"Henry cannot read when you start the game so sign posts appear as gibberish until you find someone who can teach him to read! Again, this is another attempt at making the game realistic since Henry's background would not have included schooling!"
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Well I played about 5 or 6 hours of this game on my Xbox One X once the 21.75 GB Day One update a.k.a. actual game install (since nothing but 162 MB is installed from the disc) and my conclusion is that this is a good game overall but not without some issues.
For one, the game is stable but the framerate is certainly not a consistent 30 fps on console. There is very noticeable judder when panning the camera and the game goes from feeling smooth indoors, where there's obviously less to draw, to being a bit jerky outdoors. It's not unplayable but if you're sensitive to framerate variance then you will definitely notice it. There are also graphical glitches; I saw what looked like black outlines flickering around buildings a few times and some janky weirdness with camera angles in a few of the cutscenes.
Otherwise, visually the game is pleasant rather than stunning; going for a more realistic look to the world such that buildings and the countryside tend to look samey because they are all in the same locale. Character models are acceptable; some look quite good, especially in the cutscenes, but others can look alarmingly last generation, not helped by some poor facial animations and that classic "dead eyed" look. It's leagues ahead of, say, Skyrim but not quite up to the benchmark standard set by The Witcher 3 IMO. Once I got used to that though, then I started to appreciate the attention to detail elsewhere; you have a physical body in this game, you see your hand closing/opening doors (and as far as I am aware they only open/close one way unlike many other games that have doors that open in *and* out!), when picking up items in first person (collecting plants is shown third-person for some reason) and so on. There's a real sense of being the person you are playing and I really like that. Of course, it's not without hiccups such as occasional clipping but it's certainly a cut above other first-person games IMO. Impressive.
Combat is interesting. There's an attempt to make the fighting more realistic than other RPGs and it works well for the most part, relying on stamina and strength so you cannot just keep repeatedly stabbing buttons to win. Fighting with your fists also feels very different to using a sword, as you would expect, and it works well in first-person. I did have a bow but couldn't work out how to actually fire it I'm embarrassed to say! Everything you do in the game, increases some stat or other; speaking to people in a positive way increases the Speech ability, collecting plants increases the Herbalist ability, fighting increases Strength and so on. Pretty much like how a Bethesda Elder Scrolls games works.
The first few hours of the game have a lot of cutscenes but thankfully the story and writing is good and the voice acting mostly decent with some characters being better than others but that's par for the course in any modern RPG. The only voices I found jarring were the American accents but to be fair even English ones are really out of place since this is set in mainland Europe, in the kingdom of Bohemia, not England anyway. The numerous cutscenes are well done apart from the odd camera hiccup (as mentioned) and the dialogue mostly well-written. The opening section has a set number of quests that need to be done, which introduce you to the game mechanics, but the choice of how to do them is surprisingly varied. For example, I watched a walkthrough while the game was installing and I played it in a totally different way to that YouTuber (ESO). Characters react to what you've done, how you look (for example commenting on if you are dirty from a fight!) and you get different dialogue choices and things you can do depending on the progress of the quests. You also need to eat and sleep. Food you collect can apparently go off although I haven't played that long to come across it. You can get dirty and there are places you can bathe! I washed myself in a trough for example but was told that I'd need to take a bath to get fully cleaned!
Of course, the opening section is set within a small area and eventually leads to a pre-set situation that takes you to the next part of the game. This section I had issues with as it is basically (without wanting to spoil it too much) where you have to get a horse and then ride to the next town. This section was immensely frustrating because you are being pursued and the horse has stamina which eventually runs out. You cannot just go anywhere either, you have to go to this specific town and, obviously, being new to the game I had absolutely no idea where that actually was. If you slow down, which happens because the length of the ride is longer than the horse has stamina for, then you get shot and can die here. It took me five attempts to complete this, not helped by the fact that the game auto-saves at a point before you reach the horse so you have to repeat lengthy sections each time. You can save manually here though before the chase but that was something I only found out after dying several times. I found this section very poorly executed and annoying to be honest because it is forced on the player and there is no way to avoid it. There is no choice in how you can tackle it; you cannot fight the pursuers, you cannot take a different route, you have to stick to this one route and hope that you reach the cutscene trigger point to the next town before you get killed. Utterly horrid IMO.
After a brief section in this new area (which you can explore more if you want) and several more lengthy cutscenes, you then head to a certain location and the game's cinematic opening credits appear (yes, five hours into the game!). After that you seem to be granted more freedom from this point on to explore and do quests. There's a lot to like about this game; the attention to historical detail is really impressive (with a HUGE Codex section that constantly adds new things as you come across them), the story and cutscenes are very good and the focus on making the game more realistic makes it stand out from Oblivion/Skyrim which it otherwise resembles in many ways (minus their magic/fantasy elements). The combat is interesting so far, I've not played enough to properly comment on whether it's good or bad overall, plus the game has options to avoid combat if you choose to play it that way. In fact, early on in the game a character specifically mentions talking your way out of situations rather than fighting.
I think the game shows a lot of potential from what I've played so far. It's not perfect, the game was made with a $5 million budget, I believe, so there are plenty of rough edges to be seen in every aspect of the game; NPCs can get stuck on scenery, they can clip through each other and the framerate isn't great but the ambition on show is very commendable and it's definitely a cut above "low-budget" RPG fare like, say, ELEX and the Risen franchise. The game world, for the most part, feels like a real place and it's easy to get immersed in it, something that is essential for any good RPG in my experience. There are some oddities though, perhaps as a result of trying to make the game more realistic (yes, that word again) and that is that there is surprisingly little loot that can be picked up apart from food. There are lots of chests but almost all of them are locked, requiring lockpicks and a mini-game to open. I got a lockpick at one point but could not work out how to use it (duh!) so I suspect the contents of most of those chests is going to be out of reach until I figure that out. Dead guards can be looted for armour and weapons but most dead NPCs seem to have two items, usually food of some kind. Most barrels cannot be looted and I've yet to come across any money from robbing houses or chests. Some people may welcome that though; sometimes there's a tendency to have too much loot to collect in games but here it seems too much the other way. You soon get fed up of finding carrots, onions and bread! Six hours in and I still have no real money for example (there is a bartering system however that allows you to sell stuff against bought ones).
The one thing that stands out in this game above all other RPGs I've played is how much the developers have tried to make everything in the game world realistic in some way while still allowing for role-playing elements. This may not be to everyone's liking, some may find the game dull because of the focus on realism and historical accuracy, but I am finding it very interesting so far.
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Some more feedback on this game for anyone interested (Xbox One X version):
I've played about 8/9 hours of this game now so I'm getting a good feel for the mechanics, granted I have been actively trying to avoid combat where possible. Incidentally, I did not get a horse of my own until some 7.5/8 hours into the game and the game doesn't allow you to steal one either except where the story calls for it. Stealing is really not encouraged in this game; you certainly can steal things but guards actually search you when you enter towns and will confiscate any stolen goods (I'm not sure how they know which are stolen and which aren't though - maybe they've been taking a peak at the player inventory which marks any stolen goods!!!).
As I mentioned yesterday, the game really does try to be more realistic than other RPGs such that even loitering too long in someone's home will have them running out to fetch guards. Guards seem to remember you as well; you can be wandering around and a guard will stop you. All the shops I've visited in the four towns I've been to so far have had a guard in them (not sure how historically accurate that is though...). I still have no money; in fact, the game states that I have 1.7 G. Any armour and weapons I've got have been from quests and what I have stolen has long since been taken off me (had I known it would be taken by guards then I would have stashed it somewhere).
I like the game although the quests so far lack the excitement of something like The Witcher 3 or Skyrim due to the lack of monsters or fantasy elements. At the moment the story is interesting enough to keep me playing and I'm actually intrigued to see what quests the game will offer going forward with the game being based on a real historical location and being grounded in reality. Despite it's similarity at first glance to Skyrim/Oblivion in first-person, the game otherwise feels and plays like no other RPG, borrowing from survival games, and that in book is reason to recommend it if you fancy something a bit out of the ordinary.
It definitely needs some refinement, especially in the framerate on Xbox One X, but in all the time I've played it I haven't come across any major bugs (my horse got stuck at one point but I fixed it by dismounting and whistling for it) and the game hasn't crashed either.
P.S. One thing I neglected to mention was the map. I'm sorry but it is awful. It looks beautiful when you see it on screen but in practice the lack of a zoom option and the size of the icons make it near impossible to read it properly. This has resulted in me struggling to find where I am supposed to be going, for example, one quest sent me to the town's Baliff for employment but it took me about 20 minutes to actually find the location because the map made it frustrating to work out exactly where it was. I also struggled with another quest because of this as well.
Fast Travel is also odd in that you have to wait while the game shows - Raider of the Lost Ark style - your little avatar moving slowly along the highlighted path to your selected destination. I presume it is done this way because you can find things en route or even be attacked which then takes you back to the game. The only problem with this is that you cannot just go from town to town quickly over large distances (at least not on foot anyway) as you will invariably be stopped by bandits. I was and I was killed which meant replaying the game from the last checkpoint because the game has no manual save (it saves at numerous points during quests and you can also save by sleeping but that requires you actually find a bed or somewhere to sleep first).
By the way, Henry cannot read when you start the game so sign posts appear as gibberish until you find someone who can teach him to read! Again, this is another attempt at making the game realistic since Henry's background would not have included schooling!
The game allows you to wait but like the Fast Travel system, it takes just that *little* bit too long. Here it shows a rotating 24 hour wheel that rotates slow to the last hour then slows right down for the last 59 minutes. I'm not sure what the reasoning is for not making this faster but I personally found the waiting to be a chore. By the way, Sleeping uses the same system and you *have* to sleep otherwise you run out of energy (the game has a cool way of showing when you are getting tired as well).
