While I enjoy the game, there are a couple of concepts which I don't like that much in the game.
Regarding my progress: Playing on Torment, so everything takes a bit longer
I am 20 hours in, did the central area and went west, reclaimed Fort Muck and some of the mines.
I am basically playing the nice guy who is there for the people, who fights for haven but not unconditionally. No idea where that leads but so far the story hasn't been that interesting.
I am not sure how linear the game actually is. I tried my luck first to go to the Ahriel in the east, got beaten up by passing through the entrance area and didn't try again.
In any case, I don't feel that it's linear, but it's artificially constructed to a degree where it's a bit too much. Like one realm in each direction, with 2 forts each, an army each.
It feels a bit like playing Civilization on a symetrical map or something, where it's not actually a surprise that the opponent is sitting on the other side of the river.
Or like these old companion quests in some games (including some Avadons) where you get a companion and know that he's got a quest at some point to win his favor.
Some other mechanics of the game:
You can gain resources and you need them to place and MAINTAIN buildings.
The Fort building in itself is completely uninteresting as you basically have to place one of each building anyways. The more interesting part about it is the resource management and the decision what you place first and if you hold off placing stuff.
That however seems to be only relevant if you try to hit the achievement to win the game within 100 days.
Correct me if I am wrong, but in theory you could just run in circles to get unlimited resources by passing time and then build everything.
I don't think time has any other impact besides of the achievement, but again, correct me if I am wrong. I'd actually be glad if there is some kind of time pressure to give this mechanic some meaning.
This resource focus also has an impact on another system:
While old Spiderweb games offered tons of trash loot, where you looked at every spoon to check if you can get some gold for it, Queen's Wish is the exact opposite.
There is hardly any loot at all. This is because the majority of the stuff is crated and therefore gated to how many forts you have.
This means that there is almost no loot for any encounters which makes it much less rewarding. Also you find some vendors in the world which...well...have 3 crappy items. I definitely preferred the old system and loved the trashbag feature.
Enemy Respawn: A double edged sword.
This game has lots of zones where some groups of enemies will respawn if you won't kill the boss to "claim" the zone.
That in itself isn't that bad. I guess it should make it a bit more challenging. And instead of having the challenge limited to just the boss encounter now you include the fights infront of that encounter into it, and make it a bit into a marathon.
However: You are never clearly told which enemies are impacted.
This means that you might go in, kill 5 trash groups (takes maybe 40 minutes) and then you encounter the boss. You realize, you will not be able to beat him, because you ran out of HP/Mana/Potions. So now you leave the zone, heal, come back and you see that the last 2 of thes groups respawned, which you need to kill again.
If you knew that beforehand you could just head back before actually going into combat with these groups.
And then some other issue I saw:
Secrets: The game doesn't have any hidden switches or doors anyway. That was fun in previous games and seems to be completely gone now
Pathfinding:
Spiderweb actually improved their pathfinding in their last games, so that characters do NOT run into enemy area of control if they can reach the path without doing so.
In Queens wish that's gone again and the pathfinding AI in combat got worse again.