tAinted gRail: fAll oF aValon

DLC dropped the other day.

I decided to bite, and buy the game and dlc when it did. Can't really review it yet. I'm not that far in.


I saw a couple others talking about it. So it seems like 3 of us are playing this right now. Thought I'd bump it.



My early thoughts are mixed. early act 1 review:

Lots of very good things. Fantastic ES-like by an indie dev.. but also major jank shows up constantly.

like, demo/island was great. you see reactivity, as a guy will comment if you are wearing red priest garbs..
one of the patients in the asylum was terminal. so I tried to kill him and put him out of his misery unprompted. can do.
the surprise fight at the end of the prologue is winnable.
But, in the full version as soon as I got off the island, i noticed graphical fidelity took a big drop. as I looked at the beach and its poor textures..
but then I tried picking up the crabs.. didn't work.. but then.. stabbed the crabs with my dagger.. +1 crab. that did work.. nice.

npcs have day/night cycles. how much they ACTUALLY react to what your wearing.. no idea..

world seems to be zoned off by chapter. its not a giant open world. but at the same time, the towns aren't zoned off like skyrim. they are part of the game world.

world seems dark and gothic, but the tone of most of the quests and dialogue is jokey.
overall world cohesion is a bit low. no villages. 75% of the world are bandits. etc. the world isn't very believable how horrible it is, while no one is acting like its in that state.

I'm not sure how much alternative quest design exists. I know two clearly had some major options. 1 was a necromancer, which can go a multiple different ways. Another, involves a druid circle. and that one has hidden quest markers. like. the quest doesn't TELL you to go talk to a druid. but, you can think, hey maybe I should go talk to this druid about this druid thing first, and boom alternative direction.

the jank aspect is heavily "follow the quest marker" though. you can not follow npc directions, and HAVE to follow map markers. like they don't even try.