28 hrs+. 26 quests, 26/30 secrets, 5 super-weapons. level 20
I`ve played as my traditional Merchant->Jack Of All Trades build, that again provided me with very smooth mid-to-endgame.
I`d share a couple of my thoughts.
- The overall outcome feels satisfactory. The finale is not such a great surprise, as I expected, but it was not presented as a cliche, either.
- The game feels very....compact? The small area makes an impression, that the game is much shorter than E2 or even E1.
Last quest left me with a feeling - ok, lets get to the second part of the game. Great immersion.
I had the same feeling after playing Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 afterwards - second part felt too short, beacause it was smaller and packed with action. - Having said that - now, if Wylderan is a sparsely populated wilderness, and it looks like this, other parts of Eschalon look like a barren waste. Perhaps some hardcore modding will change this in the future.
- Quests and puzzles are interesting, not so challenging like in some dungeon crawlers (Grimrock), but not discouraging either.
The "Raiders of Lost Ark" puzzle was the hardest, as figuring out the shape was not so obvious, adding something to Handle this better would certanly help some more casual players, wink wink - Skill improvements - Armour items have skill level caps - great idea.
Foraging - good idea, but needs a small patch - finding items along is a good idea, but I`d suggest making some sort of "location item pool". It would prevent some wierd situations, like "You are walking through the corridors of a dungeon of a sandy, desert castle - and suddenly - A Wild Cabbage Appears! - Spells - I usually use only the most utilitarian and priest spells, so I can say that changes here are good too. New Create Food - quite fine. Reveal Map - great improvement for compulsive mapmakers, who want to know it all, also for aesthetic reason - blanks in maps look so bad. And disturbing ;>
Had some basic issue with sand having almost the same colour as "unexplored", but after a while I got used to it. - General gameplay things - Hidden Areas and Secrets - great dungeon crawlers idea, well implemented.
Destructible vases - also something good, as the new kegs, "hostels" secrets and hidden areas.
Generally E3 feels a little bit short, but perhaps because it was such an immersive game.
The story ends in a credible, neat way, with some M&M world ideas, but still original in some ways, which is hard in usually generic/post-tolkien cRPG worlds, or even in a mix like this, vastly used in series like M&M or Wizardry.
I hope the modding tools will allow to create some new locations, perhaps some ruins or necromancers to the north of Astral Range, or a boat trip to The Isle with cpt. Morgan.
I had a great time with the game, I`m only waiting for someone to reveal 4 secrets I`ve missed ^^