You've got an active block and dodge, positioning to worry about, and you can read your opponents to predict their next move.

You'll unlock all your weapon abilities very quickly, however, and if you find a pair of weapons you're comfortable with-I stuck to rapiers and muskets for most of the game-you're looking at hundreds of hours where you're just getting the odd passive bonus and not much else.įights do at least benefit from the dose of tactical nuance. When you level up you get more points to put into your strength, dexterity and so on, but each weapon type also has an experience bar, as well as two progression trees with three abilities each. Things do get a bit more challenging as you approach the endgame, encouraging you to engage with the system more, but for hundreds of hours you'll see little growth. It's very plain, too, absent the kind of spectacles or surprises that make areas memorable.Ĭombat is in a similar situation, where the choice to use an action-based system instead of rows of hotbars is initially very welcome, but quickly runs out of steam. Aeternum is a pretty place, certainly, and for a long time I was happy to slowly saunter through its forests and swamps, admiring the natural world and the occasional ruin, but there just isn't much variety. If Aeternum was the kind of place that inspired exploration, this might be less of a pain in the arse, but these journeys are devoid of interesting diversions. With no mounts and a fast travel system that charges you currency with a fixed cap, you'll be doing an absurd amount of running around.

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