Thoughts so far upon completion

[Gautsu]

Performance is still rough, but improving. The game looks good at Ultra. Running at Ultra with max settings I was getting between 20-22 FPS in the Keep, 35-45 outdoors (depending on the number of creatures in the area), and right around 60 in dungeons. 3070, i7, 32 gigs ram. I was only picking up maybe 5~8 FPS running all settings on medium.

Combat isn't difficult enough to need a stable 60 FPS to succeed at, and will probably need to be balanced. Grabbing the Giant's Sword and going a mostly Strength and Endurance build I was able to kill everything within 1 to 2 Strong Attacks. Definitely more difficult at the beginning of the game then when your build and gear start to come online.

That being said adding the Souls-like stamina, parry, and dodging mechanics makes combat way more interesting than anything I experienced in any of the Elder Scrolls games (and I have beaten all of them from Arena on).

Black Tar Prophecies is bugged and unable to be completed. A couple of the misc tasks do not vanish when completed (Upgrade Materials is one off of the top of my head).

Occasionally all of the NPC's will strip naked upon loading, requiring a re-load to fix. After the last patch this stopped being universal among them and only Tiernan would try to get his swerve on.

I had no crashes or lock ups during my play time.

The graphics work well for what they are doing, looking forward to see what will be possible with optimization fixes.

But the ambiance and the atmosphere are really well done. It's nice to have a grim-dark first person RPG; I enjoyed the atmosphere and setting in Conquest and this feels like much more of the same, which IMO is a good thing. The voice work and music are also impressive; the sound needs some work. Weather and rain sound good, but for example crossing a puddle in the keep sounds like it should, with your footsteps sloshing through water. Walking through waist deep water in a cave though sounded like walking over stone or dirt, with no change in tone or additional sound effects.

I think if you have a problem playing things that are not running perfectly or have an older computer skip it at this moment, but I already feel like I got $27 worth of entertainment.

Looking forward to chapter 2

[Gautsu]

Also probably closer to between 20-30 hours to scour the map of things to do, I play a lot of Steam games offline at my job

[mother_crow_eyes]

I'm with you 100% on this assessment. It's already shaping up to be a wonderful game and I've been thoroughly enjoying the immersion factor. The writing is really solid - some great voice acting too, clearly a lot of attention is being put into the creative end. On the technical front though is another story - the optimization is really really bad, like as in currently the worst optimized game in my Steam library of some 600 titles. I do appreciate the quick hotfixes addressing this issue though, I can actually play the game now after getting off prison island. Also combat needs lots of rebalancing, although I'm sure it will shape into something more compelling as development continues. I would also like to see comprehensive breakdowns of all character stats - it's frustrating not even being able to see my current total armor and damage values. Feedback on sneak and crit attacks would be nice too.

All in all I'm very impressed with this title, and it's an almost startling reminder at how few developers even attempt to make games similar to Elder Scrolls, let alone show signs of success in a very early access build. I so wish it was built in Unreal or something comparable though, Unity is just not a good engine for these kinds of games.

Addendum - the motion blur is possibly the worst I've ever seen, it either needs to be fixed or taken behind the shed and put out of it's misery. Again, Unity.

[scottz63]

Can't say more than has already been said. Great game so far and can't wait for more.

I turned off motion blur right from the start. I always do anyways.