The good 👍
- Strong modding scene which fixes a lot of issue with the game
- It has all the good parts of RPG. Good story, interesting characters
- Skills are mastered by performing them, similarly to skills in Skyrim
- We can't read until we get a quest to go to a scholar to teach us 😂
- Eating and sleeping 'survival' mechanics are not really obstructive

The bad 👎
- "Hyper realistic" bow combat without reticle is an unfunny joke. Fixed via mods.
- Very realistic and complicated melee combat, which feels a bit turn based and thus clunky
- Melee combat is always us versus many opponents. It's possible to die at a high level from peasants, if we don't find a way to obscure enemies' path to fight 1v1 or 2v1. It is not possible to effectively block opponents that are surrounding us, and it can lead to partial stagger-lock
- Henry gets dirty so fast... We can get a bath, go uphill to castle and already be covered in mud tip to toe
- NPCs and animals spawn literally in front of us
- Saving mechanism is annoying. And adds a lot of unnecessary padding to already long game
- Not possible to completely remove fetch quests from the journal
- Speed of walk or horse riding is not the same for us and NPCs, which makes escort missions annoying
- DLC content baked in game but not accessible. There are hound trainers to train our dog, and it's possible to pay them to get skills, but dogs are not available in the main game
- Fast travel is more like autopilot, where the character 'physically' moves from point A to point B. If you 'fast-travel' through a city, and there are a lot of NPCs in the path of the horse, you will be stuck until they clear out. And your character on the 'fast-travel' map will be stuck. It is a bizarre way to implement it
- It is not possible to sleep in 'someone's else space', even when no one is using the spot. The game will allow lying down and start the sleep timer, but then it cancels, and some random NPC says "you can't sleep here", and walk away. I am not riding across the whole map to use the one piece of flour that is not 'occupied' by anyone, when I'm in the military camp and no one uses this dirty pile of hay at the moment...
- Herb picking animations are so slow... thankfully there is mod to skip it entirely
- So many bushes are invisible walls that can't be walked through. Just why. It's not a Pokemon game

Conclusion:

Would I play the game, knowing how it will be? No. It has very good graphic. Detailed map. Interesting setting and non-trivial or predictable story. But then comes boring, repetitive and unfair combat. A lot of game mechanics that waste time. I'm sure I would have way more fun beating Hades and Talos Principle 2 (which would sum up to time required to beat this game with all side quests solved). I did see warnings before playing that combat is bad and clunky (or amazing, and super realistic, if you look at it like this). And it is exactly that. Walking sim with good level design and meh combat.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☑ Good

We are a son of a smith. Our village is plundered by invaders. Our parents are killed in front of us. But we survive. And take an oath to have revenge. Along the way we listen some boring bits about the Czech Republic and Hungary politics, get to know all the lords of the land and become the best warrior in the province. The game is fairly historically accurate when it comes to reproducing the realities of that time, but the story is fully fictional.

🪄 Abilities ☐ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☑ Advanced combat	We can run / jump (in quite clunky way), ride horse. We can't swim. We learn and improve skills through practicing, similarly to Skyrim. There is no ability tree, and skills are made available based on level. Most of them feel like a filler, though. Like there are around 10 different combos to unlock for sword combat, but what are they good for when they are interrupted by an enemy attacking us. And 99% of time we fight one vs many, which ends with us getting hit a lot.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Over complicated	The menu doesn't look scaled properly. The right half of the screen on quest log is taken up by unnecessary map. There is so little space for quest updates that quest tasks are displayed on top of the quest list in sort of overlay. The inventory is half-taken by a big image of how Henry is looking. Default item sorting is just obnoxious (and can be fixed with mods). There is no ability to mark items as rubbish and sell in bulk. Detailed weapon and armour stats also work as this weird overlay on top of the items list.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	Love it or hate it. No other option, I'm afraid. I was in the "ugh, not again" camp. At first, combat is impossible, and we will die after being hit twice by a peasant. The game requires a lot of practice fights with wooden swords (it is free at least), before we get enough sword fight and defence skills to not die immediately. There are 6 directions in which we can attack (head, arms, torso sides, central stab) that are decided by where we point the mouse before the attack. And 90% of time, an attack like this will be blocked. So instead we need to point the mouse in one direction, and then change direction mid-way we press LMB to start attack. While still observing where our opponent is holding the sword, do not select the direction they will easily parry. Which rarely worked for me. Another option is to learn combos, which require multiple light/strong attacks in different directions. Which never worked for me. The last option is to train enough with wooden swords to learn how to do parry. Which is what pushed me through this game. Don't try to out-smart enemy, where you will fail 90% of the time. Just wait for the green "parry" shield to be displayed to press "Q" and land one effort-free hit on the enemy. Rinse and repeat. Doesn't work well when there are multiple enemies around, but then the first two ways to fight won't work as well. Bow fight is a joke without aim reticle (the game hides the aim crosshair when the bow is equipped) which makes it impossible to use it, unless you are a masochist. I did archery. To shot bare bow, you need years of extensive training. When people train at the club, they put something bright in the grass to "have something to aim at the arrow" (like orange ping-pong balls), as there is a big offset of where you think the arrow will fly and where it does. You aim at grass 0.5m to the right of the target, and the arrow hits the centre of the target. And devs wanted to re-create a mechanism like this in active combat, by simply removing the reticle 🤯 I did install the mod to restore the aim reticle, because I wanted to enjoy some bow-shooting. Not to ignore bow as unusable tool like most of the people do. Otherwise, even at max possible level, we are quite squeamish and can still die if we are ambushed by 5 peasants with spears. My solution to this was to max out scout ability, and simply avoid all combat. Except for story-related quests, but there we usually have allies with us, so we are not in 1-against-many situation.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies are brainless. Will either shot arrows at us (if we are far away) or chase us in a straight line if we approach.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☑ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☑ Fast travel	Details: