It's basically Red Dead Redemption with swords, set in a sort of Westeros-type environment. I'm liking it a lot so far... great graphics, generally great voice acting, engrossing world...

Some things are bothering me though. The combat is apparently a significant upgrade from the previous games (I can't really speak for it though since I never played them), but this still isn't quite cutting it for me. In general, I've had better success just avoiding the lock-on option because it is really poorly implemented, and toggling between mobs is really a disaster. Maybe I shouldn't be playing it on the highest difficulty, and maybe I need to get better at parrying. I don't know, but my battle strategy is usually consisting of casting shield and then rolling in, slashing, and then rolling out. If I get hit, I cast shield again... and so far, that's worked on everything, including the first boss.

Progression in this game is also incredibly slow. Again, this might be because I'm playing it on the highest difficulty, but I feel like I'm about 15 hours in and my character is still level 4. I've done fourteen side quests, and I've gotten through the first main story segment of the game... still, enemies you kill seem to give you hardly any exp points, and nothing gives you money. Every mission I'm doing is suggesting that I be a much higher level than I am. It's kind of strange.

Also, what the hell is up with the character controls in general? He sort of moves like a tank, and this will get you in a lot of situations where you'll be tapping the controller to try to maneuver your character into place so you can loot a corpse or scavenge for herbs. You can be standing RIGHT ON the thing, and the "loot" prompt will not appear. So then you tap down a bit, and you can see the prompt at the corner of the screen, but you can't activate it until you swing the camera down so you can actually see the word "loot" clearly printed on the screen. Who thought that was a good idea?

I'm liking it, despite the slow pace. The quests are all different enough to avoid feeling overly repetitive. I'm wondering if the game's actual length is pretty short, so they included all this padding to stall progression.