I completed the game a while ago and with the GOTY nomination i decided to write a review to express my feelings towards this game as well as give some advice to potential buyers who aren't willing to bite the bullet and pay the full price given it is quite hefty.

I was excited for this game leading up to the launch due to my love for divinity 2, that game was a marvel, I cherish the moments I spent playing that game with friends and the combat, story, level design and music was wonderful, this lead to me having really high expectations for the game which was going to inevitably happen, so let's break down each part, their differences and improvements/failure to deliver under each category. Be warned, there may be spoilers but I'll try to avoid them.

Combat:
Honestly the combat wasn't bad... but it wasn't great either, at best it felt rewarding but for the most part it was rather lacklustre in comparison to divinity, but I think that has more to do with the way DnD rules work. Yet this is exactly why the combat kinda sucked, they made a weird amalgamation of their existing divinity combat style with some aspects of DnD which made the entire thing weird to play with. For the most part unless you are extremely in favour of either combat style it's ok but that's just about it imo.

Design:
I'll split this into three parts (character, graphics quality and level-design) to make it a bit easier to differentiate points.

-character: I loved the character design a lot, there's so many choices and variations compared to divinity and a lot of other games out there, but you're still quite limited with a couple more preset choices than most games give, thus if you are expecting sliders to change every minute detail to make the grinch that stole from the gods, you'll be disappointed.

-graphics: honestly the game looks beautiful on every setting and runs pretty well, can;t complain or criticise, effects look good and haven't had any game breaking bugs I can point out (this considering I played at launch when it's usually the most buggy).

-level-design: not much to say other than this game is marvellous in it's level design, objects have a purpose for the most part, the cities seem vibrant and lived in, a lot of npcs have a place in the environment and add to it so it doesn't feel desolate. really solid level design imo.

Music:
honestly the music was good, then kinda just got so damn repetitive I dreaded hearing down by the river, I felt like none of it stood out, which is a big deal for me, I adore soundtracks to the extent I saved a lot of the OST for cyberpunk, atomic heart, divinity 2, fallout and the Witcher. Music drives the narrative for me, it sets the tone for the environment and I felt it was lacking, not all the music is bad, but you seldom hear the good stuff and it felt like i heard the same 5 songs over and over. If you'e expecting a wonderful soundtrack to play along to, I wouldn't get my hopes up with this game. But at the end of the day this is subjective.

Story:
This is gonna be rough so lets divide it into romances, side story and main story. this will likely contain spoilers but mostly minor.

-Romance:At the time of writing it I believe most issues regarding this were addressed but they still have massive issues with the actual content of them. let;s address triggers, some were so damn easy well others weren't, the overall romance stories were pretty terrible either in their resolution, the way the characters would suddenly dono-wall you if you accidentally triggered someone else's romance or how terrible the majority of romances ended. I get it, you can't save everyone but nothing triggered me more than doing shadowheart's entire romance questline to figure out im getting screwed over because i tried to be a bro to gale in act 1 and he caught feelings, choices for romance were sometimes so obscure it felt like saying hi instead of insulting 9 lineages of their family at a conversation start would trigger a romance and in other situations it was the opposite. I feel like many characters deserved better stories, they started so good in act 1 and then fell off hard later on. only karlach's love story had me enamoured until the end and then kinda wrenched my heart out at the last minute.

-sidestories: I feel like these were lacking, you can barely consider any sidequests as just that, they all eventually tie into the main story for the most part and only the companion quests can really be considered as sidestories, I don't think I can recall a single impactful sidestory that doesn't tie into the main quest or relate to a companion.

-main story: the story starts off great, act 1 is fantastic, but it kinda falls off as the game progresses. it feels very much like the story got rushed along, act 2 feels like it could've been more, the landscape was set up for it but was never used to its full potential and then you get to the last act which you can kinda rush through for instant gratification and hit the level cap early on in, I just felt like i needed more, the plot twists were cliche. the endings were all pretty awful for those involved with only cyberpunk being worse and even the evil "true power" end seemed to lack content after the choice. if I had to rate the story I'd give it a 7/10

Conclusion:
The game was good don't get me wrong, I just don't feel like it was the masterpiece it could've been and I don't see myself actively replaying the game in the near future like I did with divinity. I don't really recommend it full price but I can't say i regret the purchase either. other than the obvious pitfalls that failed to meet my expectations its still one of the better games released in the past few years and still far better than others released this year.