Im finding it a dilemma between playing on normal difficulty or easy.
Normal isnt exactly hard, but the combat system is such that if youre not careful you can and will wipe out pretty often. Easy however, is, well, easy.
To elaborate, the combat system is a bit like KOTOR/ME, where you can take control of each party member and assign an action. You can also set "Tactics" which basically program the AI to act based on a mahoosive list of variables. This can range from the basic "attack nearest enemy, use healing if health low" to pretty complex sets where you can tell it to switch between tactic sets based on what youre being attacked by, and how etc. As characters level you can add more slots. The game has been designed to pretty much make use of pausing the game to get all tactical and assigning actions as and when. Unlike KOTOR you cant queue actions, so there is pretty much pausing to be done every few seconds as each action is undertaken. Im not too keen on this, as Im finding the story etc fairly cinematic and would like to play through it as a story, rather than a game where I am having to reload saves from wiping out, or pausing every 5 secs to make new commands.
I dont want to cheapen the experience though by playing through on easy, which states its for new RPG players or people that dont expect to be pausing the game lots, so its not really an issue, but meh.
This asside, choices really do seem to effect the world around you. Nothing is as polar as in other Bioware games. I let out a big giant dude who had been found guilty of murdering a famrstead to discover now the people in the village wont speak to me. Similarly Ive not done much negative in another settlement, but after returning from a quest the shopkeep wont trade with me. Not sure what I did wrong there heh.
Graphically it may not be cutting edge, but its still pretty good eye candy.
Theres a fair bit of LOTR rip-offage going on.
The persistent blood effects is a nice touch, not sure if its "capped" at this kind of level (I think it is), would have been good for it to potentially get to the stage of Gears of War 2 in the worm near the end of that level where youre pretty much red head to toe. You basically get blood splattered in melee combat to a degree, which sticks around for quite a while before fading away (couple of minutes I think)
Additionally, the "Dark Epic Fantasy" is so true. Betrayals, death and murder are left right and centre, the story developers held no punches and it does leave you feeling that you dont know who is going to be killed next etc, I dont think your party members are "safe" in that sense...
