I have over 200 hours played and I've bought the game for friends, obviously I really like it. Here's my review
PROS:
>tons of great events that give you the chance to get rare gear and brothers. The writing is pretty good and kept me interested.
>Good combat, feels great when you cut a guys head off
>Varied brotherhoods are the best, some jobs will net you free gear or soldiers from events. I once had a monk talk to a pimp and convince him to join the warband. If you have a cartographer you can get a random event map translated that leads to a legendary item.
>There actually are many viable builds but there are perks you should take on every brother like STEEL BROW to mitigate those instant kill arrow headshots. My favorite two builds right now are adrenaline polearm and 1 handed murderer on the run with a rondel dagger.
>Pretty good variety on tactics you can use that totally change up fights, you can get a bird to reveal enemy locations, you can take on larger warbands or warbands with lots of archers by stocking up on war dogs. If you are not using wardogs you're playing the game wrong because they are guranteed to pull aggro from every enemy next to them and they have good dodge. You can use caravan hands as cover, you can lure enemy warbands to house soldier warbands that will totally decimate them but complete your quests and you still get loot. You can use terrifying archers to cause the enemy warband to flee before they even get to your warband.
>Great endgame, theres 3 major events to pick from and they cycle so you eventually do them all, Undead horde, Noble war and greenskin invasion are the three events. You can get unique gear and brothers from each event.
>Besides the major events there are legendary items hidden throughout the world, 3 legendary dungeons where you can fight the leader of the orks, a black monolith of the undead and the new Lindwurm dragon hoarde.
>The sense of progression is really nice, you go from getting daggered by other cripples and beggars in the woods to slaughtering vampires with 700 armor hedge knights using legendary claymores.
>Trading, its an okay way to make some spare monies
>Contract variety, most contracts will have you killing different shit but you can end up fighting stuff other than what you were expecting. Very rarely you end up with a contract that pays 4k gold and with the right brother you can avoid the fight entirely and sometimes even get a free war scythe or similar weapon.
Mixed:
>Trading is difficult because prices are based on reputation and reputation always trends towards the middle.
>banditry is possible but poorly implemented
>earlygame your builds are restricted to just maximizing your cripples and beggars paltry survival chances
Cons:
>There is way too much RNG earlygame, from your brothers stats to losing more money than you are going to make from a contract by losing an expensive brother first turn to an arrow headshot. I once had a caravan that came with 16 caravan guards, likewise I once had to fight off 47 undead invading a settlement.
>The viewing distance is not far enough to avoid getting caught by enemies playing on 2x speed, the game should give you the option to pause everytime you run into an enemy group. It doesnt help that you cant see as far into forests which is where you often get ambushed
>retreating is too costly
>you dont make enough money, even on easy economic difficulty. You can play for hours to get money for a swordsmaster and then have him get shot in the head the next encounter. His statline could even be utter shit.
>RNG forces you to savescum
>I would like to have seen archers effectiveness increase against lategame enemies but they are forced to target other archers most of the time.
>no Modsupport, this was promised and would have fixed everything above
>Nets should be a reloadable throwing weapon like javelins
>dogs are too expensive
>remove the hedge knight event where two hedge knights kill each other if you have 2, this just forces a savescum. Or at least make the advancement the survivor gets valuable and not just +3 fatigue.
>skeleton legionaires are bullshit to fight