Recent reviews by Ereghor the Enigmatic

A beautifully crafted and meticulously detailed world that easily trumps most AAA and otherwise well-known RPGs and settings which likes to hurt you at times, but it's cathartic as all hell when you get a chance to hurt it back.

It's not nearly as masochistic (and meta-gamey) an experience as Age of Decadence, the previous big RPG by the same developer, as there are lots of tools at your disposal to tip the fights in your favour or avoid them entirely, with the game still offering enough exploration, dialogue, and story content even if you choose to lean towards a more pacifistic approach. There's quite a few choices to make which allow for subsequent runs to be different, not to mention a lot of character-building freedom (again, a huge improvement over AoD where you effectively had the one meta point distribution required to get the "golden" ending).

The world and the characters are refreshingly grounded and believable compared to what you normally get out of western media these days, and the amount of thought and detail put into writing is on par, if not outright better, than AoD, with dark gritty humour and a healthy dose of cynicism without going overboard with gratuitous edginess.

The only complaints I really have are the RNG-heavy nature of the tougher fights (the "reload a lot until you get consistent criticals" kind, although it may have been more my fault than the game's), and the abrupt final act which ends quite anti-climactically (again, may differ depending on the choices made, but it still felt like the Heart and the Bridge had almost no content in comparison to the first half of the game). Bugs were few and minor (mostly background NPCs looping in place with their walking animation, and 2-3 dialogue interactions acting weird).

It sure beats the supposed "OMG best game of all time" that BG3 got lauded as for myself as 2023's best RPG experience, if nothing else. There was that one other certain game that released by the year's end, but it's Owlcat's, so there's little to no point playing it for at least another year or even two.

So, sadly, it's been a major disappointment despite having seemed very promising at several points throughout the game.

Putting it simply, it's not much of an RPG and more of just a combat-focused D&D5e-based dungeon crawler, even more so than Temple of Elemental Evil has been back in the day. Roleplaying interactions are minimal and most "peaceful" skills are marked as unused in the campaign. One neat detail is the ability to pick language proficiencies, although only two of the ones not normally obtainable via a specific race are actually in any way useful, with one actually strongly affecting the, perhaps, best designed (from an RPG standpoint) segment of the game (the volcano). However, other systems, like the faction reputation, just seem dropped halfway through - all it amounts to is access to items at shops, and despite the game claiming that the specific faction "will join you in battle" with high rep, there isn't a single instance of that actually taking place, and neither is there a way to ruin your reputation with a faction.

The campaign itself is linear pretty much in its entirety, with very rigid scripting and poor quest design in some places (such as investigations where your journal states outright how many clues and where exactly you have to find). Despite the story and the setting suggesting going on expeditions and braving this dangerous wasteland, not a single location is found by exploring the world map - in fact, there is no exploration whatsoever, as every key location is just added once a quest for it has been picked, and all the world map serves as is a source of irritating random encounters which are so poorly avoidable that it may in fact be a bug. The main "assemble the magical Macguffin" plot just takes you from one area to the next in a railroaded fashion, with only one instance where you are allowed to picked one of two locations to visit first, and concludes with a very sudden and awkwardly executed finale.
Does the game excel in what it was actually setting out to do, then - making the most out of its combat system? Not exactly, no. First of all, with the developers only having the open-source license for the system, the class selection is extremely limited. While it's not exactly fair to hold that against them, that doesn't change the fact that there aren't that many options for party composition, and also no multiclassing available. Most of the subclasses are homebrew, with some being really useless (the Spellblade fighter, for instance) compared to their counterparts, and others being quite overpowered (like the Greenmage wizard who just does double duty as a druid, a class missing from the roster, and gets the archery fighting style for free).

Then there's the issue with equipment availability and the game's crafting and enchantment systems. The weapons and armor list is missing quite a few entries, for instance, there are no polearms except for a spear, no helmets/gauntlets/boots apart from wondrous ones, and what is there is treated very unevenly in terms of usefulness (a.k.a., the existence of magical/unique versions). There are so-called "primed" pieces of gear which can be enchanted by using a specific rare (sometimes one-of-a-kind) ingredient, and this system is the player's main way to obtain high-tier gear... except there are no primed versions of most simple weapons (like handaxes or spears), crossbows (which just outright murders a potentially powerful build of a snow dwarf rogue who could use a heavy crossbow thanks to racial proficiency) and some types of armor (studded leather, hide). You are, however, just drowned in poison recipes and poisoned ammunition, which is a hassle to make both because gathering the components can be a chore, and the inventory/crafting UI leave a lot to be desired.

The battles themsevles can be quite engaging if you enjoy the D&D5e combat, as the game does a very good job at adapting the rules and implements things like reactions, levitation, and action economy in a very competent manner. However, the difficulty curve and balancing are so all over the place that you can either be breezing through battles (especially in the endgame) without breaking a sweat or be absolutely trounced, having to reload a lot or abuse stealth. Like, the game's de-facto primary antagonists, a race that is basically responsible for the world's current state, turn into a cakewalk to fight against as soon as you hit level 5 or so (quite early in the campaign), as they have no "elite" versions of their creatures apart from one late-game variety that appears pretty much at the final stretch, basically making their threat seem like a joke and making the plot very difficult to take seriously (it's not particularly interesting or well-written as it is) - whereas things like elementals can be a freaking nightmare to fight, not only for the player but for their GPU as well, with the game, despite having a very budget look to it, really tanking an 8GB card and 16GB RAM system when Baldur's Gate 3, an infinitely more graphically impressive game currently in Early Access, runs without a hitch. Even then, though, a suboptimal party I played with on the authentic difficulty faced barely any challenge apart from a few bosses and several scummy fights with enemies just spawning around the party as you explore or exit a dialogue (which, amusingly, can still be counteracted by stealth and "surprising" such enemies by attacking their supposed ambush first), and I haven't had to use a resurrecting item or spell a single time. Mileage may vary here, obviously, depending on party composition and luck with dice rolls, but parametrically the enemies aren't too tough overall - their armor class is rarely higher than 16 or so, and having a frontliner with about 20 AC allows them to hold the line really well throughout the campaign.

And then there's bugs. For a game that proudly announced its graduation from Early Access little more than half-a-year after it entered it, you'd think there'll be more reason for such confidence, but nope. Saves can become corrupted by having certain items on your characters, many effects just don't work (Law Cleric's Anathema power, Adamantine Plate's protection from criticals, and so on), quests can bug out and require a reload, and your characters' personality tags which define their behaviour in dialogues (the player's input is minimal) often mix up leading to OOC moments that may really bother those to whom the roleplaying consistency matters. Graphical glitches like broken animations, frequent mesh clipping, and funky camera in the cutscenes are also there, although they are of an ignoreable kind for the most part.

To close off, I'd say that the game, while disappointing in its current state, may yet have a bright future ahead of it if the modding tools that are currently in Beta but will hopefully get expanded upon in the future will allow the community to create their own campaigns and adventures. So far, though, what is there is a very linear, restrictive, poorly balanced, and not particularly engaging dungeon crawler with minimal emphasis on exploration and dialogue, with most of its content, apart from a few simple puzzles, being combat which is either a snoozefest, or a torture, with the sweet balance reached only on an occasion or two. It's definitely not the be-all end-all D&D5e adaptation that many were hoping for, unfortunately, but it's a good showcase of how the system can actually be adapted in the first place. It's anything but the garbage-tier Sword Coast Legends, I'd say that much.