Review
After playing the prologue, I am all kinds of intrigued.
Eastern europe continues its tradition of good and interesting writing and characters. The world is beautiful and well realized, and the music is gorgeous and atmospheric.
If this was just a "normal" RPG in the vein of Witcher 3, it would still be great. But there are some VERY interesting ideas on display here. There is a time aspect to the game, but it is completely under the players control. Normally I loathe timed stuff, but here, time ONLY moves, when you decide to do a quest. (Edit: This is wrong, update further down) Its like a currency for adventure. You have to decide what to do, because you only have so much time.
I am normally a completionist, and I love playing the good guy, so games like this, where there is a lot of gray can be challenging for me. I am unsure of wether the time mechanic is a good thing, I think I would prefer to have complete control over how much adventuring I do, and what content I want to experience, especially in a long, deep RPG that makes me invested, but the new direction is bold and creative and I cannot do anything but salute Rebel Wolves for treading new ground.
The game changes between night and day, giving you essentially two different playstyles in one game.
There is a lot to discovere here, and I am very excited to see how all this pans out. A stellar first effort, potentially an instant classic.
Continued:
So, I played some more and found out more things cost time. There are some fast travel points that are broken you can repair, and that costs time too. Leveling up a lot of the skills cost time, so you end up making hard decisions very often. The problem with the system is that there is no tangible reward to it. You decide to spend time on a quest, the quest might or might not be important or even interesting, and afterwards the time is spent. You decide to spend time on leveling skills, you get power, but it costs you quests/story. The cost makes sense from a narrative standpoint, but it makes no sense from a game standpoint. You are paying with time to do story, and the costs is you dont get to do other story thing, same with skills. The cost in an RPG shouldnt be the story, thats just odd and unecessary.
I still respect Rebel Wolves for trying something new, but it doesnt really add anything useful to the game, it simply limits the player in fun. Which makes no sense.
The rest of the game is still great, but I am docking the game one star for the time mechanic. The idea might be good, but I dont think it really works in such a long form game.
Edit: Thankfully there are mods. After some deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that the time mechanic is a wholly negative addition to the game. To actively chase players away from content makes no sense from a design perspective, and I decided to mod the timer heavily. I still respect the decision to try something new, but that particular experiment is in my eyes, something that might sound good/interesting on paper, but in reality is detrimental to the game. If anyone else is annoyed by the time mechanic there are mods on Nexusmods that can fix that for you.
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