Now that I finally finished all the available new content, it's time for some general feedback.
I played with my existing 4+2 party, starting with 24 hrs playing time from the previous content, now counting 44 hrs. So it took me exactly 20 hrs to explore every corner and finish (almost) every quest in the Urendale region. My permanent party members hit the XP cap of 17000 a few fights before that (no grinding involved), so the cap might still be increased a little bit (18000 would have been perfect for me).
The general atmosphere was great. The Medrin looks beautiful during the day and really scary at night. I explored mostly in daylight, because in this game darkness is really dark (not just gray tones like in many other games). The overall exploration experience and quest progress felt well-paced. There was still a lot of running involved, but it was less annoying than before due to the removal of the exhaustion feature. Also the conduits were well placed and it definitely helps that Urendale is situated more central in its region than Port Caleb.
The difficulty of the fights (on Old School) felt well-balanced (challenging, but not unfair), with two exceptions:
The Mycora are cute but too harmless for my taste. They are quite slow and their attack is rather weak. Even the standard beetle fights were more challenging. Maybe giving the standard Mycora (not just the elder ones) some special on-hit ability would make it more interesting.
The Yaksa are quite the opposite. Every fight with 5 or 6 of them was a pain for me. While I could manage all boss fights (including the epic beetle fight) with at most one reload, these Yaksa fights usually involved a lot of tries until I got lucky with the resist roles. They usually poisoned my group faster than I could purify (although I wore every Vitality improving equiment I could find).
This would have been ok if it was just for one or two fights, but since they are omnipresent in the forest I really started to hate them. Their difficulty was one notch above everything else in this region for me. Maybe this is intended, maybe not. Maybe it's just the composition of my group which made it so difficult. But if I had a free wish, I would invest it into decreasing their attacks per turn from 3 to 2.
The new equipment I could find gave a slight improvement here and there, nothing spectacular. Only the plate armor from the smith made a real difference. I bought it all at once to boost my bodyguard to armor value 14 and this raised tanking to a new level. Would have been nice if one or two plate pieces could also be found as loot, but maybe this is reserved for the missing content in the forest and fortress.
I was impressed how you managed to include nearly every type of skill check at least once into the dialogs. It gave me the feeling that every skill indeed has some relevance. It also means that (to get the most out of a single playthrough) one has to carefully plan party composition with regards to skill distribution, taking also into account the available skills of companions. This brings me to another wish: It would be nice if we get one free skill reset for every companion, making it easier to adjust them to the needs of the party. Marietta's initial skill distribution is one example where most players would probably prefer something more focused.
I played with my existing 4+2 party, starting with 24 hrs playing time from the previous content, now counting 44 hrs. So it took me exactly 20 hrs to explore every corner and finish (almost) every quest in the Urendale region. My permanent party members hit the XP cap of 17000 a few fights before that (no grinding involved), so the cap might still be increased a little bit (18000 would have been perfect for me).
The general atmosphere was great. The Medrin looks beautiful during the day and really scary at night. I explored mostly in daylight, because in this game darkness is really dark (not just gray tones like in many other games). The overall exploration experience and quest progress felt well-paced. There was still a lot of running involved, but it was less annoying than before due to the removal of the exhaustion feature. Also the conduits were well placed and it definitely helps that Urendale is situated more central in its region than Port Caleb.
The difficulty of the fights (on Old School) felt well-balanced (challenging, but not unfair), with two exceptions:
The Mycora are cute but too harmless for my taste. They are quite slow and their attack is rather weak. Even the standard beetle fights were more challenging. Maybe giving the standard Mycora (not just the elder ones) some special on-hit ability would make it more interesting.
The Yaksa are quite the opposite. Every fight with 5 or 6 of them was a pain for me. While I could manage all boss fights (including the epic beetle fight) with at most one reload, these Yaksa fights usually involved a lot of tries until I got lucky with the resist roles. They usually poisoned my group faster than I could purify (although I wore every Vitality improving equiment I could find).
This would have been ok if it was just for one or two fights, but since they are omnipresent in the forest I really started to hate them. Their difficulty was one notch above everything else in this region for me. Maybe this is intended, maybe not. Maybe it's just the composition of my group which made it so difficult. But if I had a free wish, I would invest it into decreasing their attacks per turn from 3 to 2.
The new equipment I could find gave a slight improvement here and there, nothing spectacular. Only the plate armor from the smith made a real difference. I bought it all at once to boost my bodyguard to armor value 14 and this raised tanking to a new level. Would have been nice if one or two plate pieces could also be found as loot, but maybe this is reserved for the missing content in the forest and fortress.
I was impressed how you managed to include nearly every type of skill check at least once into the dialogs. It gave me the feeling that every skill indeed has some relevance. It also means that (to get the most out of a single playthrough) one has to carefully plan party composition with regards to skill distribution, taking also into account the available skills of companions. This brings me to another wish: It would be nice if we get one free skill reset for every companion, making it easier to adjust them to the needs of the party. Marietta's initial skill distribution is one example where most players would probably prefer something more focused.
