Some quick first impressions on the game, after about 6 or so hours of play:
1. Combat is a clusterfuck. This is partly due to the near-total lack of party member AI, which forces you to babysit (up to) six characters, and partly due to a lack of maneuvering room.
2. Scouting mode is, well not literally broken, but pretty messed up. Why? Because you can’t just have one person enter Scouting mode, the entire party has to do so. Worse, once one person is seen the entire party gets kicked out of stealth.
3. The environments are beautiful.
4. The setting is nicely fleshed out.
5. The reputation mechanics are interesting.
6. Stealth and non-combat resolutions to problems are actually viable paths to take here since combat does not grant any experience points.
7. The Endurance/Health split is kind of interesting, but I’m not all that happy that it (combined with the Fatigue system) makes resting a more-or-less mandatory action.
Can I say I got my money’s worth at this point in time? Sure, since I backed it on Kickstarter and so got it for a reduced price. Would I feel the same had I just bought this at full price? No, no I don’t think I would. Rather than being a successor to the Infinity Engine games, it feels a lot more like a successor to Dungeon Siege III… and I did not like Dungeon Siege III.
Perhaps it will grow on me, but at this point I strongly suspect I’ll not enjoy the combat system until some sort of companion AI is added (there was some talk about adding it in the expansion). I do not enjoy having to micromanage six characters. Not at all.