This game is something I had expected to massively enjoy, but ultimately could not. So in the absence of a "mixed" review option, I'll lean toward the negative recommendation. Entirely because of the gameplay aspects of the game, not the narrative aspects.

I liked the heavy presence of skill checks in this game. Interacting with objects and dialogue choices often had several different options to choose from. Just from a surface scratch I could see that there's a tremendous amount of depth in this game. Character models look excellent, dialogue was engaging and the story hook at the beginning is a strong start to the game. The game oozes atmosphere from the very beginning. I was clicking and going through everything, and read everything I could get my grubby hands on.

But the game began to feel tedious, even after such a cursory glance at it. Going through a dungeon is a painfully slow process as many rooms are laden with traps. Juggling torches also seems like it could be annoying, though I did pick a race with superior nightvision so I didn't have to deal with it.

Healing is a fairly limited resource in this game, and that only serves to make combat encounters very lopsided. You either carefully prepare and near instantaneously obliterate the enemy after a big advantage, or they do the same to you. There is an enormous emphasis placed on environmental effects. Single-use items like grenades can be devastating if they set off an environmental effect. There's very little in the way of a battle of attrition, if you let things drag on then you are going to get overwhelmed. On paper all that sounds thrilling and fun but I only found it exhausting and boring.

But by far the worst aspect of this game for me is the short / long rest system.

This system effectively serves as your cooldowns. Many abilities require a short / long rest before you can use them again. And that is where the tedium really kicked in for me. I began to try and get through combat encounters while using as few of my abilities as possible because I didn't want to keep spamming the rest feature. I used a spellcaster, and spells are categorized into several tiers. And you only get an extremely limited amount of casts of tier 1 / 2 etc. of spells until you need to rest in order to regain your casts once more. There is a limited quantity of points you can get back out of combat without resting but that just adds to the micromanagement tedium. There is a specific category of spells that do not require these spellcasting points, but they feel a bit boring to use after a while.

Having to so heavily ration my abilities and spells really sucked the joy out of the game. And even if I strictly didn't need to ration them so heavily, I just felt like I had to. I am not fond of survival games at all precisely because I dislike these kinds of central rationing mechanics in games, though I am very fond of turn-based games and RPG's. Working with a mana reserve or cooldowns however is far more preferable compared to this system.

This game is something I had expected to massively enjoy, but ultimately could not. So in the absence of a "mixed" review option, I'll lean toward the negative recommendation. Entirely because of the gameplay aspects of the game, not the narrative aspects. I liked the heavy presence of skill checks in this game. Interacting with objects and dialogue choices often had several different options to choose from. Just from a surface scratch I could see that there's a tremendous amount of depth in this game. Character models look excellent, dialogue was engaging and the story hook at the beginning is a strong start to the game. The game oozes atmosphere from the very beginning. I was clicking and going through everything, and read everything I could get my grubby hands on. But the game began to feel tedious, even after such a cursory glance at it. Going through a dungeon is a painfully slow process as many rooms are laden with traps. Juggling torches also seems like it could be annoying, though I did pick a race with superior nightvision so I didn't have to deal with it. Healing is a fairly limited resource in this game, and that only serves to make combat encounters very lopsided. You either carefully prepare and near instantaneously obliterate the enemy after a big advantage, or they do the same to you. There is an enormous emphasis placed on environmental effects. Single-use items like grenades can be devastating if they set off an environmental effect. There's very little in the way of a battle of attrition, if you let things drag on then you are going to get overwhelmed. On paper all that sounds thrilling and fun but I only found it exhausting and boring. But by far the worst aspect of this game for me is the [b] short / long rest [/b] system. This system effectively serves as your cooldowns. Many abilities require a short / long rest before you can use them again. And that is where the tedium really kicked in for me. I began to try and get through combat encounters while using as few of my abilities as possible because I didn't want to keep spamming the rest feature. I used a spellcaster, and spells are categorized into several tiers. And you only get an extremely limited amount of casts of tier 1 / 2 etc. of spells until you need to rest in order to regain your casts once more. There is a limited quantity of points you can get back out of combat without resting but that just adds to the micromanagement tedium. There is a specific category of spells that do not require these spellcasting points, but they feel a bit boring to use after a while. Having to so heavily ration my abilities and spells really sucked the joy out of the game. And even if I strictly didn't [i] need [/i] to ration them so heavily, I just [i] felt [/i] like I had to. I am not fond of survival games at all precisely because I dislike these kinds of central rationing mechanics in games, though I am very fond of turn-based games and RPG's. Working with a mana reserve or cooldowns however is far more preferable compared to this system.