I picked this up yesterday after seeing all the positive reviews (and the moaning Eurogamer one). Put 5 or 6 hours in and have just made past the intro sequence to the title card, having spent most of that time running around semi naked and caked in shite. It’s very unforgiving.

First impressions are it’s somewhat like a non-fantasy Skyrim with deeper RPG systems and some really quite impressive AI and simulation going on. It’s also extremely beautiful in places. Haven’t got to grips with the sword combat yet but I’m planning to spec into heavy blunt weapons and just smash heads instead.

I spent half an hour this morning making healing potions. It’s all done from a first person view - you have the ‘recipe’ book open, then you have to pour the potion base into a cauldron, put in the right amount of each invidividual ingredient, use an hourglass to time how long to boil the mix for and then pour the resulting concoction into a phial. It’s fun but also quite laborious, I’m not sure it’s something I’d want to do too often.

The story so far has been great. The two leads are well written and acted and there’s a lot of genuinely funny dialog. Some of the minor characters aren’t so great, there’s some really bad line reads in places and random peasants who sound like they could read the BBC news.

Overall, it’s a really pleasant surprise and I’m hoping to soon get to a point where random passers-by don’t stop my character to tell him he reeks of urine.