Did they add a gameplay slider for tediousness and funness? What about a graphical option to make the art less generic? Less generic would be, you know, like Boris Vallejo quality for this game.
Tediousness is something that is almost unescapable in low-level D&D-Mask of the Betrayer is all about higher-level D&D, where the only thing that can really touch you is REALLY powerful shit. Even swarms of lower-level mobs would get cut down in the face of a high-level party-mass area spell damage and high ACs make the high level party both untouchable and have insanely high output against lower level stuff.
There's a lot less "slog through this cave and kill the boring crap". The first hour is sort of like that, I suppose, but after that you don't get that very much.
Area design is far, far superior. Rashemen > Sword Coast, and there's no sprawling cities like Neverwinter to get "tired" of since you spend so much time in them. Each area I've been to so far has been progressively crazier than the previous one, and the encounters, while for the most part not too particularly challenging (thanks to my min-maxing), have been more and more interesting. There are plenty of trash fights and sometimes they DO drag out, but at least it isn't againt boring orcs in some lameass cave.
Party NPCs have been very well done (both in artistic design, motivations/background, and interactions) , I know this was a complaint with the first NWN2 for some people so I'd like to air it out that these companions are a cut better than those in NWN2. And yes, they all have a sort of Boris Vallejo flair to them.
My only real complaints so far are A) camera is still awkward, though far improved-use strategy mode ONLY btw, and B) maybe a bit too easy, even on D&D Hardcore mode.
Edit: Also, with great power come great spell lists. There's a huge amount of tactical options for your wizards/clerics to work with in terms of spells since they are so high level, but managing them just right requires care and lots of planning in front of spellbook screens. I don't mind it, nor do I mind getting out paper and doing math to do gear/crafting optimzation, but I can see some people flinch. This is a hardcore, old-school D&D game, and it's not trying to hide it.
