It blew me away
I didn't want to buy this game. The combat looked janky, it's a spin off studio's first attempt on Unreal 5, just had a lot of red flags for a $70 entry. But I bought it anyway, because I had faith in these developers. They didn't let me down.
From dialog to atmosphere, the storytelling is the best in the genre. It has a lot of the same mechanics from Witcher games like "focus mode" to solve mysteries, but the semi-linear storytelling from those games where you get an A or B option that might come up later in a dialog or add/remove sections of the story is amped up here. There's a ticking clock mechanic that adds weight to your decicions, too much time here and there means less time somewhere else. And because there's only so much time on the timeline, your decisions REALLY matter and have weight. The grimdark of this story is DARK, almost right out of the gate. And the fantasy comes from a real region and real lore, so it feels gritty and real.
Combat is unique from your usual attack, block, parry slop and the variety is spiced up by abilities and forms. The game evloves with your character and story in a way I've never seen before, and that alone is revolutionary I think. There is some jank here and there, I've had no performance issues (but I run a 2 year old system that can run Ultra), and there is some awkard character animations during speech, but it's never distracted me yet, because the rest of the game is that good.
Fans of the Witcher series will feal right at home with the storytelling and challenging combat mechanincs that take a little getting used to, but feel golden when you nail. RPG players will probably love the story mode if they love grimdark fantasy. It's good.
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