This is my very subjective first impressions review of the game , in no order :
- The game plays as if you were playing an Anime. Or being within a Manga. Kind of
- So many light colours !
- Visually, the game is the complete opposite of Skyrim, judging from what I've seen of Skyrim.
- The game reminds me of what I've seen of Fenix Rising.
- Enemy NPCs are stronger the farther away one travels from the starter areas.
- Negative :
- In all characters, the nose is mising. The faces are mostly completely flat.
-The female characters look so much ... ugh ... like female stereotypes ... Their clothing is very light, I think the word often used there is "skimpy", and look very much like what men would dream of how women should look like.
- The character of ... what's the name ? Patreon ? - looks like what I know from German Christian mideaval art like a "Putte (Sing. Putte, Plural Putten), and I found the character very disturbing - which is probably because I found Putten very disturbing even when I was a teenanger, and that has never changed since then. The English word is "Putto" :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putto
- This character's voice is
extremely high-pitched, it almost hurts my ears. The voice is often very difficult to understand because of that.
- Undecided, like in "I'm not used to that" :
- The male protagonist doesn't look like a God Of War. He doesn't look like a Witcher, either.
- In fact, the male protagonist looks so much like the total opposite of a "not god of war" that he could be female, too. In fact, I have seen a few Real World medieval paintings of aristocrats in their youth, on which they look a lot like females according to our nowadays aesthetics, for example with long hair. So, My guess is, that long hair, for example, is something that was more common among men in earlier times than it is now. Apart from Heavy Metal people.
- This look is probably - like with the female characters, I guess - due to a very different set of Aesthetics regarding the looks of Manga/Anime characters.
- Male NPCs have that "not like a god of war" look as well.
- In fact, both sexes look so much like each other sometimes that I have problems telling which one is which. Which is probably good for the LGBT people.
- Therefore, clothing is usually used as an indication marker to tell both sexes apart. It's mostly with trousers, skirts, upper body parts, but nothing apart from that.
- The famele NPCs voices are often in quite some contrast to how these female NPCs look like. A tough female voice of an advnturer - I'd expect a woman like Riply to look like that voice, but then, within the game, the NPC is looking like most "skimpy lothing" female NPCs. Even if the voice does transport the toghness of a Ripley, so to say.
- So far, the game plays rather like a single player game.
- The UI is a bit overloaded - LOTS of details. - with NO explanations !
- Good : There is a section in which you can re-read dialogs. Which is good for deaf people, or those not used to the English spoken word.
- The UI doesn't quite diffrenciate enough between Microtransactions things (via Real World money) and in-game paying. I had a hard time telling both apart. I could imagine that this is intentional.
So, apart from the negatives, I like it. It's a HUGE difference to wghat I normally play, though. (This is my very first JRPG, in fact, so to say.)
Like I wrote in "A Thought", this appears to be one of those cases in which there is an interesting story (so far a bit generic, I've just been closing that early storm chapter), only to be found within games with JRPG style, but NOT with "western" mediaval style looks - and vice versa. I call this "a cross", where I'd want the one from there and the other thing from over there, but can't have both, because developers just wouldn't EVER do a "Last Unicorn" story with the visuals ofa "God Of War".
A tiny bit on language : The first, rather medival looking town, "Mondstadt" ("Moontown") is pronounced in most cases almost like "Monster" when the voice actors are speaking very fast. They use a "short o" like in "Monster".
As this is a German name, the word "Mond" should rather be pronounced with a "long o" like in the word "mongrel".