izigame.me

At this point I've done 3 runs - one with an artificer, one astrologer and one as demonologist. I haven't played alchemist or necromancer, but I feel at 169 hours I have a pretty solid grasp of this game.
Here are what I see as it's positives:
- It has a solid focus on exploration - you NEED to keep exploring throughout the game to succeed
- The maps are fairly big.
- It has deep crafting systems. Each of the 5 major classes I've played so far (3) works very differently and crafting is a major part of the gameplay.
- The worldbuilding is coherent and has a sense of place.
- It has some map randomization capabilities.
- The DLC does make significant changes to the gameplay.
- There are a reasonable number of mods available. No workshop support, but there are 79 mods on Nexusmods right now. Some of them look interesting.
I feel more ambivalent about the following:
- I haven't experimented with the random maps feature, but I'm fairly sure that the map randomization consists of remixing the arrangement of set pieces. Also, presumably because of the complexity of designing those set pieces, there aren't really any mods that add new map places. The closest I could find was one that adds a starting location of WestGuard. Because of the commonality of internal elements - there's a lot of overlap in ALL maps.
- Developing the strength of your armies takes a lot of game time but is EXTREMELY important to progress. It seemed to take around 60 hours for a full size map and maybe 40 hours for one of the smaller ones.
I perceive these as negatives, but your mileage may vary (YMMV):
- There are no mods that add entire new maps - and the built in # of maps with all DLC is fairly small. I get the sense from the game that their concept of a map as implemented is closer to a new game mode. There are starting choices re starting locations and these are complex, but the fact modding support for locations/maps/etc is limited is likely due to the complexity of these internal systems.
- Some parts of the story are so morally confused that I think it harms the story. In particular, they present the "New Purity" as some sort of rough analogue of the Church, who are somehow the bad guys because they were somehow intolerant... but I have to say that narrative just didn't land very well when playing demonologist in particular. Because of how occultism/demonology work, I was regularly sacrificing large #'s of my own troops as well as regularly butchering entire villages to obtain blood for one of my heroes (Galtrak). All I can say is, in a world where occultist demonologists like I was playing at the time are running around murdering everything in sight... maybe the New Purity folks had a valid argument against mages. This definitely damaged my willing suspension of disbelief in the storyline.
- Several of the major plotlines involve demon subversion, and you really can't play the game with all dlc without demonic bargains being involved at some level. Many of the Circle mages have demonic pacts, and you are offered pacts in all versions of the storyline I've played so far as well. You can fight the demons, but these are very challenging when starting out - and there are time limits where if you don't, you might lose apprentices you've worked on for quite some time in game. I wouldn't mind it if there were SOME plotlines around these points, but you can't really play the game without encountering these. I'd prefer it if there were some modes without demons in all parts of the plot.
Maybe we could get a future dlc with a heavenly invasion as well?
Just a thought.