:
* The game world is large (nice!) but designed to be a winding maze of mountain and forest paths, giving you no orientation. You are a cartographer, but you don't have a map unless you activate it in the menu (post patch 1.07). Coming to the big city, not a single road in that city is straight, you constantly have to guess where you are. The map is unhelpful here. Most of the time in this game, you walk around. The game is largely a walking simulator: Many fetch quests make you walk back and forth in this maze of a game. Came to city, low level, so you get offered errands. One guy sends you to some other guy at the other end of the maze, eh, city. And back. To make things more fun, second guy moves around. Looks like other people, so you run around just looking for the guy. Could really be anyone. Oh what fun times. (Patch 1.07 added “joint walks”, no kidding: these are people you can hire to walk you to the districts of the city, a slow stroll but at least you no longer get lost; it seems also that the patch added a lot of camps to rest at night and marked them helpfully with green lanterns, so the devs are not committed completely to annoying players of the game 😊)
* The game is also an easter egg hunt simulator: All quests are designed based on vague hints. Druid tells you "Find my sickle." Go find it. Don't expect more info. No quest marker, no map, no good journal hints. Or main quest: Go find Knights. They are literally scattered across the whole world map, with only the vaguest of hints. You walk around endlessly searching for stuff you have no clue where it is/should be. Or find booze stashes on a farm. You really need to google every single quest for help or otherwise spend hours just walking around, trying to find stuff. This is still very sucky design, combined with the above having to walk insane distances to search and collect stuff. You google location of people, items, quests, because the whole quest system is soooooo bad.
* Fast travel: will come late game via teleport circles. Patch 1.07 introduced wagons, but in the beginning of the game they are extremely expensive (I don't think you will be able to afford this considering how much back and forth all the quests are), and at least in the free hunter area, I found one of these wagons not in any of the camps, no, but somewhere in the middle of nowhere (and of course, no one tells you where they are). Let's hope the other fast travel points are easier to find. I tried the new patch and the game remains a huge walking simulator.
* The game is also a huge running simulator: Combat is so massively broken and totally unbalanced. In the beginning, you see an enemy, you have to flee. Main character has the ripped body of a gladiator, but glass bones or some other medical condition. You cannot win against enemies, who regularly (until the end of the game can stunlock you to death). You swing the sword once, your stamina is gone. Combat in the wilderness is hectic and often wandering monsters join a combat, which leads to a contest who stunlocks you first. Unless of course, you run as quickly as the wind and let others deal with the situation (but of course, 10meters later, your stamina is gone, or you slip and fall in a puddle; no kidding!). Later on, you get better weapons and develop strategies to stunlock the monsters themselves. Combat never in my playtime was satisfying and either imbalanced for the enemy or me. (Spoiler: I robbed the guy in the castle for his legendary dagger in Act 3 and from then on, I stunlocked pretty much every enemy to death --- better them than me, but not very satisfying combat).
* Broken minigames: Most minigames are quite unfun (lockpicking is very tedious, pickpocketing also unless you go heavy on dexterity). Yet you absolutely need those to earn some money and XP.
* Broken leveling: devs are still messing around with the patches, trying to find a balance between skill points, attribute points, weapon requirements. Things change. Much of this ill-explained ingame. I don’t know, what to say, they enabled a cheat console in version 1.07, you can just edit any of your stats yourself. Kills immersion but at least you can try and play the game at your difficulty.
And yet, here I am, changing the thumbs down to thumbs up and leaving a positive review. When I abandoned the game and the devs published patch 1.07 providing an ingame map from the getgo, I picked up the game again and played through the pain. I think I mean this quite literally. Maybe this is Stockholm syndrome, where an abusive other (the game) breaks down the player’s will (mine at least), but I started liking and enjoying the graphics and exploration in a low-magic fantasy setting, not unlike a modern Gothic/Risen. Do not misunderstand me, all the above negatives are still there as of this review, but maybe, you too, will enjoy playing the game after a while, if you know what to expect and work around all these annoying design features. Maybe you will see the same beauty in this mess that I do.
I don’t know whether to thank the devs for this weird wild ride or see a psychiatrist to check out what is wrong with me, but ultimately, I enjoyed most of my time with the game, after these infuriating first 15h. Try it out, but don't say I didn't warn you ;)
