Watched a few streams.
Exploration in games like Skyrim or the latest Zelda happens from within the gameworld. It is initiated from the avatar's perspective: spotting a point of interest, a landmark and then moving toward it. Exploration at the core.
Both products also did a fine work at providing diversity in landscape for Skyrim by providing culturally different zones in the same biome and Zelda by providing different biomes.
In this product, though, the landscape is somewhat uniformized and undistinguished, exploration happens and is triggered by external means like map navigating.
Really weak points for me:
- stiff/clunky/unsatisfying combat - it's an action rpg so if combat does not click it's a game-breaking offender
- bloated hp bars for enemies with simplistic attack patterns a.k.a artificial increase in difficulty - it's not even close to Dark Souls from which it borrowed stamina attack system
They borrowed more than that from DS. While DS combat is contained within a defined perimeter (which allows precision in its design), this one is left with multiple degrees in liberties, especially as the product is big on verticality.
It leaves that imprecision touch as the PC movement is not confined.
They also tried to satisfy the demand for lethal combat, which backfired strongly.
The combat is pattern based, moving around, letting the enemy trigger its sequence to hit it and the combat is reflex based (especially spellcasters: the crosshair turns red when damage can be applied, sweeping the cursor on the enemy and shoot at the right time)
They wanted to lock up areas by fielding hard to take on enemies. With their system, though, players can cheese their way on.
All it takes is to bear being two or one shot. Run around, take the pattern or the reflex path and stronger enemies are discarded.
It is made worse as the enemy seldom displays a mob mentality: it is possible to squeeze one enemy at a time.