I admit, the first time I tried this game back in 2020, I bounced off completely -- I did not grasp basic tactical positioning, not party composition (my first party was built almost entirely out of hybrids).
Well, I can testify that with proper consideration of your formation, and the kinds of characters who should occupy certain spaces in it, the combat in this game can be a real blast. The steady trickle of new spells and ever-increasing character abilities means that one must change up their tactics fairly often to thrive, and the enemies certainly do not lag behind on the power creep.
I begin by talking about the combat because that is what you will spend the overwhelming majority of the game doing. Yet, it is not the only great part of the game -- it features an open-world, non-linear structure, great worldbuilding which makes Dominus feel like a real place without being overbearing, a main quest with multiple branching paths up to the player's discretion, no arbitrary 'critical NPCs', and generally about as much freedom of approach as one could ask from a classic-style CRPG from the early 2000s. The game also features lots of fully-voiced character dialogue, including a whopping 36 different voices to give your player characters, and over half a dozen mercenaries to hire, all with their own personalities. These character voices continuously surprised me as they made comments on story events, without a very particular reason to (for example, my bard randomly decided to mention that Bela, a returning character from Wizardry 6 was 'her type'). I found that the game had a great deal of character, and was pretty much fully-realised in terms of immersing the player in its world.
I found that the environments were varied, as was the plethora of enemies found within them. The soundscape was something of a weak point, particularly the somewhat unremarkable and very repetitive music, but it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, as the other qualities of the game bear the burden of setting the mood on their titanic shoulders.
Overall, I might just recommend this game to everyone, just to see if they might like it. Now, I have not played any other blobbers, and I as told that this was a bad starting point, but I ended up beating it on Normal difficulty without much issue, taking 72 hours. Hence, if you feel like you'd be at all interested in trying this game based on anything you've seen about it, I would recommend you give it a go -- considering how cheap it goes on sale, and the amount of playtime you'll be getting, the value proposition almost becomes an irrelevant factor.
Well, I can testify that with proper consideration of your formation, and the kinds of characters who should occupy certain spaces in it, the combat in this game can be a real blast. The steady trickle of new spells and ever-increasing character abilities means that one must change up their tactics fairly often to thrive, and the enemies certainly do not lag behind on the power creep.
I begin by talking about the combat because that is what you will spend the overwhelming majority of the game doing. Yet, it is not the only great part of the game -- it features an open-world, non-linear structure, great worldbuilding which makes Dominus feel like a real place without being overbearing, a main quest with multiple branching paths up to the player's discretion, no arbitrary 'critical NPCs', and generally about as much freedom of approach as one could ask from a classic-style CRPG from the early 2000s. The game also features lots of fully-voiced character dialogue, including a whopping 36 different voices to give your player characters, and over half a dozen mercenaries to hire, all with their own personalities. These character voices continuously surprised me as they made comments on story events, without a very particular reason to (for example, my bard randomly decided to mention that Bela, a returning character from Wizardry 6 was 'her type'). I found that the game had a great deal of character, and was pretty much fully-realised in terms of immersing the player in its world.
I found that the environments were varied, as was the plethora of enemies found within them. The soundscape was something of a weak point, particularly the somewhat unremarkable and very repetitive music, but it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, as the other qualities of the game bear the burden of setting the mood on their titanic shoulders.
Overall, I might just recommend this game to everyone, just to see if they might like it. Now, I have not played any other blobbers, and I as told that this was a bad starting point, but I ended up beating it on Normal difficulty without much issue, taking 72 hours. Hence, if you feel like you'd be at all interested in trying this game based on anything you've seen about it, I would recommend you give it a go -- considering how cheap it goes on sale, and the amount of playtime you'll be getting, the value proposition almost becomes an irrelevant factor.