u/Minutemann1776

I bought this game because all the hype and reviews made it sound like a dynamic open world where anything could happen at anytime and it is supposedly really popular. but I'm not seeing any of that or the appeal of the game.

There's different genres of RPGs of course but each one has its central appeal. JRPGs are story centered, deep story telling, fully hashed out characters, effort put into music etc. its like you're playing an epic story.

Then you have open world sandbox RPGs like Elder Scrolls or Kingdom Come Deliverance, where the world is very open, malleable, and interactive.

Then you have more combat focused dungeon crawlers like Diablo, where its more about the thrill, but you're also give a degree of freedom in customizing your character.

so far in this, the game is completely linear, you run through extremely restricted and annoying mazes, there's absolutely nothing open about it at all. the character creation has a lot of customization but then thats it. Can't really spend stat point, you can select from a handful of different skills in your very limited restricted "Vocation", the AI of NPCs is, well...non existent, they stand in one spot usually, and stay there no matter what time of day or night, except for a few random people walking around, you have the option to "talk" to them but then they just say some stupid meaningless line, you rarely ever have any dialogue choices. it gets very annoying running from one place to another, it doesn't feel like an adventure, but more like driving. like driving to work on the highway restricted to a road system.

The enemies are super receptive and infrequent, so far anyway, the plot is very generic and shallow, it both tries too hard but not hard enough, the voice acting and things characters say is just so shallow, dry and cringe. and the whole like high fiving whatever random "pawn" you have following you around is super cringe. and they try to make the pawns act like genuine characters but they just aren't characters, just bodies that say the same boring lines.

What am I missing. There has to be some reason its so popular, I feel like I'm playing an old PS2 RPG just without the nostalgia, and less fun but better graphics. there's nothing really unique about it, nor does it copy the more enjoyable aspects of other RPGs its only original in shallow little ways. This youtuber who convinced me to play it said "ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN' but I don't see it. I see the same exact things happening over and over. My character neither feels like a manifestation of my own imagination and choice OR an interesting scripted character. Just a body that I run around with and use my generic little moves.

Maybe I just got spoiled coming straight from Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 and 2 and feel like I'm taking a step backwards in almost every dimension. I find myself not looking forward to getting off work anymore, and just bored driving home at night. I'll play for maybe 45 min and get distracted and just end up on youtube lol. I'm going to give it another day but I feel like I'm missing something. usually I can at least see the appeal to a game and why other people like it, even if I don't like it. but here I'm not. It just feels empty. like if it was one of those free mobile games just with a bigger budget, better graphics and better combat physics I guess. like they were just whipping something together and using the new tech and better graphics just to sell a repacked version of something old and generic. Like the whole PS3 era of gaming.

I felt like I was on a role getting back into gaming again after KCD, Bannerlord and KCD2 but now I'm getting very bored with the PS5 after 3 games. I don't even see anything else appealing. 😢