Good Game, Questionable Prologue
The prologue works well as a tutorial, but don't waste time farming materials, gold, or XP there. All of that progress gets reset once you start the main game. There really should be a clear notification telling players that their progress in the prologue won't carry over, because otherwise you're spending time gathering resources that will simply disappear.
So far, though, if the full game plays anything like the prologue, there is a lot to like. The visuals are fantastic, the animations are excellent, and the voice acting is surprisingly good. The world immediately creates a strong atmosphere, and there is enough going on to make me curious about what happens beyond the prologue.
One thing that confused me was the cook asking for ingredients. I assumed this was part of an actual quest or some kind of activity I could complete, so I spent quite a while searching around for everything he wanted. I found nothing.
While I really like the idea of listening to NPCs and remembering what they tell you instead of having everything spelled out in a quest journal, I found this particular situation a little dishonest. If you're going to introduce something as though it is a task the player can actually complete, putting it in the prologue and then not following through just leaves the player wondering whether they missed something.
There are quite a few questions like that left unanswered, but since I decided to refund the game for now, I'm going to leave them for later rather than judge the game based on a small slice of content.
I gave the game a try and I'm definitely intrigued. The animation and cutscenes are fantastic, the atmosphere is great, and the gameplay has enough potential that I definitely want to come back.
My friends were the ones who convinced me to play it with them, so I bought it first, while they all enthusiastically declared that they were "definitely going to buy it too"... just after a bigger sale, or when it hits Xbox Game Pass. 😂
So now I'm the proud owner of a game that everyone else is waiting to buy.
I'll refund it for now and come back when it hits Game Pass or gets a significantly better discount. I can't really say much more about how the full game works because I stopped early, and I still have plenty of questions.
But the intrigue is definitely there.
I can't wait to give it a proper playthrough when the game reaches 1.0.
