However, I did keep playing, and I found the ending satisfying (even if the boss fight mechanics, which should have been special and memorable, ended up feeling like minor variations on a theme I'd been listening to for forty hours.) The overall combat experience probably does deserve a 4 actually, but the rest of the game is top-notch. There were times I kept playing only to find out what happened next in the story, and actually playing the game was an obstacle to that, rather than fun for its own sake. It's a dismaying lack of content that adds up to truly monotonous combat. This is highly annoying, partly because it makes every single little fight more of a slog than it should be, partly because it makes the more important battles just more of the same, and partly because it breaks immersion (e.g., second wave coming from a room you not only just cleared, but to which you are guarding the only entrance.) This is exacerbated by the extensive re-use of levels there are essentially one each of every environment, so every time you're in a cave it's a piece of the larger single "cave" level, and the same is true of the sewers, the wilderness, the wilderness. Unfortunately, the game is primarily about combat, and while the core changes to the combat system are interesting, the encounter design is terrible almost every fight in the game plays out the exact same way: an initial group is present or is spawned in somehow, and once you've beaten most of them a second wave spawns in. Still, aside from combat I think the game is generally great with some minor lessons to be learned.
There are some missteps here the interface feels consoley, with too many clicks to get in and out of subsystems, and the inventory streamlining does some nice things (like the Junk tab) but the loss of party customization is inexplicable. An unconventional and well-told main story, supplemented by imaginative and fun inter-party dialog and a more cinematic presentation are all giant positives. This shouldn't be taken to mean that the game is without major flaws it definitely has problems, but the current user score of 4.0 is laughably low. This shouldn't be I wonder whether some of these reviewers have actually played the game or are basing their reviews on the demo or hearsay. I wonder whether some of these reviewers have actually played the game or are basing their reviews on the demo or hearsay.