It's very playable in single-player. I didn't find it compelling enough to finish, but I thought it held up well as a simple action-RPG. You have no control over the other two characters, but the ai does a decent enough job with them. That said, it's probably more enjoyable in co-op.
Thank you, that's definitely the general feeling I got from reading more about it and watching a bit.
Here an overview:
- Difficulty : Some parts are quite hard on Normal, Easy is easy, difficulty can't be changed during a game you need restart a game to change it. Harder difficulties need be unlocked.
- There's no pause, the combats are pure action game unlike for example Dragon Age series. Companions AI isn't that bad, to counterbalance AI weaker than real players (coop) the difficulty seems lowered in single player in comparison with coop.
- There's some RPG elements like inventory, items, character management with attributes and skills with three trees, but overall it's medium quality, to compare let say the quality of this is a bit better than Dungeon Siege III but not much. You manage nothing of your companions.
- Overall it's a straight forward RPG from fights to fights with intermediate cutscenes and some dialogs building a mildly dense story telling. It's a pure action RPG very combat oriented and if DA2 was too much for you on that point this one is a lot more purely combats+story, in fact the comparison with Dungeon Siege 3 is better it's similar but more heavy on story telling and quite weaker on exploration knowing that DS3 is only fairly good on that point.
- The links with the books seem quite well setup from a story and lore point of view and overall the story telling seems well done.
- Combats are setup on duration with never ending waves, those who hated this in DA2 should better skip this game.
- Companions (AI) aren't fully puppets they provide hints during combats, require help, detect waves of enemies and warn you, seem have a good survival, comment some of their most important actions during combats, and they provide sometimes some comments.
- Exploration is very minimal but there's some, it's mainly explore area corners to find some loot. The loot is a bit generic but there's stuff and there's some basic crafting to enhance items.
- It is overall in the range of AA games with a lack of polishing you could expect at this production level. It's a RPG heavily oriented to combats with story telling.
- It bugs a lot with many ATI cards and PC version, it requires apply cautious for ATI owners.
So overall this RPG will rely a lot on how much fun you'll have with the combats, the story telling will be a nice addition but won't be enough to sustain the fun. The RPG elements will just reinforce the mood and their medium quality won't sustain the fun that will rely heavily on combats fun. ATI owners should know they take a high risk in buying this.
I enjoyed Dungeon Siege 3 but parts with better exploration did help and the key point is if I'll enjoy the fights and will find them enough diversified and deep without to be too difficult.
Because there isn't much RPG on Mac I'll certainly end buy it, but would probably never on PC.