So far I believe the game will be as much of a success as DOS:1 if not more. It is clear there has been a huge leap in the entire GUI of the game as well as animations and environment. I'm expecting to want to tell people I know to buy this game and be proud of supporting it in Kickstarter.
With this being the Alpha version, I'm not going to speak ill of it now as I know there will be lots of change and I look forward to testing them. In the future postings I'll be re-creating my initial experience and pretend the best I can to not know what to expect. Unless there is too obvious of a change that I wouldn't have been able to ignore.
Now onto where the game gave me trouble...
Walking Around bug - still present, especially when attacking with a dagger. While it isn't the most severe issue, the fact it still remains since DOS:1 Alpha is really bad. Bug is defined; when melee attacking, your character will sometimes waste AP by walking around in an unnecessary manner to attack a creature that your already next to. The causes issues with them sometimes getting one or two opportunities of attack (from two different monsters when tightly packed).
1st Fault - Combat is a mess (see below). I'm not surprised on this due to the titles of many complaint threads. I'm hoping a lot of progress was made on the next update.
2nd Fault - Please see my 10-liters of blood thread.
3rd Fault - lack of humor. There is a lot of cocky attitude in dialog, but nothing that is funny. Example is "Here lies NPC who learned the hard way that trolls make for bad pets." Or "Here lies NPC who died from dieing." I simply love that one from the DOS:1 Enhanced Edition.
Starting off my character did the following in classic mode:
Created Wizard - didn't change any stats/starting spells
Killed first two voidwoven creatures
Recruited Red Prince
Help Hint dialog box told me to "walk behind things" and found hidden cove.
Got lightningscroll from little girl
Killed Voidwoven Turtles -- Very OP (over powered) battle
- was critical to use lightning scroll on the big turtle
- took a large amount of save/loading effort
Killed the two thugs that were going to kill the elf
Got quest to save elf in Gruff's cage
Didn't find elf kid in 2nd hiding spot (DIDN'T FIND 4th COMPANION)
Gave beer to healer for his patient, created first healing potion
Recruited Elf (looted lizards camp)
Used sneek to steal armor/loot chests
Killed three npc's over playing cards (tough, but not OP battle)
Found the guard that was made corrupted, got Restoration Ring
Gave up Restoration Ring, got key. NPC never showed me where to use it despite dialog saying she would.
Found NPC that stole food, rescued elf (Gruff battle Impossible to beat as I didn't want to give up the addict)
Three Frogs in back of elf cave... Extremely over powered, unbeatable.
Started playing on Explorer Mode as classic wasn't worth the stress...
Playing the game on Explorer mode felt like there was no point in combat...the HP was much lower and armor was well buffed. I didn't spend a fraction of the time in Classic mode to even loot armor from chests in the camp. Though my elf was bugged. With 99-100% chance to hit, she couldn't hit a single npc in combat. She was useless.
My suggestion is that existing Explorer mode should be "easy mode" with "classic" being similar to explorer mode just with no buffed armor/stats from difficulty settings and maybe +25% HP as rough numbers.
Classic Mode should be hard mode. In classic mode, I found combat far more challenging then in any other Divinity game. I know that I could have looked up a guide on this, but that is not my play style.
Typically I'll look up for help when I truly cannot figure out what to do or crafting guides.
Anyway, I'm not an upset or disgruntled customer as I know Larian will listen to all player feedback. If Larian were to start another kickstarter campaign before the next update, I would be a backer within 24hrs for that game too