I’ve just completed the game after around 170 hours, and thought that my opinion might be appreciated better here than on Steam as I’d like the developers to know what I think.
I’ve put a lot of hours into the game, and it’s certainly worth the £30 I spent on it as a backer a couple of years ago, so I have no complaints regarding its value as a timesink. I have an overall good impression of the game, but while playing I formed opinions about a few of the game’s negative aspects, and I want to outline them here - this isn’t so much a review as an opinion, and I’d like to know what other people think of it.
Most of all, I feel that the game’s focus is off. A lot of effort was put into the game as a cinematic storytelling experience, and it’s this which mainly lets it down. Despite the range of actors employed, some of a very high skill level, the cinematic part of the game does not feel well acted, which I feel is down to both the script and the direction. Many times in dialogue, characters feel as though the actors said their lines in separate rooms, with the inflection and emphasis of lines completely wrong, which jars as you try to follow peoples’ meaning.
I feel that the true star of this game is the world itself, which is amazingly detailed and teeming with life. The developers, in my opinion, have missed this and put far too much emphasis on the characters and story. Compare this to Skyrim, which has a fairly boring story, but one which can be easily ignored because the world itself is the central attraction. I understand that this game is trying to do something different to Skyrim, but in doing so it sacrifices what it does better than that game, which is in its detailed, immersive and believable historical world.
Henry is not a likeable character. He’s weak-willed, sycophantic and shallow. There seems to be a weird reverence for the nobility throughout the game, with the vast majority of ‘good’ characters either rich or aristocratic, and Henry seems to drawn to them in a way which is never really explained, other than that he is attracted by strength because he himself is weak. Again, I feel that the developers were aiming for something different, but at least some element of character creation would have led to far better immersion in the world than what we get through Henry’s eyes. I didn’t find him relatable in any way, which had a profound effect on my experience of the game. It’s a common tool to have a shallow character in fiction in order to make the consumer more easily identify with them (Harry Potter, Bella from Twilight), but Henry is too shallow to be interesting and not shallow enough for the player to put themself into him, as the vast majority of the story choices he makes you have no control over.
The cinematics detract from the game, and during most of them I was just waiting, slightly bored, to regain control and make my own story. They’re beautifully done, and give a good sense of place, but they act to separate the player from the world, as do the story and characters.
The combat is interesting and engaging, but still slightly odd feeling and never completely satisfactory when your opponents flop to the ground, which at higher levels seems to happen after nothing but a vague slap with a sword. However, it’s definitely a novel, positive and fun aspect of the game which is I hope is developed upon in the future.
There are tons of things about this game which I hope Warhorse and other developers take on and improve in the future, and the game as a whole is a great achievement, but I think that Warhorse’s choice to focus the game on the story and characters was wrong, and not well executed. Some level of character creation would have added much more to the game than the story and character focus do.