So, I'll start with the positives, then address the most glaring problem at the post's end. Tl;dr, fun game made with a lot of love, great multiplayer, active developers fixing issues as fast as they can, not yet but eventually will be worth its asking price with a few updates, AI-usage is going to poison this game's reputation and quality and is something they could and should change as soon as possible. I'll say outright that this could be a truly great game someday, I enjoyed it immensely. It's satisfying to swing your weapon, to move carefully in combat or sprint through the world, to dodge enemy attacks, I think they absolutely nailed tons of it. Playing on the hardest and easiest difficulties are satisfying on opposite ends of the spectrum, bosses feel appropriately difficult and enemies appropriately deadly on hard, while it's a leisurely walk on easy. I'd feel comfortable playing this with a wide variety of friends of multiple skill levels. The action/combat of it almost feels like it has a universal appeal, though a stamina meter demands it be played more precisely than HackAndSlashy. I think the visuals are quite strong as well. Character portraits can look awkward, but in terms of spritework, every single player character looks spectacular, every single animation is complex, flat out cool and conveys exactly what it needs to. It feels and looks amazing to swing your weapon in these beautiful smears and arcs and leave dents in the surroundings, or even to harvest materials from the world, watching your character split logs with their axe in unique animations. Each and every monster is striking too, bosses can be actively breathtaking at times, npcs, environments, everything is rendered in gorgeous detail. I think its biggest claim to fame is its skill trees. As of now, there are three races and three classes for a total of nine different base builds that can all go in drastically different directions. The build-crafting channel in the discord is something to behold, tons of people are sharing wildly varied builds on the same classes. I think there's already some delightful depth here that's only going to get better. Each of the 9 currently existing skill trees all have extremely fun and satisfying nodes and skills to unlock from them, and I found it utterly delightful to make my way through point by point to what I wanted. Respeccing is possible and encouraged, you'll not be wanting on that front either. Add in gear that all have individual stats and set-bonuses that you can mix and match, and something wonderfully satisfying to engage with blossoms. Even if all this isn't your thing, this game has surprisingly easy to navigate menus. With a small team and an early-access game, I wouldn't blame them for having some clumsiness, but I found it to be smoothsailing. I must commend the multiplayer as well. Whether you want to play with friends or strangers, I found its connection nigh flawless. I did bump into hitbox issues playing with friends on other continents, but it's hard to hold that against them. What I didn't experience were dropped connections, lag, bugs or desync of any kind on allies or enemies, I found it to be a practically perfect multiplayer experience. For the heck of it, I joined a 20+ person public server and had a grand time romping around with strangers, all doing their own things in the world, pursuing my own goals or helping others as I saw fit. Overall, I liked it a lot, I enjoyed this game immensely and found myself not wanting to stop playing. With that said, I feel this game is not currently, but will become, what I paid for it. Endgame content is present but rather limited, involving infinite rematches with gear-dropping bosses that scale in difficulty. There's a nice variety of bosses to do this with, but not enough for me to be sinking hours and hours of my time into. To be harsh and hyperbolic, as of now the endgame does feel a bit like playing a bad monster hunter. I feel like I thoroughly exhausted the game's content in about 20 hours or so.If you don't mind repeating content if you get to do it with a new set of skills, the game has a lot of replay value. If I got this game on a steeper sale I might be singing a different tune, but on a personal level, 19 dollars for 19 hours of game isn't quite enough for me with how competitive the medium is, as unfortunate as that statement is. The game also features an inventory encumbrance, gathering, crafting, and base-building system, which all functions appropriately. Admittedly, none of this is particularly my speed, and I all but exclusively made chests to store my items in and ignored much of what I was able to do in this regard as much as I could. You will need to pause your exploring, fighting, sidequesting and adventuring when your inventory gets full, dumping stuff in chests to craft or store for later, sell them for gold, dismantle unwanted gear so you can turn it into a currency used specifically to upgrade gear-if you don't build the stat that grows Encumbrance, you might find yourself frequently annoyed by these pitstops. You could soldier on of course, but it doesn't feel great to leave the slew of monster materials and geardrops on the floor. There's also a food and drink gear slot you seem to need to fill, which I did immediately balk at, but it was ultimately unintrusive and easy to ignore. Anyway, clearly take this critique with a grain of salt when these systems are not to my tastes. Its still satisfying to obliterate useless gear into something that rewards you later. On that note, this game features an elaborate hub, filled with extremely verbose NPC's that demand you move through their dialogue trees in order to accept essential quests to progress through the game and unlock new areas and enemies. This was also a turn-off for me, as I think an action-heavy multiplayer game like this works best when the story stays out of the fun's way. It is easy to identify which NPC's you need to speak to and to mash through their text if you're utterly disinterested. Finally, I'll address what is rightfully and rapidly becoming the game's biggest controversy - undisclosed usage of AI-assisted writing. I believe the problems are twofold. One, the writing is actively bad and is making the game worse with how often you're forced to engage with it, and two, the ai-usage is poisoning the well, so to speak. Dialogue in Dimraeth fails to convey narrative, making you slog through huge walls of the most generic fantasy dialogue imaginable. It spends an unbelievable amount of words to waffle about vague concepts such as "the refugee village is struggling," or "the evil mage lies in shadow, seeking power." It doesn't go anywhere, obsessed with building these character relationships that all boil down to everyone having a positive respect for each other. There are no character dynamics, there are no plot twists - and this would be perfectly fine, but instead the game shoves literal walls of texts in front of you everytime you do anything. I have to wonder why the game seems so intent on being read when it didn't bother to be written. In-between fun gameplay it feels like I need to read someone's chatgpt prompt of "speak as a grizzled soldier/shy fae about x topic." There are decent ideas here that fall completely flat, such as parts of the forest intentionally corrupting itself to war with humanity as an environmental punishment, but the game has absolutely no reason to be so wordy with so little of interest to say. There's nothing wrong with generic fantasy, but now, everytime I so much as hear a bland song, I have to wonder if an AI generated it, having to wonder which weak parts of this game are from human hand or just a generated mistake. This story does not have to be perfect or the best anyone has ever made, but it will never be anything but a complete waste of reputation-destroying time if it continues down this direction.