Just my feedback for the first part of the game, up to riding a horse to the second town.
A few points here, I had to replay the first town quests about 3 times (debatable as that should be replayed too for issues but I powered on despite it just to see if it got better).
So in the first part, your father clearly tells you, the tasks can be done in any order, which is not the case and makes me very suspicious about the rest of the game as this seems almost fundemental to game design.
If you do them in the order the game apparently wants you to and respond with the comments you are suppose too in a very linear design, it works, or it should as I couldn’t guess the right way after 3 times, The first time I went to the castle, no problems, went to the drunks picked the non combative options, so far so good, sold the chest items bought the bag and did the tavern section.
In this first run through, it all played out in order except the throwing shit scene never happened, and the subsequent fight scene never happened it just went straight to run from the authority whom never actually showed up at the house, being the first play thru I wouldn’t have any idea that there was more to it other then some confusing weirdness if I hadn’t seen that scene in a preview already so I knew something wasn’t right.
Second time around through the town, I did the castle first, sword fighting, went to the drunks choose the hostile option and got into a fight with a drunk who is apparently a golden gloves boxer and mixed martial arts champion, as I couldn’t land one punch on him and getting within 4 feet of him resulted in a knee to the face from magically long arms, and my blocking which I know works from the brawl scene which handeled very very differently, was unable to defend against this drunks knees and fists, I did manage to beat him after literally several minutes and I left with torso injuries, apparently broken ribs and internal bleeding. To claim my prize after being given the key and told to take whatever I wanted, I picked up the axe that was apparently in my understanding to be property of my fathers as I was there for an axe, hammer and nails, picking it up resulted in the drunk running off screaming thief towards the town guards… Very dissappointed I had to restart the game from the begining again.
Thus I set out to replay for a third time, this time around I did the castle first, no problems, went down and did the sword fighting, prolonged it a little bit to get at least a level of xp out of it, so far so good, combat was okay, feigned a little stupid on how to do combos to meta some more xp from the quest. Then I went down to the coal guy, traded cheese for the coal, no problem. Went to the tavern, this time I said Yeah i’ll help and not, no I got things to do but eventually still went and helped cause the quest just moved on the same either way, this time the shit scene and brawl scenes worked. Here I was told I have to go to the drunks house first, so damn I was hoping to do everything safe first, then save it and do the drunks house. But afterwards when I went to the drunks house, I choose the non hostile option again and ran into some problems, the trigger for the lockpicks dialogue would not happen, the npc would not talk to me about giving me lockpicks cause apparently I had completed later sections of the quest and the earlier parts became void due to that, talking to the lesser intelligent friend just kept replacing the What happened at the shit house dialogue over and over.
Frustrated at this series of events, i said screw it and continued with the game anyway just to see what the next section would be like and it actually got worse… The cut scenes were pretty good, I quite enjoy most the games hero’s dialogue it makes him feel very real and you can even tell hes a bit more intelligent then the others around him but still very much a real personality.
The trouble starts with game design… I ran down the path as the npcs told me to, towards the quest icon on the map, coming down onto the road an npc soldier spawned next to me, NEXT to me, not behind me a few paces, literally right next to me and stabbed me in the back as I sprinted past them as I was already sprinting as fast as the game allows, which crippled me and then was killed by a second attack a second later, I thought well that was pretty shitty, but figured it was possibly just a glitch or something so replayed it. This time I got to the horse no problems, no magically teleporting backstabbing soldier this time, I got to a horse and started to ride off!
Yet, here comes game design again to hit on my already rainy day, I figured out the sprint keys of the horse in a few seconds, wasn’t too hard, riding the horse feels fine, I was speeding down the road with fair control, enough to weave just slightly left and right around people like it was a horse barrel race I quite enjoyed this part. I looked behind me and seen nothing, no ones following me considering I stole one of the horses of one of the soldiers at that house back there and they didn’t seem to notice me, yet here was 3 magical teleporting horse riders right on my ass from out of no where like the dark riders just appearing. Well I kept the horse at a full sprint, weaved down the road cutting corners to gain grown on what I presumed was a limited AI pathing they had to take and I could get a little more distance in the corners to not get shot in the back (again)… well it did work. as I looked back I gained about 25 to 30 yards on them but my horse was tiring out, so I looked back to see if I could allow my horse to regain some stamina by going down to a gallop for a few seconds and remake that distance up again, alas not a god damn chance, the teleporting riders had magically teleported up to me and the lead riders horse was literally smelling my horses ass while shooting arrows at me… Well god damn it, if teleportation magic was so readily availible in this world why can’t I just teleport to the next town.
I luckily made it to the next cut scene so I didn’t have to replay that again and was greeted to a very well down cut scene in the next time, even if the lord guy’s dialogue voice sounded like someone in there 30’s coming out of a mouth of someone in there mid 60’s, then I was released into a small room, after supposly receiving medical attention and being offered food, I was very much still bleeding all over the place followed by recuring complaints from my character that I was starving so bad my belly hurts, yet there was no food nor a bed in here…
I am playing on the PC, thru steam, auto updated as I played it today, a couple days after release,
The story, characters and cut scenes seem great, a few rough patches in some quests, but you kind of expect the starting area to be the most polished area as that is a players first impressions of a game to be pretty smooth and bug free after release, and quite expect to find some quest glitches and stuff around the map here and there in most rpg games but not really in the very first prologue area, and certainly not the kind that would make an avid and understanding gamer quit the game in frustration from being forced to replay entire prologues due to issues.
I am very much looking forward to playing this, but I have to put it on the shelf for now until a patch or two to even make this playable. From a few videos I watched and other peoples reasonable issues not the ones that could be dismissed from just user error I got to say it looks like my experience replaying the intro scene is pretty standard for the rest of the game.