I don’t wanna feel Blue anymore...
I've been playing it for so long and now I'm 50% sick of it 50% can't let it go. It's worse than fucking Skyrim - I got all of my houses from normal ones to creepy archmage tower to a fucking keep with a library and art gallery. And, of course, a shitton of stuff I never used.
It's a solid action/RPG, much like Jade Empire. Though I would say it's even closer to action genre since there's very few major decisions in the game, only siding with some factions with little difference. There aren't even proper conversations, you only get occasional variants usually when attempting a persuasion. Thus, the game doesn't have a high replayability potential. However, it offers something instead - a chance to easily change speciality at any point so you get to try out all it's got.
I love the gameplay. The fights are very fun and elegant, like good choreography. Great visual effects too. That's crucial to a game you play for 100+ hours. The enemies were oddly varied and it didn't get boring with the great choice of weapons, spells and tricks. But the interface was just plain bad, though probably still not as bad as Skyrim. Of course, one of the best features was beautiful graphics. The landscapes were amazing and every region has peculiar terrain, architecture and creatures. That's how I have 538 screenshots. Take that, Skyrim! One of the minor features that I really loved was being able to change the character's appearance at any house. Of course, you can't change the face but the hair colour, tattoos, jewelry and make-up make a lot of difference. Simple and fun but I never saw it in any other RPG games.
One thing it's missing though is a good plot. There's strong lore but the plot is pretty vague and boring. It's kind of dark too. I knew it from the start. The only thing keeping me from playing it sooner was the fact that the starts with you waking up in a pile of dead bodies. It's not too graphic of course but I think there's still a lot of unnecessary gore in the game. Also Fateless One sounds a helluva lot like Nameless One and the whole being resurrected and not remembering a thing thing? Yeah. The quests were mostly rather boring and sometimes plain buggy. Also some were nearly impossible to figure out on your own and even with walkthroughs. Another thing missing is companions. You only occasionally side with some characters but they're all basically useless except for distracting the enemies.
Dead Kel was obviously trying to introduce a bunch of things that were missing in the original game but it tried too hard. It was funny how it so casually inserted the word "sex" into 3 different female characters' dialogues. One of them becomes your wife but all that happens when you finally get to marry her is a black screen followed by her compliment at what a beast you were in bed. That's it, not even one new interaction. Just a little something to boost the male ego. I played as a female - one of the features that attracted me to the game - but it changes exactly nothing other than your appearance. The whole Keep quests are good idea but they take way too much time so by the time you get to them all, I was already sick of the damn island. It all seemed underdeveloped.
I think at some point I will give Skyrim another try, with all the expansions and mods and all.
Overall impression: fun and pretty, no real depth
Strong points: gameplay, graphics
Weak points: plot, interface, interactivity