Swords, guns and magic in a third person game where a war waged over a mysterious island climaxes with the player influencing the result.

The combat is decent enough to hold the player’s attention for most of the game. Different play styles will change combat with rogues rolling, warriors being more of a tank class and mages relying more on magic as you would expect. Hybrid builds can also be created.

The characters and world is interesting with plenty of lore for those who care about that sort of stuff. The companions all have unique personalities and combat styles which keeps them interesting but most importantly their quests actually feel like they matter with one of them having a huge impact on one part of the main story. I’ll never forget how “Things are about to get dicey!”

Your character is basically a diplomat who is supposed to ally with factions to give yourself the best chance in the upcoming war. Over the course of the game you have interactions with faction leaders who all have different beliefs, the factions are based on ideas of pirates, mercenaries, strict religious people, monster allied natives and scientists. The plot is all about the different issues that each faction faces and the choices you make in solving them, as a diplomat you want approval but many interactions put the factions against each other. As with most games you’ll side with your favourite factions each time and be set up ready for war.

Then a plot twist which subverts expectations about the factions means the story ends in a surprising way. There’s a huge final boss that looked like it should have been in Bloodborne if it was a little harder. Then sadly it goes a bit too cutscene reliant but the story and war end up concluded based on choices made through the games so for once in game choices actually matter.

Sadly I can’t bring myself to play the game again to get the different endings because the charm of how the game is set up relies on going in blind. I don’t think I’ll play it through again but it was brilliantly done when I had no spoilers.