Recent reviews by Ding Ding Dong

Everything in this game is nice, except for the gameplay itself. That is UNBEARABLY SSSSSSLLLLLLOOOOOWWWW, or feels like it is. Every step, every breath, every lockpick, every shot, every thing has these year-long animations that must be seen for the director's vision to be fulfilled or smth.
Why is there a turn-based cooldown on lockpicking in areas devoid of anything else? To slow things down.
Why can't I use the map exits without my companions, whose AI pathfinding bugged out and they don't want to get onto the elevator platform? To slow things down.
Why does your pathfinding get interrupted and you're stopped dead in your tracks if an NPC crosses the street in front of you? Because ♥♥♥♥ you, that's why.

The Ch. Engine speedhack doesn't work either, so it's a poop creek without a paddle.

I've just handed in the quest and had to cross the map to go back to the overworld. No, thanks, not doing that again.

It's alright

The Wall is around Act 4 / level 40ish, which is par for the course, but there's a lot of the game left after that.

The main focus is the story: you can't just rush through the zones, you must go back and hand in the quest, talk to more npcs, receive the next quest, talk to the quest giver again, talk to the quest giver again again, and only then you can go on your merry way. Unfortunately, you are a mute moron in the story, so following it is an acquired taste.
In the same vein, the devs put a lot of cutscenes in the game. Every wave of an npc hand got it's own (luckily skippable) cutscene. Bosses waking up have cutscenes. Dialogues have cutsenes. Every sound and smell has cutscenes. I find it tiresome. Small nitpick for the pile.

I'm dropping the game at Act 10 / level 70ish and Act 3 / lvl 35ish, to give you an idea of what 27h may look like. No endgame or deep crafting for me. But from what I've seen, crafting involves a lot of chaos orb spamming and being locked out of options by min lvl reqs. May or may not be an accurate impression, who knows.

On the plus side, the actual gameplay is quite alright if you're using an enjoyable skill and are ahead of the dps curve, good luck with that.

The Beta was okay, if laggy and buggy, but that's expected.

The "launch" is feature-incomplete (the title card has weapons that aren't in the game yet, for the biggest example), laggy and buggy.

Buying this game is just paying Fatsharks to stuff you, don't do it yet, they don't deserve it.

Good fun once you get into the groove, quite tedious when you decide to do the last couple of main quests.

Good game to grind while listening to podcasts or watching things on the side.

This is to Vindictus what God Eater is to Monster Hunter, if you catch my drift.

A bit floaty in controls and a bit UNFASTFORWARDABLE ANIME in story, but so far so good, will play more.

You know how these grindathons pit you against ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobs for the first few levels so you can feel stylish and cool whacking them? This game doesn't do that, it's all chore all the time.
Other downsides are the lack of tooltips for the things you'd expect to be explained, the invasiveness of the shop (I've seen worse, I've seen better), and questionable game design decision devils in all the little details: your progress in everything you do is halted at every step, it's crazy.

It's good.

Aiming is with the mouse or whatever, rather than facing. Ymmv, I'm not a fan.