Early impressions.
This game is definetly Mars 2, I got the same vibe. Lore gets expansive and you learn a bit here, a bit there, I'm not even sure anymore which faction is which and which name is who. J/K, I wanted to say there is so much to learn about the world and it widens by talking to every new NPCs you meet. Which is IMO good.
I don't think tutorial mission is bad as some reviewers suggested. You get to practice combat plus stealth and learn about technomancers history. That mission is not openworld - it's linear, so maybe that's why reviewers didn't like it. Dunno, it's IMO good.
Soon after it you'll open a big city hub which is openworld definetly, I love the architecture. Classic Spiders' human props you can't talk to are still there, but at least are moving around instead of staying at one place. Which brings in the first problem. Sometimes these "walklings" will play Lydia role, strike a pose at some narrow passage and make you stuck. Not a big issue though, you just wait a few secs till they move again.
Loadtimes are… What loadtimes? I saw no loadtimes (SSD though) and animated dooropening and climbing a ladder is used to cover for area transition. Nice! Saving and loading is almost instant. The game makes autosave on area transitions only and city parts are huge so I'd say frequent quicksave is a necessity. Phone audience who got used being passive and let game to play them instead them playing the game will have a hard time to adapt to this. IMO this is superpositive thing after horrible checkpoints system in Dragon Dogma.
The music is… Honestly: meh. At least earlygame. Nothing caught my attention like in some other games where I stop to listen. Not saying this is a bad thing as some people don't like to be distracted by "violins", but a random great score wouldn't hurt the game.
Skillsystem is huge and is set in three parts. I didn't put up much thought in it and went only staves fighting, but after a while I think you shouldn't do this. You have to switch "stance" for effectiveness during fights with different mobs which means you won't play one class but will be jack of all trades. You can, if you want, concentrate on just one skill tree, but I don't see getting any huge benefit from it. In any case, the combat totally reminds me on Amalur videos. It's arcadey. More than this about combat I cannot say, it's too early. However…
Just like in Mars, mobs spawn at the same points you've already cleared before. Horrible, disastrous, catastrophic decision. It wasn't a problem in Mars because it was linear game where you'd see mobs on the same spot max two times, but this is openworld! First time I saw it I thought it's questrelated as I needed to find someone and these were basically faction mobs, but after dealing with the same pair of hostiles 5 times at the same spot, I got tired of that bullshit. And you know the drill. Dropped difficulty on easy. Sorry guys, I know you all like challenge, I also like challenge, but this is not challenge this is grind at it's worst. Trashmobs will remain easy, I'll be switching bosses and nonrepeatable questmobs on hard.
Some reviewer said Technomancer is Bioware wannabe, these idiotic trashmob respawns carboncopied from DA:Bears prove it at least partially is.
Speaking of Bioware, I've already found a girl with an option "compliment her". Found is not a proper word, I helped her wihin a quest before I got the butter up option. So romances are in. How many and at what scale dunno. Also dunno if it's possible to romance more than one NPC, would be nice if it's in (yes, I know, "romancing" everything left my Geralt without anyone in the end but what can I do).
The game has karma and reputation system that promises at least some c&c if not huge changes later. By killing a human your karma drops (and at least one of your sidekicks protest - which might make him leave later, not sure). It raises by solving quests though. Reputation with factions also depends on your choice how to solve a quest, but it can also raise reputation with your sidekicks! Just as an example, not a big spoiler, you'll be chasing some deserters and you need to choose if you'll kill them or not, and in the end will you let their leader escape, kill him or just arrest him. Each choice will produce different karma and rep, possibly also lategame consequences. Honestly, I love it.
About that deserters quest I used as an example… It's timed. You have a day and a half ingame to solve it. No. Just no. This is bad decision, especially because time cycle is in and you can sleep to get rid of some "tired" effect (not sure yet what exactly it does except no XP bonus while tired). I didn't see another timed quest yet and hope there isn't any more - why I didn't, because I was chasing sidequests. There are quite a few of those and each one adds something to game lore.
Performance so far so good. Didn't notice any hiccup or lock or something, everything runs smooth and I don't even have any monstrous $20K priced machine but a decent rig (i5-4670K, GTX760).
Dunno what more to say after just a few hours of game, in many things I'm still not sure, some things like inventory weight and room chest to store items are pretty much nothing of high importance.
Oh yeah. Hair is still horrible and to cover for it most NPCs are bald. This is expected from a title developed for consoles too, but sorry it's 2016. and they could put some proper hair at least on PC version.
I'll have to replay TW3 after this game.
EDIT:
Final edit is this. I don't see this game being 5/10. This is not an average game, it's definetly above average. Screw IGN.