Reviews by Shopper

This is one of the best games of our generation, and possibly of all time. The game mechanics are smooth, the story is thoroughly original and engrossing, and the settings are absolutely stunning. Very few games have such ambitions – and then match them.

My only complaint would be that the combat is somewhat repetitive and overall a bit easy. But I see this game primarily as a very thoughtful, intelligent, high-concept historical fiction story communicated via the medium of an action/adventure game, so the relative lack of challenge was fine by me.

Also, 12-15 hours is the perfect amount of gameplay time. I know that's short by AAA standards, but the pacing of this game is perfect and I would hate to see it stretched thinner just to bulk up the gameplay time.

I'm not usually a fan of FPSs but this one blows the lid off the genre. Highly recommended.

The port of this game is mostly fine but some bugginess pops up here and there. Games of this complexity will crash, I get that, but this game caused 4 kernel panics (i.e. computer shutdowns) in my playthrough, in addition to maybe a dozen soft crashes. For a game of this calibre from a developer of such repute, this level of crashiness is unacceptable. I'm currently unable to progress through one of the DLC quests because of a persistent crash. (The "final sale" caveat is just salt in the wound here.)

As for the game itself: it's good, but I don't think it's the transcendent experience that it has been made out to be among the critics. It plays the classical RPG pretty close to the book: human/elf/dwarf, warrior/mage/rogue, make your party, fight battles, loot corpses, kill the dragon... nothing really outside of the box. It's very well balanced and well constructed, for sure, but it rests a little too heavily on the tropes of the genre. Also, I know it's supposed to be epic and all, but 30 hours is too long for the content. I'd say there's about 15 hours of legitimate content and 15 hours of padding: repetitive battles, fetch quests, lots and lots and lots of travel time...

Ultimately, the game is functional enough that it's worth purchasing if you want to have it. And, well, you probably already know if you want to have it. It's a high-fantasy RPG, through and through, for better or worse.