This game really do be making you feel like a medieval peasant, from it's combat, menus, music, allllll the way down to the potato looking graphics.
I find the whole combat learning curve to be pretty interesting both in it's believability with what the themes are going for. As Henry, you really shouldn't be able to slay 15 people in the first hour because it's not something that Henry is meant to be good at, rather it's something he and you, by extension, become better at the longer you put up with the mechanics. Once I was able to unlock nicer perks and fully grapple the idea of it, it became very fun to master the fighting by the end. It's absolutely not a mechanic that everyone would like though, and I don't blame anyone for dropping this game because of the combat. You can be a professional at it in this game and still die in a fight against 2 enemies who just dog-pile you. It's frustrating as all hell to learn, but it can be rewarding if you give it a chance.
For me, I was loving the whole medieval setting thing, probably a bit too much, but mainly because it was so different than the other games that I was used to. I found it all so goofy as Hell to be honest, I was weirdly immersed in being a random dude fighting for his life in a world where a sneeze could kill you. There are processes to just about everything. Henry is illiterate until you decide to put him through a reading class. Brewing potions is like a weird recipe based cooking mini-game. You can only save from sleeping in a bed you own or by drinking a potion, etc. It's very consistently detailed to make it feel like you're a medieval idiot and I found that to be the most interesting aspect of the game. Again though, it's not a gimmick that everyone would like and I also don't blame them. It's weird to describe this game to someone who's never played it before because my favorite parts are the ones that sound so boring on paper.
I really do wish that the story had a bit more oomph to it. It's.. fine? But, there's a reveal later down the line that sort of ruins the whole theme for me that I just gushed over above and it's kind of unfortunate. I wouldn't want to spoil it, but it's not a reveal that's done well and left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth for the rest of the main questline. That coupled up with the fact that some cutscenes are just a bunch of royal lords sitting around spewing massive historical infodumps for several minutes at a time will just put you to sleep at times. This game shines best when you're going through dialogue trees because you can sometimes change the outcomes through speech checks and optionally learn more about the context if you desired. There's some genuinely funny outcomes to some of the quests, both main and side, but as soon as the pre-rendered cutscenes start, just know that you're in for the world's longest AP European History lesson.
The ending is huge sequel bait and is ruined further by the DLC. If you have all the DLC for this game, your companion friend literally halts progress right at the end to make you go on one of the most trivial quests of all time. It's a fun quest and all but if you were thinking of maybe doing all the DLC after the epilogue, you can't. The game will force you to do this random side quest before showing you the world's shortest ending cutscene and allowing you to call it a day. My only guess for why they did this, is because the events of the DLC will be canon later?? But, it was still a weird as fuck choice.
On the subject of speech, it's done very interestingly here because it's affected by the clothes that you're wearing. If you're wearing nice, expensive looking clothes when you speak to someone, you're probably going to pass most of your speech checks. On the other hand, if you're wearing garish, bloody armor then you may not be able to. You could theoretically pass more intimidation checks instead though. It's a cool idea but there are some instances where it doesn't seem to work? Each dialogue has numbers that indicate whether you would win against that person or not in a speech check, but a lot of the times it doesn't seem to matter. You could have +4 points above someone and you will still fail apparently because the dialogue option is "so unbelievable" that not even that person believes you, even though you have super high Charisma. Why is it an option then LOL? You can use speech checks to get out of a lot of hard combat scenarios or get better quest rewards, but this will fuck you sometimes without warning.
On that note, this game is still incredibly buggy at times. Supposedly when it first came out, it had massive problems that have been mostly fixed today. Unfortunately, I did still run into some issues. For the most part, they just stuck to graphical bugs where textures load weirdly or some characters T-pose here and there, which.. sure broke my medieval peasant immersion sometimes. I did however run into problems where dialogue would freeze infinitely if I skipped over some choices too quickly, which was annoying because I'd have to reload. There were also some battle scenes where the friendly AI just wouldn't function properly sometimes and I'd die because of it.
All and all, I found a lot of fun with this game but I would only ever recommend it to the right person who I know would thoroughly enjoy it and it's mechanics. It's not the greatest story ever and can be drier than ancient wood at times, but I really dug the actual gameplay. It's very unfortunate though that after enjoying the hell out of this game, I found out later that the guy who made it is an outspoken member of a movement who thinks that I'm a sub-human who's out to destroy the gaming industry. It's a game that I already bought and played so I won't piss on it because of this, but you can use that information however you like.
I find the whole combat learning curve to be pretty interesting both in it's believability with what the themes are going for. As Henry, you really shouldn't be able to slay 15 people in the first hour because it's not something that Henry is meant to be good at, rather it's something he and you, by extension, become better at the longer you put up with the mechanics. Once I was able to unlock nicer perks and fully grapple the idea of it, it became very fun to master the fighting by the end. It's absolutely not a mechanic that everyone would like though, and I don't blame anyone for dropping this game because of the combat. You can be a professional at it in this game and still die in a fight against 2 enemies who just dog-pile you. It's frustrating as all hell to learn, but it can be rewarding if you give it a chance.
For me, I was loving the whole medieval setting thing, probably a bit too much, but mainly because it was so different than the other games that I was used to. I found it all so goofy as Hell to be honest, I was weirdly immersed in being a random dude fighting for his life in a world where a sneeze could kill you. There are processes to just about everything. Henry is illiterate until you decide to put him through a reading class. Brewing potions is like a weird recipe based cooking mini-game. You can only save from sleeping in a bed you own or by drinking a potion, etc. It's very consistently detailed to make it feel like you're a medieval idiot and I found that to be the most interesting aspect of the game. Again though, it's not a gimmick that everyone would like and I also don't blame them. It's weird to describe this game to someone who's never played it before because my favorite parts are the ones that sound so boring on paper.
I really do wish that the story had a bit more oomph to it. It's.. fine? But, there's a reveal later down the line that sort of ruins the whole theme for me that I just gushed over above and it's kind of unfortunate. I wouldn't want to spoil it, but it's not a reveal that's done well and left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth for the rest of the main questline. That coupled up with the fact that some cutscenes are just a bunch of royal lords sitting around spewing massive historical infodumps for several minutes at a time will just put you to sleep at times. This game shines best when you're going through dialogue trees because you can sometimes change the outcomes through speech checks and optionally learn more about the context if you desired. There's some genuinely funny outcomes to some of the quests, both main and side, but as soon as the pre-rendered cutscenes start, just know that you're in for the world's longest AP European History lesson.
The ending is huge sequel bait and is ruined further by the DLC. If you have all the DLC for this game, your companion friend literally halts progress right at the end to make you go on one of the most trivial quests of all time. It's a fun quest and all but if you were thinking of maybe doing all the DLC after the epilogue, you can't. The game will force you to do this random side quest before showing you the world's shortest ending cutscene and allowing you to call it a day. My only guess for why they did this, is because the events of the DLC will be canon later?? But, it was still a weird as fuck choice.
On the subject of speech, it's done very interestingly here because it's affected by the clothes that you're wearing. If you're wearing nice, expensive looking clothes when you speak to someone, you're probably going to pass most of your speech checks. On the other hand, if you're wearing garish, bloody armor then you may not be able to. You could theoretically pass more intimidation checks instead though. It's a cool idea but there are some instances where it doesn't seem to work? Each dialogue has numbers that indicate whether you would win against that person or not in a speech check, but a lot of the times it doesn't seem to matter. You could have +4 points above someone and you will still fail apparently because the dialogue option is "so unbelievable" that not even that person believes you, even though you have super high Charisma. Why is it an option then LOL? You can use speech checks to get out of a lot of hard combat scenarios or get better quest rewards, but this will fuck you sometimes without warning.
On that note, this game is still incredibly buggy at times. Supposedly when it first came out, it had massive problems that have been mostly fixed today. Unfortunately, I did still run into some issues. For the most part, they just stuck to graphical bugs where textures load weirdly or some characters T-pose here and there, which.. sure broke my medieval peasant immersion sometimes. I did however run into problems where dialogue would freeze infinitely if I skipped over some choices too quickly, which was annoying because I'd have to reload. There were also some battle scenes where the friendly AI just wouldn't function properly sometimes and I'd die because of it.
All and all, I found a lot of fun with this game but I would only ever recommend it to the right person who I know would thoroughly enjoy it and it's mechanics. It's not the greatest story ever and can be drier than ancient wood at times, but I really dug the actual gameplay. It's very unfortunate though that after enjoying the hell out of this game, I found out later that the guy who made it is an outspoken member of a movement who thinks that I'm a sub-human who's out to destroy the gaming industry. It's a game that I already bought and played so I won't piss on it because of this, but you can use that information however you like.