Just finished the game on Hard, the end fight was ridiculously hard in comparison to what came before, but I'm glad I'm done with the game now. Ultimately, it was fun enough for me to power through the game, but my expectations on a new Obsidian game were too high and ultimately makes me feel the game is a major disappointment with too many glaring issues.
Some of the cons:
- The balancing: on Hard, the beginning of the game is quite tough, but then it becomes way too easy up until the last area of the game where the massive difficulty spike sullies everything.
- The itemization: one of the worst itemizations I've encountered in a role-playing game in a long time. You're absolutely OVERWHELMED non-stop with the same type of items, from dead bodies, from bins/chests, from the environment etc. Also, the reward in exploration is quite low since the majority of the items are basic, non-unique stuff with few exceptions. Inventory/weight management becomes more of a burden than anything else, and breaking down equipment overwhelms you with repair parts.
- The combat: not much nuance to it, and going long-range/heavy weapon feels like the only viable way forward unless you want everything to grind to a halt. TTD is alright, but every combat encounter plays out the same way. I essentially underequipped my companions in order to create more of a challenge; figured I might bring them along due to their involvement in dialogue and didn't want to miss out.
- The enemy variation: haven't played GreedFall but heard lots about its lack of enemy variety, but I can't imagine it being worse than here. Hell, even the final boss is an enemy type you get to encounter earlier in the game which I HATE.
- The skills/perks: the idea of accepting negative traits in order to get extra perk points was novel but ultimately didn't amount to anything due to the basic nature of the combat. Also, the skill checks throughout the game are way too forgiving making it too easy to be a generalist (until very late in the game where the 100 skill checks don't really open up alternate approaches or anything unique). Due to the ease of the combat, many, many skills and perks don't really bring anything unique to the table.
- The world design: At the start, it bodes well since it feels like a nicely designed game world, but the lack of height maps, non-intricate map layouts and a very "gamey" way of framing/locking in the open world grates on you. Also, I think it's too bad the brunt of the exploration is relegated to Edgewater and then to Monarch, making some of the smaller areas feel like afterthoughts despite them being more interesting from a visual standpoint (looking at you, Scylla). Finally, too many quests force you to travel all over the place, inducing constant load screens, and the lack of good hidden paths almost forces you to tackle the straightforward quests head-on in a very unoriginal way.
- The UI: whenever you need to do any kind of item management, the UI falls apart completely. Sorting options are relegated only to the main inventory screen and are not available when you manage your companions, it's easy to accidentally move/break down items you don't want to because the cursor jumps all over the fucking place, and so on. Some of the worst UI behavior I've seen recently.
- The quest design: Too many fetch quests with unoriginal ways of completing them. With all the skills thrown at you, such as lockpicking/stealth/hacking etc., you'd think you would be able to come up with more inventive ways of solving stuff, but nope. The Deus Ex games are so much better in that regard.
- The shroud: Cool at first, but it really gets old the further you go into the game. Especially with the forgiving skill checks if you get caught.
