izigame.me

This game not a fresh take on the first person RPG formula at all save for visuals and setting, however it did scratch the loot goblin itch all us degenerates who like skyrim have. I was hoping that this game's magic would be interesting, but it's basically multiple versions of "projectile that does damage right now or over time and sometimes to other people near them". Also, holy shit, this game eats 10GB of memory. I don't know what the fuck for, but it does, and my whole computer crumbles under this game's sheer weight when it's being run. This means that even with an i7 7700k, 1080ti and 8gb ram, this game CHUGS in the open areas. However keep in mind that optimisation is usually done last in gamedev so don't expect these issues fixed any time soon.
Story:
The story is very interesting. I don't know much about the Arthurian legends, but what's here is very well done. You have what's essentially a struggle for power between the Keepers and the Dal Riata, a member of which you meet early on and whose dialogues set up the story for which you will later be involved with. This conflict, and the recent degradations have caused alot of unrest in the area and it's up to you to go around and see who needs help. Some of the side quests are boring fetch quests, but the dialogue surrounding it is great, like giving an unmotivated soldier pie his mother used to make to remind him why he left! Or that one time you go into a crypt and its caretaker can't stop the undead from running around causing havoc because a necromancer is using them as soldiers. Even in the open world there is great non-story or quest related stuff, like happening upon a dead noble whos mission was to retrieve an amulet. You can't get the amulet unless you pay attention to the ingredients you need to put into the offering by reading his note.
Basically, the story is very well written and interesting. If there is any reason to play the game in its current state, it's the story and basically nothing else; there are games where the melee/ranged and magic combat is far superior and unless they do something different, I find it hard to justify the design decisions here when instead it could have been a linear(ish) adventure game.
The art is also very inspiring. Between the dreary setting of Avalon and the tribal aesthetics of the Dal Riada, are tonnes of designs ripped straight out of eldritch horror. With tentacles extending out of sacred sites, those... things in the basement of that one sunken village and even Excalibur. The "sword in the stone" aesthetic is replaced completely with stone hands rising out of the ground to grab at a sword pulled straight out of Cthulhu's ass. It's not holy and comforting, it's hellish and unnerving and beautifully sets up the game's later twists. The game's story is super promising from this perspective, it's just a shame that the gameplay doesn't deliver to match.
Combat/RPG:

AI is more A than I. Very easy to sneak around even with a full magic build. When in combat, running away causes the AI to just lose interest and go back to its spawn.
This game's melee combat relies on the enemy being in your crosshairs. This works for older first person games but nowadays it just feels like I'm painstakingly aiming a rifle with a range of 1 meter. Suggestion: make the hit be a cone in front of the player.
Mana recharges veeeeery slowly. I get it, it's based on old magic mechanics of DnD and The Elder Scrolls where magic is powerful but hard to use. There are perks that allow for 10% of mana recovered per kill and 10% chance to get 50 mana (which doesn't scale that well and 10% chance means sometimes it never occurs or occurs too often) but these over centralise spells that have a super low cost, so you are left spamming the low cost fire spell because magic damage actually scales very well in this game. I like having a favourite spell, I do not like needing to use a single spell over and over because it's the only viable one.
Attribute increases are linear, which works in Morrowind because that game is janked to the max with all kinds of things you can use to become more powerful. In this game, it just makes progression feel extremely slow.
There should be an actual status screen that shows your character stats, like current armour/magic armour current mana cost reduction, current stamina cost per attack. Things like that. If that's in the game, I missed it.
Magic spells fly through the floor, which makes AOE spells weaker.
Magic spell effects are highly limited to doing damage, doing damage over time, healing and healing over time. The few spells that do literally anything else are highly limited, and less viable than the first flame spell you get in the game anyway because of mana cost per damage. Suggestion: There is already a persuade mechanic, how about a spell that increases my chances there? Maybe nerf it so it can only be used on a unique NPC once ever or it has a high mana cost. (For anyone complaining about how much I complain about magic, reminder that there is a dude called MERLIN in this world)
Magic spells' descriptions do not show the mana cost of casting it.
: sheathing when casting a magic spell stops mana regeneration until you unsheath and cast a spell.

QOL:

There is a category for consumables and crafting items. These should not overlap, or there should be a different tab for "food that i cooked" or "potions brewed". I don't want to see my chop of venison and my venison stew on the same window, it just makes things harder to find.
There should be an option to sort by type in the (ie potions are all together, armour piece types are all together)
The stash, although probably implemented at the 11th hour due to feedback (mad respect devs), is tedious when it comes to storing things. Make the default store value for stacked items the max value instead of the min value. i don't want to play with a slider when i have like 60 stacked items in my inventory. don't feel bad though, multi million dollar company CDPR fucked that up far harder somehow.
The quick select wheel is a good idea, but I'd prefer to select on the wheel what spell or weapon goes into whatever hand, rather than the "loadout" system that was implemented. Loadouts don't save time, they just force me to think about equipment in a way I don't need to when every other system does not function this way.
Carrying capacity is an irritating thing to have to deal with, and I no longer know why it's there. I'm not asking for its removal, but what I will ask is to really think about why it needs to be there in the first place. Let's say there is a pack of hard to kill mobs whose armour sells for alot of money. The only difference I can see between being able to carry all of it and not being able to is 5 minutes of real time, because I will definitely be back for it, I just can't carry it right now. Do things really need to be this way? If so, why?

Overall, I would say to give this game a miss... for now. The story is SUPER intriguing with the go and kill king arthur/king arthur is trapped within your body plot twist thing it has going on. I will change my recommendation if this game improves so I'll follow it closely and edit this review over time (hopium). It however remains to be seen if this game's story is good enough to carry the experience or if the mechanics bring so little that this game could have been a skyrim mod instead (no hate at all, it's very hard to make something original that surpasses what bigger companies have already achieved. Godspeed, developers).